[TWLuedke]

I am partnering with Kayla Stonor on her books. She's publishing on Amazon via the UK.

No matter what she does with keyword phrases, Amazon only gives her 2 categories. No subcats, no spread of categories.

I can routinely grab 4-6 cats/subcats with my blurbs and keyword choices, yet, using the same strategy, Kayla only gets 2, ever.

Is there a difference between Amazon UK metadata processing and Amazon US?

Seems that way to me.

 

[I'm a Little Teapot]

Yes, they have fewer categories.

LOL! I just checked, actually, and one of my keywords has managed to dump me in the "Gay Romance" category in the UK (but not in the US). Yeah, there's no gay romance in my book.

 

[TWLuedke]

The UK store has different categories, but it's not a matter of where you publish - her listings on the US store should have all the categories it would have if published in the US, and vice versa.

I don't see that happening though.

We're putting out keyword rich blurbs, and even listing the actual keywords at the bottom of the blurbs, and still not getting anywhere near the subcats that match those keywords.

And its happening on more than one book.

Its happening on 3 of Kayla's books. All they ever give her is 2 categories. Its ridiculous.

 

[Guest]

Just checked and I'm seeing the categories listed in both uk and com as the same. and that's three, not two.

 

[TWLuedke]

That's quite strange. I'm based in the UK, and I always get all the categories I expect to get, and there are thousands of books out there by UK-based authors that are in more than two categories. Maybe try emailing KDP and asking what's going on?

Let me better clarify:

Your book, Carina, has limited categories:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00PEAHOOQ/?tag=kbpst-20

This book, which has been fine tuned for keyword phrases and categories, to reach more subcats, has a lot of categories:

http://www.amazon.com/Nightlife-Moscow-Fantasy-Paranormal-Suspense-ebook/dp/B00R9UIGKU/ref=pd_sim_kstore_18?ie=UTF8&refRID=0NJWSJ3KKTYEHG7443AD

Kayla Stonor , publishing from the UK, has the same kind of limited categories which your books, Carina, are experiencing:

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=ntt_athr_dp_sr_1?_encoding=UTF8&field-author=Kayla%20Stonor&search-alias=digital-text&sort=relevancerank

Why does Nightlife Moscow have so many categories (which are all applicable), because I setup keyword phrases and the description to achieve precisely that.

Using the same strategies, I can't get but 2 kindle and 2 book cats. I should have 3-4 of each, not 2.

My observation: Amazon UK publishing metadata processing is creating limitations on categories, limitations that we US publishers do not experience.

 

[cecilia_writer]

I published something less than a week ago from the UK and it seemed to go into 3 or 4 categories right away - 2 that I had put in myself and (presumably because I had set the lower age thing to 16) it turned up in YA as well in at least one category. I haven't ever meddled with the age range thing before but because it's a sort of political novel and I remembered 16 year olds were allowed to vote in our recent referendum, I thought I had better enable them to read it (if they wanted - not sure that any of them will).
I also have some other novels that I managed to get into various sub-categories of cosy mystery using keywords. All from the UK.

 

[TWLuedke]

Well then, I guess its back to the drawing board to figure out the right keywords and description, in order to get some more category exposure.

 

[CoraBuhlert]

It is true that the categories in the different stores are not the same and indeed many of the non-US stores have fewer categories. And if you think Amazon UK is bad, try publishing German language books at Amazon Germany. They have hardly any subcategories at all and even top level categories like western, historical fiction or gay and lesbian fiction are missing.

You can also find your book stuck into weird categories in non-US Amazon stores. I recently hit a bestseller list for diaries, memoirs and biographies in the Italian Amazon store - with a book that was neither a diary nor a memoir nor a biography.

However, when I'm publishing from Germany, I can get into extra categories via keywords at Amazon.com without any problems (except that I cannot for the life of me get a pirate romance into Romance ---> pirates).