Episode 97
Amazon Categories Unraveled: Maximizing Book Discoverability with Lara Bernhardt
Tune into the latest episode of the Writing Momentum podcast with Chris and Gena, featuring the knowledgeable Lara Bernhardt, where they delve deep into the complex world of Amazon categories. Lara shares invaluable insight into the significance of accurately categorizing books on Amazon, giving examples of how misidentification can lead to reader frustration. She also reveals the recent changes Amazon has made to the categories and offers practical tips for authors to effectively narrow down the right categories out of the staggering 16,000 available options. With enlightening discussions, real-life examples, and deeper insights into book publishing on Amazon, this episode is a must-listen for authors looking to maximize the discoverability and success of their books.
Links:
- Lara’s book, Red Rain: https://amzn.to/3KhfzjX
- Liz Wilcox's Email Marketing Membership at http://wmdeal.com/liz
- Get your FREE Move the Needle goal-setting for authors ebook at https://www.writingmomentum.com
- Write with us! Join Chris, Gena, and Rene each Wednesday at noon Central and let's get our writing DONE! https://www.writingmoments.com
Transcript
Hello, and welcome to the Writing Momentum Podcast.
Speaker:I'm Christopher Maselli.
Speaker:I'm here with my wife Gena.
Speaker:How are you doing today, Gena?
Speaker:I'm doing great.
Speaker:We are back with Lara Bernhardt today, so we're so excited to have her here.
Speaker:And we're talking about a really relevant topic today.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:What are we talking about, Chris?
Speaker:We're talking about Amazon categories.
Speaker:But before we get to that, we should introduce Lara.
Speaker:We should definitely introduce Laura.
Speaker:Just in case you don't know Laura?
Speaker:She's a push cart nominated writer editor.
Speaker:Oh, there's someone who might not know who I am?
Speaker:That's right.
Speaker:And you are also the founder and acquiring editor for Admission Press.
Speaker:And y'all produce a wide variety of books.
Speaker:And you've written The Wantland Files, which is a supernatural
Speaker:suspense novel series.
Speaker:And then of course, two standalone women's novels.
Speaker:One is, which is Red Rain.
Speaker:I know that's your latest.
Speaker:And so I know whenever you publish a book, you've gotta put
Speaker:it in an Amazon category, right?
Speaker:That's what we're gonna talk about today.
Speaker:I know there's been changes with the Amazon categories.
Speaker:So I think we should dig into all of that.
Speaker:I do wanna point out here that Laura comes to us because she is
Speaker:an author who writes in different categories and in different genres.
Speaker:And so she comes at this not just from a, oh, I've done this
Speaker:once and this is what's worked.
Speaker:But she comes from it from a really thoughtful place and I actually was in
Speaker:Lara's class at WriterCon a couple of years ago when she was talking about this,
Speaker:and it gave me pause and really helped me understand categories a little bit more.
Speaker:So I'm really excited to have her here with us talking about it.
Speaker:Welcome, Lara.
Speaker:I'm so happy to be here.
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:I think most authors when they think of Amazon Categories.
Speaker:We think of it just in terms of, okay, I need to find a category
Speaker:that's very specific so that I can be number one in that category when
Speaker:my book launches, and that will make me an Amazon bestselling author and.
Speaker:Number one bestseller.
Speaker:What categories are good for is that why they matter?
Speaker:Or is there something more to it?
Speaker:I Think that it's a little more complex than that, but you're not wrong, I think.
Speaker:That most authors especially indie published, but not only definitely
Speaker:wanna find categories that are very niche so that they don't have as much
Speaker:competition so that they can hopefully get that coveted orange flag, so that
Speaker:you can grab those screenshots and say, I'm a number one bestselling author.
Speaker:And it feels good to have that up there.
Speaker:But from a reader's standpoint, think about how people are
Speaker:going to discover your book.
Speaker:They'll very likely go to the type of book that they want, and then
Speaker:they're probably gonna look and see what's on that first page, that top,
Speaker:and it's, it'll say, see the top 100 in this category, it's 25 per page.
Speaker:So being in that first 25 is a real advantage because people searching
Speaker:for that type of book will see yours.
Speaker:Are they gonna keep going through the top 100?
Speaker:Maybe, but they're certainly gonna look at that first page.
