- Are you self-publishing your books
and just kind of hoping for the best
when it comes to actually having it categorized properly?
Are you just leaving the category selection up to Amazon
and just hoping for the best?
Well, in today's video, I'm gonna talk
about how to self-publish a book in profitable categories,
and this is one that you won't wanna miss on, so stay tuned.
(powerful tune)
I'm Dale, a best-selling author and self-publishing expert
and I wanna show you how to publish books that sell.
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Hey, stick around to the end
because I'm gonna give you two invaluable tools
that's going to save you a ton of time
and remove all ambiguity
when it comes to categorizing your Amazon book.
Just a little bit of a review
when it comes to actual category selection
or niche selection as some people would say,
it's really complex when you first look at it
but it's rather basic,
so I wanna kinda get it down to the granular level
just real quick before I move on.
Categorizing your book is a better way
for you to become more discoverable and for more exposure
because if we, for instance,
just put your book out into the market
with no specific category,
like if we used non-classifiable for instance,
then there's not gonna be really any other way
for people to find you
outside of maybe the keyword selection that you have.
That's why categories really can make or break the exposure
and the likelihood of discoverability.
You may already know
that you can actually choose up to two categories
in your KDP dashboard, known as the BISAC category.
It's also known
as the Book Industry Standards and Communications.
And I googled up the actual definition of this
and it actually says the official definition of the term
is an industry-approved list of standard subjects
designed for use in the book trade in the US
and English-speaking Canada.
Meaning, these codes are used
to properly shelve your title at retailers.
Amazon isn't one to kind of use BISAC
in the way you would think because they're trying
to make the shopping experience much easier
for the browsing customer.
So that way, they can kind of find what they need,
purchase it, and move on with life.
So, what they'll do is they take that BISAC code
that you're gonna select inside your dashboard
and then they're gonna take the keywords that you selected
and go, "Huh," and they have, like, a little bit
of like a machine-learned algorithm that figures out,
"Okay, this book's got these keywords
"and they selected this BISAC category.
"So that means it's got to go over here in this one."
And once you get your first sale,
you actually will see inside the product details
that you're gonna be listed into two categories,
sometimes a third one,
which kind of gets you scratching your head, going, "Third?"
"I only chose two.
"Why'd they throw me into a third one?"
They wanna get it to where you have more discoverability.
They want you to sell more books at the end of the day.
But what actually happens sometimes
is you're gonna get thrown into a category
maybe that you don't agree with
or maybe even other authors don't agree with.
In fact, you'll find some people
that have been slipped into categories
and they really didn't purposely do it
or sometimes they actually do it
and they do it for nefarious reasons
'cause they believe that going into a category,
become a number one best seller
in the wrong category is a big victory, yahoo.
And I'll be honest with you, I already kind of covered
how to get a best seller not too long ago
and really, it's not all that difficult
and if you wanna get best seller, then kudos to you,
but it's rather,
it's not the big victory you'd think it'd be.
I'll put a link down inside the description down below
if you wanna check out that.
So since it's not a perfect system
and they do categorize your book in the wrong spots,
it's up to you to do your own due diligence
and actually getting it to where your book
is put into the right categories.
Now, before we do reveal that two-part process
I'm gonna kinda walk you through, it's important to note
that yes, you can choose
up to two browse paths or categories.
You heard me say browse paths quite a bit.
It's insider lingo.
It's the same thing though,
the browse paths or the categories.
But you're allowed to actually have
up to 10 browse paths per publication,
and that's for Kindle e-books and for print books.
You can actually have up to 10 on each one of them.
Pretty freaking cool, right?
That's not so easy sometimes to find all 10 of them.
In fact, if you're struggling to kind of figure out
what browse paths you go into
and, like, "Oh, I need to get in all 10 of them,"
don't freak out.
Sometimes there's some books
that just won't get all 10 browse paths.
But if you use some of this research method
that I'm gonna show you,
you're probably gonna find in due time
a place for your book and where it should go.
So I've got a two-part system that you're gonna actually use
for vetting out the proper browse paths for your publication
and also figuring out is it going to be a category
that's worth being listed in
because you don't wanna go into a fistfight
and just try to get yourself to the top of a list
where it's just impossible to be discovered.
You don't wanna be drowning in a sea of other books.
So, selecting the right categories
is not just a case of what suits your title
but also what's going to suit
for as far as getting yourself into the best seller list
for that specific browse path.
So let's start it out with number one: bklnk.com.
Now, not to be confused.
It's actually B-K-L-N-K dot com.
I discovered this through the Sell More Books Show podcast.
