Chris A. Baird | January 23, 2023
Top 3 Best Book Categories on Amazon

What are your books all about? Find out if they belong under the top 3 best book categories on Amazon.

So, you're looking to choose the right category to put your books on Amazon. Well, you're going to want to stick around because I'm going to tell you exactly how to go about finding that exact right category that will work for you.

The first thing to keep in mind when you're choosing a category for your book on Amazon is that not all categories are equally profitable. But at the same time, you have to decide if that even matters to you.

Because you could always just choose a book category that is within a category that you just naturally would like to write about. The challenge though is that some of those categories you're going to naturally choose are not going to have many sales happenings.

Then you come back later and say, why are my books not selling? Well, you may have chosen the wrong category and there are several things you're going to want to consider when choosing the right category.

But before I do that, I'm going to let you know exactly which categories are making the most sales. Well, if you use KDSpy like I always tell you to use, you can quickly take a look at the top categories and also the top-selling books on all of Amazon.

You'll see something very magical which is that romance and erotica are selling far more books than anything else on the top hundred. It's just dominated by these romance books in particular. Right now, it would be seasonal romances like Christmas-time books that are selling on Amazon like crazy.

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The challenge is that this market is flooded. So, you need to find a sub-niche within it if you're choosing to try to start writing romance books. But at the same time, there are a lot of readers.

So, if your book is placed properly and fits in among the best sellers, you may have a winner on your hands if you're going that route. Number two is going to be crime and mystery. Now, it's about half as many sales as romance and it just goes downward from here from the winners on Amazon.

You'll notice we're still in the dictionary fiction category. The next one about equally as large is religious and Inspirational books which people can't get enough of that. Finally, we're within the non-fiction area.

Then, moving on, we go to science fiction which is making about 590 million dollars in that category. A little bit less than the others that we talked about. Finally, we end with horror which is making under 100 million.

These are the top categories you might be thinking of. You should target just one of these categories. But you would be mistaken because the fact is that you can do quite well within the non-fiction category of how to's certain skills. By simply looking at those books that are already in those categories. 

Looking At The Recent Trends

We choose categories where we see at least three books that are ranked in the top hundred thousand in those categories. That gives us an idea that yes this may be a category that's worth targeting. Even if it isn't the original category you're thinking about.

Like we’ll see romance books sell so many, so I'll just put another romance book out there. But it's going to be flooding the market. That can be a little bit of a challenge if you aren't in it for the long haul. I would say you should be in for the long haul for everything.

But non-fiction clearly will give you a win even if you're just looking at putting out just a few books. If you want to win at the romance niche, you're going to need to put out a lot of books. You're going to need to do a lot of marketing and a lot of other things.

We go through those very steps to ensure that your book isn't just going to be thrown on the market. We hope for the best but it's going to be positioned to win. Sometimes, if you compare yourself with the best sellers, you'll notice a lot of differences between your book and their books.

So, you shouldn't just choose the top-selling category. Rather, choose something you or yourself are passionate about. That you're going to be able to keep writing as the years go on. That we're going to be building up an audience.

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Understanding this is not an overnight bestseller sort of a thing but it's over some time. We start to evaluate and look at our books and maybe this is something I definitely would like to read more. So, it's a huge mistake that so many people make when they're getting started.

It is ignoring these categories and not understanding them. So, on the fiction side, you will make a lot more money in the long run. If you just keep writing out fiction and keep building your audience without switching away from the non-fiction category.

You can do well if you're looking at the most recent trends that are happening. Putting books in those categories where you're doing it. But you still should be building out a brand around it.

Non-fiction can do insanely well because there's always the opportunity. For example, like my classic example, if you're doing a book on puppy training, you can build a business off of that. Because what you can do is you can train people digitally over the internet to tell them how to do puppy training.

You can give advice and guidance. You can create courses, there are all sorts of things you can do in non-fiction that isn't available in fiction. That's one of the reasons why I prefer non-fiction over fiction. Just because it's a lot easier to build on it. 

Getting The Whole Cycle In Place

Whereas if you target the fiction side of things, you're going to have an upward battle. Because there are a lot of books that are hitting the market in those categories. The competition is high.

But in the long run, if you stay in the game, you can start to do well in fiction. Just putting out books, getting the covers done correctly, and doing the formatting. Getting this whole cycle in place.

Then pushing the marketing and learning as you go which is one of the key aspects we're always focused on. We are trying to see how easily we can make self-publishing. You're working through these steps and that's one of the reasons why I use tools like KDSpy.

You can check that out if you want to see it. That helps with that also in choosing categories and looking at competitiveness. I use Publisher Rocket and you can also check that one out. So, these are two primary tools I use in evaluating the competitiveness of certain niches and certain categories; the keywords within those books.

You're also going to see that the best sellers in these books are doing well. If you wish to be an Amazon best-seller, you're going to need to choose a category that has at least 100 books in it. To ensure that if you reach that number one spot, you're going to get that.

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Be careful of the seller flag and you should not choose categories that are completely not related to your book. People do this all the time to get that best-seller flag for an unrelated category. But Amazon has problems with this and you risk your account by doing something like that.

So, I would suggest that you stick to Amazon's guidelines when it comes to choosing your category. Choose the one that is in alignment with exactly your book and the genre that you're publishing. It can be a little bit off but not too far off.

If I go into cookbooks, I'm not expecting some steamy romance books which is what you actually will see that people do regularly on their Amazon accounts. It is a terrible idea if that's your long-term plan. So, my question for you is what categories have you chosen for your books?

Have you had any success? What best tips would you give if it comes to selecting categories when getting started with self-publishing? Let me know below in the comments because I want to know. Check out my other blogs and videos for more answers to your self-publishing questions.

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