Demystifying Keywords, Categories, and Themes For Amazon Indie Authors
To most indie authors, Amazon is really confusing. There seems to never be a clear path to success and once there is some clarity, the path changes yet again. If you feel like this, take heart. Though Amazon is tricky, it’s not a total mystery.
Let me start by presenting Amazon to you in a different light: Among all of the other things that Amazon does for us as consumers and authors, Amazon is a search engine. When you start looking at Amazon that way, a lot of the information in this article will start to make more sense.
When I view categories for my Kindle book, I see both “Books” and “Kindle Store” categories. Which categories matter most?
That’s a great question, but let’s look at this a bit differently. If you’ve explored the categories in print at all, you’ll likely see that they are vastly different from the eBook categories. That’s because the print categories are based on an industry standard of categorizing and sorting books — a standard used by e-stores and brick-and-mortar stores alike–called BISAC. Kindle store categories, on the other hand, are based on the things Amazon has learned we are looking for — years of data collected by Amazon’s search engine. Both are important, but they may not line up. Additionally, BISAC categories are limited while eBook categories offer greater variety and specificity of category. For that reason, I would stick with eBook categories as your primary focus.
It’s not a bad thing to have different book categories in both “Books” and the “Kindle Store,” by the way. It’s sort of like the old saying: The rising tide floats all boats. If you end up getting a lot of eyes on your book through a Kindle Store category, that can raise the exposure of your books in categories across the board.
Read more here: WriterUnboxed