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Increase eBook Sales—Keywords & Categories (Part 4)

By Reading Time: 4 minutes

Why not have a greater part of the $1.25 billion in self-published books sold each year? And why not have a greater part of the $250 million in royalties Amazon pays each year to self-published authors? Are you searching for ways to increase your ebook sales?

In order to increase sales as an aspiring author, you need to get your ebook in front of readers with effective keywords and appropriate categories. While the strategies here are easy and can help increase ebook sales, they do take a little time and effort. It’s not a get-rich-quick scheme.

In this part of the 5-part series on increasing ebook sales, we dive into getting your ebook in front of readers. We’ll look at a few strategies for getting your ebook before potential readers by using keywords and categories. Using them effectively can help you promote and sell more ebooks. In the rest of the series, we continue to dive into other topics suggested by Derek Murphy at Creativindie (our rephrasing): doing market research, meeting genre expectations and covers that fit the genre, and using advertising and promotion.

Keywords

Using good keywords is perhaps the easiest strategy for helping to get your ebook before readers. While some gurus suggest doing a keyword search before writing an ebook, you can do it at any time. You can easily add new keywords to your KDP setup. You can also add keywords to your Amazon sales page. And you can use keywords in your ebook ads. Good keywords can help search engines find your ebook.

How do you find good keywords?

Your ebook’s competition. You can easily start your keyword research by looking at the competition. What keywords do they use in the title or subtitle? What keywords are in the description at Amazon or other ebook outlets? While you can use keywords from the competition’s description, don’t steal their description. Instead, use a few keywords, which also help describe your ebook.

Read the competition’s reviews. Search them for useful keywords that also describe your ebook. Read your own ebook’s reviews for keywords to add to your overall strategy.

Keyword research tools. Ubersuggest and Publisher Rocket are helpful research tools. Other popular tools to help you identify good keywords include Ahrefs, Google AdWords Keyword Planner, and SEMrush. Some of these tools let you see which keywords are working for the competition. Consider how you could use those keywords for your own ebook.

Categories

Using the best categories can help get your ebook in front of potential readers, which can lead to more sales. We’ll cover three easy ways to find and use the best categories.

Start with your own ebook

If you set up your ebook at KDP, you were allowed to select two categories for it. Check your ebook’s Amazon sales page to see if they put your ebook in those categories. If the categories differ from what you wanted, you can request a change. For instance, if KDP added a “book” category, you can request them to change it to an ebook category. It will help get it in front of ebook readers rather than those who are searching for print books.

In addition to the two original categories, you can request KDP to add eight more. You can have up to 10 categories for your ebook. To easily make the request, go to the KDP “Help” page. Scroll down near the bottom and click on “Contact Us.” On that page, click “Amazon Product Page…” Then click “Update Amazon Categories,” and follow the instructions. Fill out the form to add or remove categories and submit. It’s quick and easy to do.

Find other categories for your ebook

You can find more categories for your ebook by checking the competition’s categories. But don’t stop with the three categories on the Amazon sales page. Instead, you can find all of the categories it’s listed in. And it’s free. Here’s how.

  • Scroll down on an ebook’s Amazon page to find the ASIN.
  • Copy the ebook’s ASIN.
  • Then go to the free category finder (CatFinder) at bklnk.com.
  • Paste in the ASIN and tap enter.

Bklnk will give you a list of all the categories. Of course, not all of them will be appropriate for your ebook, but several might work.

Do this for a few ebooks similar to yours. If possible, select at least 10 appropriate categories to use with your ebook. If you’re not finding at least 10, click on BKLnk’s “Catalize” button. It’ll list even more possible categories, which might be useful for your ebook. Then, as noted above, you can request KDP to add more categories to go along with the two already there.

Tools for Finding Categories to Increase eBook Sales

One popular tool for finding ebook categories is Publisher Rocket. It’s affordable, quick, and easy to use. Because it’s well worth the small fee, it’s highly recommended by many authors.

Using appropriate categories, along with effective keywords, can help readers find your ebook and potentially increase sales.

Don’t wait. Start today!

How can we help? To let us know, please fill out our contact form. Happy writing!

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