Get your book into more categories

A lot of my readers are also writers as well. I thought today I might offer some additional advice to those who are trying to get their books noticed. (Now I'm not going to keep blogging about self publishing forever. It's just that I get these questions a lot, and this is a great opportunity to help many authors at once.)

Now, one of the most important things you can do to get greater visibility is to get your book into more categories. Most books end up being in around four or so. This is pretty typical. Now look at my link to Land of Shadows on Amazon. Scroll all the way down to the bottom. http://www.amazon.com/dp/B008QQ60BI  A bit more than four, correct? So how did I do that?

First you get to choose your main categories. For example, my books are all in Epic Fantasy. But what about all those other categories? One's you can't even choose outright? Does amazon just put my book there? The answer is simple. You are allowed to use 7 key words that will help people find your book through the search engines. But what not everyone knows is those key words will help you land into sub-categories that you couldn't otherwise choose.

Here is a great example. Sword & Sorcery is one of the sub categories of fantasy. But you can't actually choose Sword & Sorcery directly. This is where key words come in. One of my key words is simply the word Sword. That got my book into Sword & Sorcery. Another of my key words is Arthurian. Guess which sub category that got me into.  :)

You see where there this is going. Too many authors type in the key words quickly, and never give them a second thought. They think they don't really mean anything. As you can see that is not true at all. So don't be afraid to experiment with your key words. If you don't like the results, change them up and republish again. There is no limit to how many times you can do that. (I'm sure amazon would not appreciate me telling you that)  :S

That's it for now. As always, everyone have a great day!