Speaker:So being one through 25 can matter.
Speaker:So categories in general start with BISAC.
Speaker:So when a book is being published, the first thing that you're asked to
Speaker:choose or that the publisher is asked to choose is the BISAC categories.
Speaker:And you can pick two, I think even up to three.
Speaker:And I'm gonna glance at my notes here because BISAC stands for a thing.
Speaker:It's book industry standards and communications.
Speaker:And basically it's telling you to pick your book genre.
Speaker:Just if you were going into a bookstore, going into a library, you can find the
Speaker:type of book you're interested in by going to the shelf, you want a mystery.
Speaker:You go to the mystery section, thriller, you go to the thriller section,
Speaker:romance, you go to the romance section.
Speaker:There are 54 major categories under BISAC, and that includes
Speaker:everything even like nonfiction.
Speaker:And then under those, you're gonna get the more specific genres, but
Speaker:they still say pretty general.
Speaker:Compare that to Amazon's browse categories, which have
Speaker:something like 16,000 in total.
Speaker:Wow.
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:So that 54 number doesn't, I don't think, include all the little smaller sub genres,
Speaker:but that's still a massive difference.
Speaker:So Amazon has really taken it to the next level so that you can
Speaker:really get specific as a shopper, as a reader, what you want to read.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And people do that.
Speaker:I do that myself as a reader, right?
Speaker:I'll be on my Kindle and I'll enjoyed the book and I'll start to look
Speaker:through categories, and you do, you just start to, swipe through
Speaker:those categories and see what other books are near the top of that list.
Speaker:And yeah, if you ranked because you were specific enough, that can influence
Speaker:me and my buying decision, right?
Speaker:Absolutely.
Speaker:As a reader, I do the same thing.
Speaker:I know that I like women's fiction, but.
Speaker:I think there's 20 something categories under women's fiction alone because it
Speaker:is such a, there's, it's a wide variety.
Speaker:Even within that singular heading.
Speaker:I tend to like literary better, so I know to go check out what's popular
Speaker:literary, and it's the same thing.
Speaker:We're all subject to that and accustomed to it.
Speaker:We're gonna go see what's selling what looks good.
Speaker:And that's also what Amazon then starts feeding you.
Speaker:What they start recommending to you will be based on those categories.
Speaker:As a reader.
Speaker:Which I know when I was in your class a couple years ago,
Speaker:you were talking about that.
Speaker:You were talking about how one of your books had been miscategorized
Speaker:and some of what your concerns with.
Speaker:Can you talk about that?
Speaker:What happens when a book is in the wrong category?
Speaker:That's a great question, and I had almost forgotten about that example.
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:It was a publisher had chosen to put I, I write women's fiction
Speaker:that I know that, but they had put it into a thriller category.
Speaker:Which did confuse and confound me because anyone going to search for a
Speaker:thriller would probably take one look at my cover and just be confused by that.
Speaker:And even if they did click on it, once they start reading the
Speaker:description, they're gonna realize that's not what they're looking for.
Speaker:So misidentifying your book is very misleading to readers and can definitely
Speaker:result in frustration, especially if they decide to override that
Speaker:misgiving, go ahead and purchase it.
Speaker:That's where you get a bad review.
Speaker:I bought this book 'cause I thought it was a thriller and
Speaker:it wasn't a thriller at all.
Speaker:So it's critically important that we place it where the right
Speaker:readers will be looking for it.
Speaker:Not just because we want to see success with.
Speaker:That coveted number one bestseller flag, but because we wanna make
Speaker:sure that the right eyes are looking at it, and we'll be more inclined
Speaker:to grab it because that's the type of book that they are looking for.
Speaker:Just the same as if you say, okay, people like to buy romance books.
Speaker:Those categories are hot, so I'm gonna stick my book in a romance category.
Speaker:But then the reader will just be very aggravated that you've misrepresented
Speaker:your book to them if it's not a romance.
Speaker:So okay, if there's 16,000 categories, that's so many how do I as an
Speaker:author even narrow down the right three categories out of 16,000?
Speaker:Is there a method of research or is it just I'm going to go down the list
Speaker:until I find something close enough to what I want or do I choose more general?
Speaker:What's what's the best practices for that?
