When you first publish your book, Amazon only offers about three fifths of the total categories. While you do have to choose from the ones offered, you also have to ask Amazon to add your book to other categories.
Upon publishing your book, go to the special page Amazon has created specifically for sending in category requests. Be sure to have the following information available:
- Your book title
- Amazon ASIN number
- The exact category string you want your book to show up for
Once you have this information, you can follow these steps:
- Click to go to this Help/Contact Page for Author Central and sign into your KDP account
- Under “How We Can Help” select “Amazon Book Page”
- Then select “Update Amazon Categories”
- Then in the box, you'll see the following:
You can submit a single request for all category updates. Add a line per marketplace, using the example below.
Example: ASIN or ISBN, .COM, UK, DE, JP, etc., eBook or book, preferred category
Categories to be added (list each category as a separate line item for all applicable titles):
1.
Categories to be removed (list each category as a separate line item for all applicable titles):
1.
To fill this out, put your book's ASIN or ISBN in there that you want to change the categories, and the market. Then enter in the appropriate category string that you want to be included for or removed from.
A category string looks like this:
Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Science Fiction > Colonization
Increase Your Book Marketing
See the Publisher Rocket effect, when you use the right keywords and categories to help get your book seen more on Amazon.
Get Publisher Rocket Now!This is an incredibly important step. If the categories of your book are left up to Amazon, it will be automatically put into categories that are already so saturated. Using this technique, you have control over which niches you can get your book into, and you’ll have a better chance of becoming a best-seller in that category.
Our case study in this episode, Dali Burgado, didn’t take this step at first, but once she went a different route and called Amazon, she was able to get her book listed in very specific categories and it boosted her book to a Bestseller and she was able to get more book sales.
It’s also important to note that it’s not just the niche category, but the whole string. The more you niche down, the less competition you will be up against. And Dali is proof that by doing this, you can earn that Bestseller status.
Bio of the Author in the Case Study:
Dali Burgado is a Certified Personal Trainer (CPT) through The National Council for Certified Personal Trainers (NCCPT), a wife, and mother of four children who lives in Brooklyn, NY.
After the birth of her fourth son, she shed 40 pounds and began coaching others online to shed their weight, and is an Amazon Bestselling author of Defeat It!: A Woman’s Guide to Crushing Life’s Challenges And Finally Living The Fit Life.
Resources Referred to in this Episode:
- Dali Burgado’s Amazon Author Page
- Defeat It!: A Woman’s Guide to Crushing Life’s Challenges And Finally Living The Fit Life by Dali Burgado
- Kindle Sales Rank Calculator
- KDP List of Categories that Require a Keyword
- Author Central Send a Request to be Included for a Category
- The Side Hustle Show
- Book Marketing Show Episode 16
- Kindle Direct Publishing
I have the KDP Rocket and am working on categories. Amazon Kindle has the Two-hour short reads but the KDP Rocket does not appear to recognize categories with Two-hour; 2 hour; or short reads. When I worked with it about a month ago I thought those came up – “Kindle eBooks/Kindle Short Reads/Two hours or more (65-100 pages)/Self-Help”, but not today. I checked Amazon and they still show that as a category?
I’d like to use these as a couple of my 7 categories but I cannot find the stats on them now. Am I doing something wrong?