How to Determine the Genre of Your Book for Amazon Categories

If you're still struggling to determine the genre of your book after reviewing the Week 11 lesson on Book Categories ("Book Categories, Keywords And Optimizing for Amazon SEO"), you're not alone. Here's some advice:

When it comes to genre, it's often helpful to find the closest books to yours (in terms of topic and audience) and use the same genre/categories they do. This can help ensure that your book ends up in the right categories for its target audience.

On Amazon, you can have multiple categories, so don't worry if your book falls into more than one. For example, if your book is both a memoir and about your life in education — you can simply choose both the "memoir" and "education" categories.

This isn't a crucial decision, but choosing a smaller category (which will generally be the more specific of the two — or "education" in this instance) will lead to less competition and an easier path to becoming a category bestseller.

I generally recommend having one super-specific category and one more general category.

To sum up, determining the genre of your book can be tricky, but finding similar books and considering your primary audience can be helpful. Using multiple categories on Amazon can also help ensure that your book reaches its intended audience.