As an indie author you will have a tool kit. Whether it is for writing, publishing, formatting, or advertising, there are so many ways to do what needs to be done to publish your book. Today we are going to talk about part of the publishing tool kit.

One of the things you’ll be asked when you start publishing a book on KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) is what keywords and categories you want your book listed in. This is where it comes in really handy to know your genre and other authors you want to target. This is an important step because it tells Amazon where to place your book on their shelves. And you want to be on the right shelf.

Note: When you publish with a publisher, whether they are a small press or a large press, you will never see the KDP dashboard, only the publisher can see it, so you won’t have any control over where they place your books. As a self-published author, not only do you have control, but if your book is not doing well in one category, you can go in and tweak it and put it in another.

How do you find the "right" keywords and categories?

You’re allowed 7 keywords and 2 categories. So, what is the best way to find those categories and keywords?

There are two ways to go about this…

1. You can go to Amazon and type your genre in the search bar.

I did a search for Vampire Urban fantasy. You can see in the screen shot below that along the left side there is a section called Departments. You can click in those departments and look at the books that show up on the main screen. This will help you narrow down your search and find the books and authors that yours would fit in with. By clicking on books you think yours is similar too, you can look at what categories they are placed in.

That’s the hard way…

2. The easy way. You can purchase an app called Publisher Rocket.

It is a one-time purchase of $199.00. If I could only buy two programs to help me publish, this would be one of them. We’ll get to the other in another post. Publisher Rocket takes all the work out of searching for keywords and categories.

I am going to add a bunch of screen shots to show you how easy it is.

Some Definitions

When you open up Rocket this is what you will see. I’m going to go through what each of those items means.

Keyword Search

The name says it all. This is where you would type in your genre and have Rocket generate some of the keywords you can place your book into. But as you can see in the screen shot, it not only gives you the keywords, but allows you to click on Analyze and it will show you a whole bunch of other information.

Competition Analyzer

This one will show you how much other authors are making in the specific search you typed in. So, I typed in Vampire Urban Fantasy and this is what came up. There was a lot more, but I cropped the picture.

Now if you want to go deeper, I would take the highest ranked and highest selling books and click on them. See what categories they are in, what their blurb looks like, and try to mimic what they are doing.

Category Search

This one will help you find your categories on amazon. It does help to have a basic idea of where you want to start with this one. Screen shot one shows you the front screen before you start digging in.

This second screen shot shows you what happens when you enter a search term. I picked science fiction and fantasy because it is what I write.

Now my book doesn’t fit in all of those categories, mostly the romance, so I wouldn't use those, but I would go through this list and find the best ones that fit my book.

AMS Keyword Search

This the section you would use when you are running AMS ads through Amazon. Once again, some great information in here. It gives you the titles, authors, AISN numbers, and the ability to export all of this into a spreadsheet to use for your ads.

I come to this section often to get new keywords for ads.

Final Thought

I am not trying to sell Publisher Rocket, but like I said it is one of my favorite tools. If you enjoy research, then you can skip Rocket and do all the same in the Amazon search bar. You will not get all the sales information, but you can get everything you need to set up your keywords and categories.

Note: Amazon says you can only have two categories on KDP, but if you email Amazon with a list of other categories you would like your book to be placed in, they will add up to six more.

This seems like a lot of information, so I am going to end this post here and take a nap.

Are there any other authors out there who have some other handy tips and tricks to help find categories and keywords? Please share them down in the comments!

* * * * * *

About Jenn

Sass. Snark. Supernatural Sizzle. 

Award winning author of Urban Fantasy and Paranormal Romance. Vampires, Greek gods, and a bit of Demon Destroyer fun for everyone.

Jenn Windrow loves characters who have a pinch of spunk, a dash of attitude, and a large dollop of sex appeal. Top it all off with a huge heaping helping of snark, and you’ve got the ingredients for the kind of fast-paced stories she loves to read and write. Home is a suburb of it’s-so-hot-my-shoes-have-melted-to-the-pavement Phoenix. Where she lives with her husband, two teenagers, and a slew of animals that seem to keep following her home, at least that’s what she claims.

Website: https://jennwindrow.com/

Top photo purchased from Depositphoto. All others are from Jennifer Windrow.