Recently KDP changed the category
selections for books published on Amazon, which will affect books that you are
thinking about publishing and books that you've already got published on Amazon. And these are important because it
can affect how your books get found, the ranking on Amazon, and therefore
ultimately the sales of your books. So we're going to look at this
in a little bit more depth. We're going to look at why
they're important, what's changed, and then some tips on how to select the
right categories for your books and do it quickly. So if you don't know
already what categories are, if you go to a book listing
on Amazon, scroll down, you'll see here under product details
categories that it's ranked in. And this can be up to three categories.
And why are these important? Well, when publishing a book,
when you select a category, you're essentially telling Amazon what
your book is about. So can affect its ranking on Amazon and whether
customers find it. Also, when customers are
looking for books to buy, they sometimes just browse through
the various categories on Amazon. So if your book is ranking
highly in a particular category, again it helps your book get found.
But not only that, if your book, like this one here, does rank highly
in a ca category, in this case, number one in three different categories, you do get this number one bestsellers
badge that you can see here. Now, it used to be in the book listings, you would also see this orange
bestsellers badge next to a book, but that seems to have disappeared, so
I think maybe they've got rid of it. If you know anything more about that, then please do let me
know down in the comments. But having this orange bestsellers
badge does affect your overall ranking on Amazon.
Now, it used to be that some publishers
would try and game the system by publishing their books in
really obscure categories, but KDP cracked down on this and
in fact terminated some accounts where publishers published their books
in irrelevant categories to the type of book that they were publishing.
So I don't recommend doing that. So what's actually changed? Well when you were publishing a book on
KDP and you went down to the categories area, you would click on
the choose categories box. Now you would have a choice of two
categories in which to publish your books, but there was a problem because these
were old industry standard categories. They were called BISAC
categories or BISAC categories, and it stood for book industry
standards and communications. Now, the problem was, was that these categories were
older categories and they were quite broad and it was often difficult, one to find the right
category for your book. And also it was difficult to
decide on which category was most relevant to the book
that you were publishing. But there was a bit of a way around this
and that was to email KDP support and request that your book be put in. 10 Categories. Now that has changed completely
because you can no longer email KDP support and request
those KDP categories, but now you can choose up to three
categories in which to put your books. But not only that. They're no longer these old standard
categories and they are now these specific categories that
you can see on Amazon. And you can also see these, if you go to
the categories on Amazon, click on one, for instance, children's books.
You'll then see these subcategories. We'll click on activities,
crafts and games. And again, see these further subcategories
in which you can put your books. So this has the advantage in
that you can be more specific about where you place your books. You can now place your books in those
categories that you used to see other books published in that you couldn't
see in the old category system. And also it should hopefully reduce
the chance of other publishers trying to game the system by putting their books
in really obscure categories because they've only got three to choose from
now rather than a broad selection of 10. So let's have a look at the important bit, which is actually choosing the
categories themselves because there are a couple of shortcuts we can take
to picking the right category. So what you do is when you are
filling out the details of your book, you eventually come to this categories
area, you click on choose categories, and in this dropdown menu we
select our broad category. Now you may be thinking, well, we've
still got all these to choose from. Where do I start? Well, one way of doing this is by going
to a book listing on Amazon, looking at what categories, similar books to what you want to publish
are being published in. You can then say, click on one of these categories. And on the left here you will see the
category and subcategories it's published in. So here we've got books,
crafts hobbies and home, coloring books for grownups. And
this is published under humorous. So you would go along, find
crafts hobbies and home, then you would start to
look at the subcategories, which in this case was crafts
and hobbies under subcategory, coloring books for grownups. And
then you could pick humorous, or in this case it could be
mandalas and patterns as well. So we'll click that one and you'll see
here which category your book is going to be listed in. Another way is to
use a tool like Publisher Rockets, which is excellent for keyword research, but they do have this
category search feature here. And up here we would just put in a word
related to the book that we're going to be publishing. So say we're going to
be publishing a kids' handwriting book, so we could put in handwriting. And here we have some suggestions.
So we've got children's books, education reference, reading and writing.
So we go back to our categories list, select add another category.
So that's our broad category, which is children's books. Our subcategory education and reference, our next subcategory reading and
writing, and then selecting handwriting. So there we've got our,
our second category. There is also an additional useful
feature about this category search on publisher Rocket, which I
recently did a video on, which I'll link to down
below in the description. The other way is just to
browse the listing. So again, we'll click on add another category,
and we'll just go through the listings, like so, digging down under different
subcategories until we find something that's appropriate for our
book. Once you've picked three, you then click on save categories.
Then the next thing you need to do, and don't forget this, is to tick whether your book
is a low content book or not. If you're not sure what that is, you
can click on this dropdown menu here. And Amazon gives you a broad outline
of the definition of low content books, but essentially they're books in which
the content on each page is almost identical. Now, what if you've
got books already published? Well, here's an example of a book
that I've got listed on Amazon, and you can see here these are the
two categories that it's listed in. So you've got a choice, either just to keep your book in
those two categories that it's in, or pick three new categories by
clicking on choose categories and going through that selection process. Once
you've done that, hit save categories, then go and republish your book. It will go through a short review process, not the usual long review process
when you're publishing a new book. And it should update it in the system, very similar to if you are
changing the pricing of your books. So that's the categories and the new
categories and how to select them efficiently. Now, if you are new
to publishing books on Amazon, I do have this playlist here, which goes through how to create and
how to upload and Publish on Amazon. Thank you much for your time.
It is very much appreciated. Don't forget to hit that subscribe
button and until next time, goodbye.
