So you’ve written your book, you have your blurb down pat, and your cover should be framed for an art gallery. You’re all set, right? As you enter the book information in, you come across the categories you want to put it in and realize that the particular category you want isn’t listed. So you instead grumble and choose the closest related category before moving on to the next line, keywords. If you’re like many authors, you learned to write using a free site and do the usual keywords before moving on. This is a mistake that many authors make, those precious few keywords define your book and can place it exactly in the category you wanted in the first place.
Amazon has lists of keywords available for each of the major categories: Romance, LGBT, Erotica, Science Fiction and Fantasy, Literature and Fiction, Biographies and Memoirs, Teen and Young Adult, Business and Money, Children’s Books, History, Religion and Spirituality, Comics and Graphic Novels, Mystery, Thriller and Suspense, and Fiction and Literature.
These keywords will help you reach specific audiences through subcategories that Amazon calls browse categories. For example, if you wrote a piece of erotica that featured a transgender character you would find that in the category listings that there isn’t an easy checkmark for transgender erotica. However if you select the erotica category and in the keywords list transgender then your book will be listed among the transgender erotica category. Or say your book is about a billionaire that reveals a new world to the protagonist, using the keyword billionaire in the Romance category would have your book placed into the browse category of Romantic Heroes > Rich & Wealthy.
By properly utilizing the keywords you can target your book to the specific audience. Spending a few minutes to be sure that you have your ebook in the correct browse categories can be the difference between making sales and being ignored as potential customers flick through titles.
A list of the browse category keywords can be found here: https://kdp.amazon.com/help?topicId=A200PDGPEIQX41
Title photo by eGuldry, no alterations made, used through Creative Commons licensing, original can be found here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/eguidry/4010965162