Speaker:You could interview 20 people and you'd probably get 20 different answers.
Speaker:So everyone has a method that they use and honestly, there's
Speaker:software that you can purchase.
Speaker:That purports to help you with this, help you find those best categories.
Speaker:I like to I like to go find my comps, the books that are most similar
Speaker:to mine and see where they are.
Speaker:'cause you're absolutely right, we don't, we can't be going through 16,000 browse
Speaker:categories on Amazon, but you don't need to, you need to get it pretty close.
Speaker:And I, for me, I've been most successful in looking at the books
Speaker:that are most similar to mine and seeing where they're placed at.
Speaker:And then I'll kinda hop over to the list of categories that's right next
Speaker:to it and see what all is there.
Speaker:And it's, it takes some time.
Speaker:I, but it's time well spent because it is important.
Speaker:It, it used to be, a lot more of a chore.
Speaker:So you get to pick those two to three BISACs when you are publishing at the
Speaker:get go, and those would carry through when you then went and uploaded to
Speaker:Amazon you would already have those chosen, those general categories.
Speaker:And it would just push through and publish that way.
Speaker:And you just had those, it was, it's two that you would pick on Amazon.
Speaker:You just had those two.
Speaker:Amazon though was allowing up to 10 browse categories, 10 browse
Speaker:categories for your ebook, 10 browse categories for your print book.
Speaker:They were separate.
Speaker:So you'd have the two from what your first round of publishing it.
Speaker:Yeah, but you could choose eight more for both the ebook and the print.
Speaker:So a very savvy author would find ways to avoid overlap so that you
Speaker:could have up to 12 categories.
Speaker:Wow.
Speaker:Sorry, I did the wrong math.
Speaker:20 I said the wrong thing.
Speaker:20 categories total for that title.
Speaker:Going for a scattershot approach, trying to see how many different
Speaker:categories you could get into.
Speaker:Again, I still think that it's more important to pick one that
Speaker:is real and really does apply and is more likely to make a sale.
Speaker:We definitely saw people gaming this.
Speaker:The flaws in this is that people were then going over and maybe finding very
Speaker:obscure nonfiction categories that they thought maybe sorta applied to their book
Speaker:if you really stretched, credulity and Amazon wasn't watching this at first.
Speaker:So Amazon wasn't watching it at first.
Speaker:Correct.
Speaker:Amazon wasn't really policing this at first.
Speaker:You could get away with just about anything and people did.
Speaker:So someone would stick their book into some.
Speaker:Weird nonfiction category where they had almost no competition whatsoever
Speaker:because maybe it's textbooks that a handful of people purchased for a class.
Speaker:And so if they got 20, 30, 40 people to go buy this in a day, boom, they
Speaker:hit the top of that bestseller list and now they get to go say, I'm a number
Speaker:one bestselling author on Amazon.
Speaker:This is an approach that a lot of people were taking.
Speaker:That always made me a little queasy.
Speaker:I don't think that it's telling the full story, but for people who
Speaker:didn't care and weren't bothered by it, that was a great model.
Speaker:Amazon started getting wise to this and they started trying
Speaker:to curtail this somewhat.
Speaker:I even heard people say, so you would, you, this is a whole other step.
Speaker:After your book was published, you had this list.
Speaker:For a while, you had to call in and get a person and read them off to them,
Speaker:and your rep might tell you, oh, sorry, that's, that doesn't really count.
Speaker:Your book doesn't really fit there.
Speaker:So some people were being instructed not to just place them anywhere
Speaker:and were trying to follow that.
Speaker:Later you could just send an email.
Speaker:They had a place specifically for you to email this.
Speaker:I just can't even imagine.
Speaker:The workload that this put on their employees.
Speaker:They have taken that away now.
Speaker:They've done away with it.
Speaker:You're gonna choose three when you first upload it, and that's it.
Speaker:Those are the three.
Speaker:Unless you go back and change it, I'm sure there's a way to change it, but you'll
Speaker:never have more than three at any time.
Speaker:I really think this is a good change.
Speaker:In general, what we're going to see is we won't have, we won't have Harry Potter
Speaker:dominating 20 different browse categories and hitting the top spot on all of them.
Speaker:Some of the biggest sellers, that's exactly what was happening and I,
Speaker:it's not just independent authors who were following this approach.
