This is a YouTube explainer by Julie Broad (Book Launchers) about Amazon’s changes to book category handling. Key points: in June 2023 Amazon shifted to letting authors select Amazon categories directly (authors may choose up to three), replacing the earlier algorithmic placement tied to BISAC codes and a previous ability to be in up to ten categories. Julie discusses practical implications (duplicate and ghost categories — Kindlepreneur found 54% duplicates), shows the KDP dashboard, and gives actionable advice: use Publisher Rocket for category research, monitor category performance every 3–6 months, research print and ebook categories separately, and avoid choosing the same parent category for all selections.
Chapters
Oh man, it's been chaos working with Amazon as an author lately and the category changes have been one of those things that's really flipped things around and upside down. If you're trying to get a handle on Amazon in 2023 or 2024 or probably beyond, this video is for you. Hey there. I'm Julie the Book Broad, founder of Book Launchers, a full service self publishing company. I did a live stream last month where I revealed research from Kindlepreneur that shared that 54% of categories are duplicates, which means you want to make sure you aren't choosing two categories that are duplicates. And there's also ghost categories. That's different than a book that seems to be getting ghosted by the algorithm, but probably not unrelated. What an adventure we have been having. But that's also another topic. So let's talk about what you must know about about categories. Technically, you can now set your categories with Amazon, which is a huge shift from how they did things before, where they required you to choose a bisec code and they used metadata and their own metrics to determine your category. Don't know what a bisec code is? Well, I have a video for you on that and I'll link to it at the end. The bisec codes have long been the industry standard for selecting categories, and even Amazon used to use these. When you would upload your book to kdp, the categories you would select were not Amazon categories. You weren't in a bisect category on Amazon though they have their own. But you got into those categories through the algorithm. I know this is crazy, but that changed in June of 2023 when Amazon started having authors choose three Amazon categories. Just check out what this looks like. I'll take you into my KDP dashboard for the new brand you, which doesn't sell a lot so I can mess around with it. Wait though, my friend, it is an awesome book and I'm going to repurpose it and launch it in early 2025. And I think you're going to love what you learn in that one. Make sure you're on the newsletter list for that. And all the fun we've got planned for 2024. We have a crazy exciting year ahead. Go to booklaunchers.com newsletter for all the goods. Okay, so back to this dashboard. I want to note that if you click yes for sexually explicit content, it starts to create limitations. It doesn't mean you can't publish your book, but it does change the options for categories. Now we're doing nonfiction, so that's probably not relevant for most of you. But then, assuming you've done your category research, I'll link below to Publisher Rocket and their content on category selection, because I don't think you should choose your category without Publisher Rocket, and they have some great instructions on choosing the right category. All right, in other words, don't do what I just did in this video where I randomly selected the category that just felt right to show you how to do it on the video. No, don't do that. I just wanted you to see what the process looks like. All right, now here's a caveat. Choosing those categories doesn't mean that's the category you'll show up in, because it's Amazon. I mean, really. But that choice does have influence. Ultimately, Amazon still makes the selection, which I assume is still the case because of scammers and spammers trying to game the Amazon system by being in categories they have no business being in just to play certain games. This does stink a little because their categorization does result in some weird plain placements sometimes. And now Amazon customer support claims they can't override these automatic category placements. There are also a lot of folks, myself included, that believe your description and what you put in the seven keyword boxes will impact your categories. But we don't know exactly because we don't have the Amazon algorithm to dissect. Okay, so besides the fact that you can choose your categories where you couldn't before, and it's also a big change from the past because you could request to be included in up to 10 categories now, if your book can only be in three, it can also only be on three bestseller lists in the store at any given time. Amazon has actually said this was to stop people from putting a book in categories that it doesn't really belong in, which is how the bestseller game was played by many companies and authors seeking that orange bestseller flag. But that was obviously not good for the overall conversion and buyer experience, so they had to put a stop to it. And as an author, we want that to not be the thing people are doing. So again, publisher Rocket handy dandy tool. You can go to book launchers.com Rocket. You should probably pause the video and grab it now so you can use it to make sure you're in the right categories, you're not in duplicates, and you're not in Ghosts. And I have three other quick tips to add to this that you should know about. Besides the fact that you should use the tool to check for ghosts and duplicates. But it's also that you should try to keep an eye on your most important categories because new releases can really change how a category is performing. And this means checking in on your category performance every three to six months. And we do that when we refresh keywords, which we also do every three to six months. This is vital to the health of your book visibility. And by the way, the second tip, you have to do this research for print books and for ebooks separately, because they do have different categories. Next tip, don't choose the same parent category for all three. I just noticed that my latest book, Self Promote and Succeed, the ebook, has all three parent categories the same. So I'm going to revisit the category research my team did on that one because I believe it's always better to have some variety on your category parents because it gives you more opportunities to rank in a bestseller list. And there are almost always some category parents that fit for you, if you don't know what I mean. What I'm talking about is right here. You can see in this screenshot, I am in reference for all three. So reference is my parent category. These are all logical categories and they probably were really good as far as competition and opportunity for the book. So I understand that. But when you look at the book how to Market a Book, you see the book is in 10 categories. So this is from the historical ability of being in 10 categories. But you can see it's things like business and money down to entrepreneurship and web marketing. It's possible these categories weren't a good fit under the new practice or they are too competitive, which is why my book isn't in them. But I want to go back over it again because I would love to be in at least two different parent categories for improved discoverability. And that's my recommendation for you too. Okay, so now let's get you that video on bisect codes that's right here. And of course, this video on KDP vs IngramSpark to help you figure out the difference if you need to know it. So go ahead, click on over. I'll see you there.