A big shout-out to Jim Kukral and Bryan Cohen
for sharing some of this information.
Well, at any rate, on bklnk.com,
they have what's called the CATFINDER.
And what you can do
is actually find other books within your niche.
So, find something that's really doing good in your niche.
So, something that's at the top of the best sellers lists
or one of your highest competitors.
Grab the ASIN inside the Product Details
or even inside the website URL,
I'm gonna show it right here on the screen,
you're gonna highlight that, press Control + C,
and then go over to the CATFINDER, press Control + V,
drop it on in there and search,
and it will pull up all the browse paths
that are associated with this publication.
Now, you could just stop at that
and say, "Okay, well, I'll just go ahead
"and take these browse paths.
"Deuces, I'm out of here."
But it's important to kind of know,
okay, are these browse paths really applicable,
relevant to your publication?
You're gonna know that if it's relevant to your publication.
Now the next thing is going to be proof of concept
and we want to make sure it's proof of concept
in a way that favors us.
Again, we don't wanna go in to a gunfight with just fists
because we're gonna get our butts kicked.
We wanna make sure we're going into a browse path
and a best sellers list that's going to be suitable
and puts us up to the top of the charts.
Enter number two: Publisher Rocket.
Now you've heard me long tout
about Publisher Rocket here on this channel.
And of course,
I'm gonna talk a little bit more about it here.
If you wanna get your hands on Publisher Rocket,
go to DaleLinks.com/Rocket.
So now that you got the browse paths,
all you really need to do
is go into the Category Search feature in Publisher Rocket
and grab just the string of the words
inside a given browse path
that you found in the CATFINDER on bklnk.com.
You'll go ahead and paste that on in there.
Now, it's gonna hopefully pull up that specific browse path,
and we're gonna look at what's the number one spot
and what's their rank,
how many books did it take to get to that point.
The same thing's gonna be for number 10
in the best seller list for that browse path,
what's their rank,
how many book sales did it get to get to that point.
And you gotta kind of think in your head,
what can you realistically and consistently do
as far as performance when it comes to your specific book?
So if you can think to yourself,
"Okay, I can squeeze between the top 10,"
then you are definitely in the running
for hitting the top of these charts.
Now, you don't want to be finding browse paths
that are, again, not relevant to your publication.
Only find things that are relevant.
And you'll know
because you'll either match the rest of the people
that are inside the best seller list
or you're gonna stick out like a sore thumb.
So for instance,
you don't wanna have some werebear shapeshifter romance book
inside a children's book category.
That's just wrong.
Even though the children's book category
might be really easy for you to get to the top of the list,
again, it's just kind of a real shallow victory
and no one's impressed by it.
So once you feel comfortable
that each one of these browse paths
are working in your favor,
just make sure you put it off to a sheet on the side
and you may have to rinse and repeat.
You might have to find other books within your niche
and go use bklnk.com, drop the ASIN in there,
figure out the browse paths,
double-check it with Publisher Rocket,
and then you've got your entire list.
Now, you can probably go with all 10 if you want to
and that's fine.
I would recommend going with eight, initially.
So, what you're gonna do is go into KDP
and you're gonna scroll down to the bottom,
click on the Contact Us feature
and you're gonna hit the book details
and it's gonna actually,
I think somewhere, like, it says categories,
you're gonna go into there and say,
erase whatever they have there,
say, enter ASIN, whatever the number is
for your given e-book or your print book,
add ASIN blah, blah, blah,
into these browse paths and categories.
Thanks in advance.
Now, in the event you have,
say for instance those three categories,
you've already sold a book,
and you see one of them that's not really conducive
to your specific book or it's just not relevant,
you can let them know,
"Hey, get rid of this particular browse path."
You'll notice though in your product details,
it's not a full browse path.
They actually have them collapsed down
and that's because they really want
to make for a less confusing experience for the customers.
And yeah, it does create some confusion for us authors.
Now, once they get that,
they're gonna go ahead and fulfill it
and they'll drop you an email,
so keep an eye in your email inbox to make sure
that they actually put those browse paths in there.
Typically, it takes anywhere from about 24 to 72 hours
for them to fulfill that
and get it to where it's rocking and rolling.
I actually talk about that quite a bit
inside the Best Seller Book Launch Checklist.
You can actually get that for free
when you head on over to DaleLinks.com/checklist.
Download that, and actually, I walk you through
not just selecting the proper categories
but when you should do it in a proper launch sequence.
While we're talking about choosing the right categories
and the right niches, believe it or not,
I actually have a more granular in-depth coverage
of how to choose your niche in this next video.
You're gonna wanna make sure you click on that.
I'll see you there.