The below tool was created to help authors and readers learn more about books and to find which categories the book is a part of. For readers, this can help you to discover more books on Amazon. For authors, this can you help find categories or check to see which categories your book is a part of.
In order to do this, I use Amazon’s API. Understand that the links created from this use my Amazon Associate, and if you click on one and purchase something, I will be an affiliate commission. This doesn’t affect your pricing, but only adds money to my book and coffee fund. So, much appreciated.
Find a Book's Listed Categories
Enter the ASIN or ISBN-10 of a book to see what categories that book is a part of so as to shop for your kind of book.
You can also select which market you want to search in.
Created by Paladin
Why Are Categories Important?
A lot of people search for books by looking through the categories that they like the most, browsing the genre, essentially.
Additionally, every book genre has a rank, so even if you’re not necessarily a bestseller overall in the Amazon store, you could still be a bestseller in a specific Amazon category, which would increase the attention that your book could get.
And if that weren’t enough, Amazon automatically creates a few sub-lists within each KDP category that give you an even greater chance of being found. Two of the most important are:
- The Bestseller List
- The New Releases List
Ranking high in these places will increase your visibility in the Kindle store, which in turn will increase sales…you see where I’m going with this?
How to Choose the Best Categories
So how do you find book categories? Well, there are a couple of ways to do that, apart from looking through books one by one using this tool and scrolling through those. That can be a good start, but then what do you do? How do you find an Amazon book category that is right for your book?
Step 1: Start by assembling a comprehensive list of categories that your book can rank for. This is a crucial step, and it’s where this book category hunter tool can help the most. Find books that are similar to yours, and lookup all the categories that it ranks for. Then assemble the biggest and best list you can for those categories.
Step 2: Now it’s time to go through each of the categories you listed to see if they’re worth adding your book to. You can do this by looking at the first and last book ranking on the first page of the best-seller list. How high is the first one? Is it really competitive? What about the last one on the page (usually #20)? How large is the gap between book #1 and book #20?
If the gap is not very high, like only a difference of a few thousand in ranking, that category will be hard to rank for. But if it’s a larger gap, say of 20,000 or more, than those categories should be prime targets.
Side note: just because a category is easy to rank for, doesn’t mean you should do it. You need to make sure the category is relevant to your book, otherwise you could ruin the Amazon algorithm by trying to direct people to that category when you’ve got the wrong audience.
Step 3: Once you’ve found categories that are relevant and easy to rank for, make a list of up to ten. You can have ten categories for each book, so choose wisely. Pick the categories that are A) most relevant, B) not too competitive, and C) Not too niche. Because some categories are easy to rank for, but no one is looking in those categories.
How this Book Category Hunter Tool Can Help
This tool allows you to search through every Kindle eBook to find the different categories that it ranks for. Let’s say you had a science fiction or a children’s book. All you would have to do is find other sci-fi or children’s books that were similar to yours, plug them into this tool, and see what pops up.
With just a few searches through this tool, you’ll have a huge list of Kindle categories in no time.
It works for any fiction and nonfiction book. Ebook or paperback book (because each print book actually has a different set of categories). So make sure you’ve done the research to get a comprehensive list so you can add to your book’s category options.
How to Request Categories
Once you know the categories that are appropriate for your book, you can get started ranking for each right category.
Now, when you first upload to KDP, you have the option to pick your BISAC code, these are the two categories that Amazon lets you pick when uploading. But did you know that you can have waaaay more than that? In fact, you can have up to ten.
All you have to do is go to Amazon’s contact page for authors, select “Amazon Book Page” from their list of options, then select “Update Amazon Categories”.
From there, you’ll need to enter the book you want to update, along with the full category string of each book.
Thankfully my little tool here gives you that full string.
And viola! You’ve got yourself a new category for your book.
List of Favorite Books for Authors and Writers
For more information on this and other stuff I’ve learned as an author, below is a list of the best books that helped me to become a better writer. If you are interested, please check them out. And remember, these are affiliate links and again, it won’t add anything to the cost, but only helps fill my book and coffee fund 🙂