Speaker:I saw a book once the character, I think, traveled through Turkey or went to Turkey.
Speaker:It was a fiction work.
Speaker:But it hit a bestselling category because the publisher and a New York publisher
Speaker:very well known, I won't name names, but a New York publisher put it in Turkish
Speaker:travel books as a browse category.
Speaker:It was not a travel book at all.
Speaker:So everybody was doing this?
Speaker:Yeah, everybody was getting in on it, but if you're looking for a Turkish travel
Speaker:book and you go to that, now your number one spot is taken up by a fiction book.
Speaker:And frankly we had romance books clogging up a lot of the women's
Speaker:fiction categories, like the literary women's fiction categories again.
Speaker:As a reader, even that's, a little bit frustrating to me when I go
Speaker:to look for a new book, right?
Speaker:And I'm scrolling through the top 25 of what's supposed to be literary
Speaker:fiction books, and I'm seeing, Hot Boss, series book number five, that's
Speaker:not what I'm looking for there.
Speaker:Exactly.
Speaker:Not quite the right category there.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:The billionaire romance book is not what you're looking for
Speaker:in literary women's fiction.
Speaker:There's nothing wrong with that, but it's just, that's not,
Speaker:that's the wrong category for it.
Speaker:Absolutely.
Speaker:Thank you Laura, so much for coming on that really I think that's enlightening.
Speaker:And I think it's gonna help our listeners and our viewers to better understand
Speaker:what these are, how to use categories as authors, but also some of the
Speaker:changes that have been coming around.
Speaker:So I really appreciate you being here.
Speaker:Absolutely.
Speaker:And now that you are limited to those three, I think it's more important
Speaker:than ever to do your homework to make sure you really make those three count.
Speaker:You really do want it to, you want to find on Amazon the most specific,
Speaker:applicable categories to your book.
Speaker:And if you self-publish through Amazon, it might be worth going back and looking
Speaker:at your self-published books and looking at the categories you originally chose.
Speaker:And just make sure that those are still the ones you want to be in, because
Speaker:you can change those on the fly.
Speaker:They don't mind if you change 'em.
Speaker:So yeah, it might be a good practice just to go in and look at it.
Speaker:We know that your latest book, which is Red Rain, is in
Speaker:the right categories, right?
Speaker:Yes, women's fiction.
Speaker:Tell everyone a little bit about Red Rain before we sign off.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Thank you.
Speaker:Definitely.
Speaker:This is a book that's about empowerment of women and friendship and overcoming
Speaker:hardships and obstacles and finding joy even though we struggle with the
Speaker:tough things that life throws at us.
Speaker:So it's a poignant but uplifting book.
Speaker:It's been described as best exotic Marigold Hotel meets, eat, pray,
Speaker:love, and it's, it was an Oklahoma book award for best fiction finalist,
Speaker:and I recently found out as well that the Oklahoma Center for the book
Speaker:has nominated that for the Dublin International Literary Award this year.
Speaker:I don't think they've put the press release out yet, but I just
Speaker:received a message a week or two ago that they've submitted that.
Speaker:Congratulations.
Speaker:That's awesome.
Speaker:Thank you.
Speaker:We'll put a link there in the show notes so everyone can click directly to it.
Speaker:And I encourage you to it's got a great cover too, so you have to check it out.
Speaker:It's a beautiful looking book, thank you for being with us, Lara.
Speaker:This has been a great time we've had together.
Speaker:I always learn love learning about stuff like this.
Speaker:'cause I think it can just help you sell your book, which is what
Speaker:so many of us are interested in.
Speaker:After we've gone through all the difficulty of writing it and all the, you
Speaker:exercised your creativity and that, and now you actually want people to find it.
Speaker:Hey, this is one of those key points, right?
Speaker:Absolutely.
Speaker:Absolutely.
Speaker:Hey, if you've enjoyed this podcast, please rate, review, subscribe, and
Speaker:share with someone who may wanna know about Amazon Categories, because this
Speaker:has been some really good information.
Speaker:And this is the kind of thing we have when we join together and
Speaker:just learn some things because it is not something we do alone.
Speaker:Is it Gena?
Speaker:That's right.
Speaker:Together we have writing momentum.
Speaker:Bye-bye.
