How To Rank Higher on Amazon Without Selling Books

Seems like a dream, doesn’t it? Rank highly on Amazon, but sell no copies of your book? This very simple method of moving your book into a much more prominent position with minimal effort is the perfect way to get seen and sold.

Drowning in your Category

So why is it your book has sold a few copies, and yet you are still in the weeds on Amazon in your category? Simply, there are too many books in your category to ever be seen. The most full categories in Amazon are typically Science Fiction and Fantasy and Romance, and all subcategories in those main genres, such as YA and erotica. And typically, in these subcategories, classic modern books and new books by beloved authors reign supreme, selling hundreds of copies a day so they take over the smaller categories because they dominate the broader category. This means even if you outsell all of the thousands of books that are selling books now, you cannot ever get into the top 20 in these genres unless you outsell daily books like Harry Potter, Fifty Shades of Grey, The Handmaid’s Tale, or Stephen King’s myriad titles.

For example, if Harry Potter is #1 in all of Science Fiction and Fantasy, it will be automatically dominating in all subcategories, so YA Fantasy etc. will also be topped with Harry Potter. This is getting to be a bigger issue, with a few big books dominating the landscape with huge sales most indie authors cannot beat.

Few Options For Keywords

There’s a lot of odd advice and keyword scraping tools* from so-called ‘experts’ when it comes to keyword use. The bottom line is there are few options for keywords to rank in Amazon. Amazon does not add every keyword to its algorithm to show as a subcategory or theme if a user searches for it, nor if an author adds it. Instead, it has a finite list of most-used subcategories and keywords that group books into themes. So if you are in Fiction> Science Fiction and Fantasy> Fantasy and you have added ‘Swords and Sorcery’ as a keyword, this will show up in Amazon as a subcategory, and you can show up and start ranking for that subcategory under Science Fiction and Fantasy>Fantasy>Swords and Sorcery. These subcategories are not listed in the categories on the admin page of KDP, and these sorts of subcategories can only be added via keywords.

Keywords of any kind may be added to your book in KDP, but trying to find weird niche keywords has little effect on sales. After all, there is no point in adding a word that only means something to you if nobody will ever search for it. You might be the first book showing up for that word, but if you think about it you would be the first book to show up for “ghashdkjdfgkajftaiytf” if you added it as a keyword and then searched for it!

You can also add popularly-searched theme words, such as ‘wealthy’ for Romance books about millionaire lovers. These sorts of keywords will narrow a list down for the customer to find your book more easily. But again, you can only use words that people search for if you want it to be effective. To find out what these are, you should search for your general top category, such as Horror, and see what comes up in the left-hand column, as Amazon gives you some tips. You’ll see here you can add Character keywords or subcategories, listed under Horror:

So as you can see, Stephen King dominates Horror, coming top of all 60,000 books.

If we try clicking some of the boxes on the left, first just “Monsters”, added as a keyword that would put your book into a pool of 7,000 books, down from 60,000 books. So suddenly, even if you are the last book in the category, you are #7000 instead of #60,000 of a grouped selection of books.

Then if we add a subcategory of Dark Fantasy you are suddenly in a pool of 1000 books, rather than 60,000!

So adding ‘monsters’ and ‘Dark Fantasy’ to your keywords would rank you much higher (#7,000 minimum) than just straight “Horror” (#60,000 minimum). This one trick alone will no doubt help your visibility in Amazon searches, and is essential when you stop making sales after the initial launch.

Plan of Action

Search broadly for your category, then find theme/character keywords to add to create smaller pools for yourself to compete with inside broader categories
Remove old keywords that you thought were unique/very niche if nobody has bought a book lately
Remove your name or book title from your keywords, as that is completely useless and already listed in the er, title and author name…
Don’t be afraid to change and experiment with subcategories and keywords. As the algorithm and trends change, so you have to be ready to react

And remember, there is no sale if you are in a category that may suit your book, but your book is so far down in ranking that nobody will ever see it. Be bold and adventurous with re-imagining the category for your book, and you will find the sweet spot. Honestly, you’re going to have to be these days.

*A more technical word about paid scraping tools. Screen scraping a website versus data scraping (within an API) may be considered a felony violation carrying a 15-year jail term per offence in the USA if certain conditions are not met by the person who designed the tool (pretending it’s for personal use, violating the site’s Terms of Service by selling the app, using it to compete with the website it scrapes…). So while the scraping part is not always illegal, the ‘using it to compete with other products or to make money’ is, as well as being a risk for being deleted on Amazon if you abuse Terms of Service as a seller. Amazon and other big names have been coming down heavy on these practices, considered to be akin to hacking by some. As you don’t know how the app was created (I probably lost most of you at API), and what terms were agreed to or ignored in the process of its creation, it’s best to stick to reliable and old-fashioned methods of keyword use as in this article. Plus, this was free…

If you fancy going higher in Amazon and want to get us to do this for you, get your keyword/category analysis done by our experts via our Book Services page.