First off I want to send out my prayers to all my friends in the Philipines. I hope all of you and your families are safe and unharmed.
Categories!!!
This is a quandry for most writers. There are so many genres now. When I was younger you had Romance, Historical Romance, Science Fiction, Mystery, Christian, and Non Fiction. I’m sure there were more, but that’s the ones I remember in the book stores. Now there’s everything from Young Adult to Shifter Paranormal and beyond.
As a writer this is something that always blows my mind. If you put your book in the wrong category it may not sell as well as in another category. But how do you choose? On Amazon and Smashwords I do a lot of research. It takes a little time, but it can help you to move up in the ranks.
Here’s how I research:
1: I write down the top 5 categories I think my book would fit in. I look at the many facets of my book. Does it have any suspense? This could put it in a suspenseful romance category. Does it have paranormal aspects, mystery, horror, or historical? All of these things play into the choosing.
2: Don’t fall in love with these 5 categories because this step could throw them completely out of the list. Then go to Amazon or Smashwords and search that category. I learned a lot from doing this. I used to put all my romances in the Romance category. Then after researching it, that category is overrun with books. That means it will be harder to climb the charts. Then I started stepping out of the general category box and pull out the big guns. It really helped.
3: Amazon has a nifty little tool in the help section. It gives you the list of the most popular categories and the side lines that go along with it. Go to your KDP dashboard and then to help. From there all you need to do is type categories in the search box then it will give you the main categories then just click on yours and there you are. It help my sales immensely.
This is just a couple of ways to select your categories. Believe me that is a big part of your book sales.
As always, good writing and May God Bless You…
Stephanie Hurt - Romance Author 
Thanks for this Stephanie, this is really helpful. My debut novel is not selling too well at the moment, I think this could be mainly down to the fact that it doesn’t fall easily into a category. But I will try your tip and see what happens.
Glad it helped. You might want to double check you categories on Amazon through your KDP link. They changed around some of their categories and it bumped some out. I found this out when I went in to tweak mine. Good luck. If I can help, just let me know. 🙂
Thanks! 🙂
This is a great help for readers. This will give them tips on how to search books. Thank you for sharing.
Thanks Carl. If we as authors don’t put our books in the right categories then readers can’t find us. I know as a avid reader it really helps me. Have a wonderful day.