Published Authors: What are your Amazon search strings?

I'm looking ahead to when I can get my novel up on Amazon, and know that I'll need to generate keyword search strings. Alas, the art of it eludes me. I've been on Kindle's "Make Your Book More Discoverable with Keywords" page and a little light is beginning to dawn, but I still can't figure out to put these strings together and how to rank the terms in the proper order.

I need real-life examples. And right now I can't even recall how to make them visible on the Amazon site.

So whether you're published traditionally or self-published, would you mind posting your search strings? I'd like to know how you came up with them, and how well they're working for you.

@Tenderiser, @BayView, and @psychotick, you three come to mind. Who else?

 

I'm very flattered to be included with such authors, but I'm not published yet. I believe @peachalulu also has books on Amazon.

Even as a reader I can't help much. If I search it's because I'm looking for a specific author/title. Otherwise I go to a certain genre in the Kindle store and browse by rating.

Good luck with it!

 

You will be.

 

Ooh, I thought you were. Well, any time now.

 

I'm not much good at it. I'm mostly with publishers, and they take care of that stuff for me.

For my few self-published books? I just flail away, mostly. For the first book in my current self-published series, my terms are:

contemporary, romance, gay, m/m, new adult, pets, angst

"Pets" is probably stupid. I can't imagine anyone looking for an m/m romance and thinking they should search for "pets". "Angst" might be a bit shaky, too.

So these aren't really examples of good terms, they're just the terms that I tried.

I've heard of people putting other author's names in this category. Like, if you wrote a book about child wizards, maybe you'd put JK Rowling as one of your terms? I don't know...

 

@BayView, do you have to put the terms in any particular order? Like starting with the major genre the book might fit into, and narrowing down from there?

I dunno about "pets" being stupid. After all, cats rule the Internets.

 

The order may be a subtlety I'm unaware of. I entered them in the order I listed in my post, but I'm not sure if that's what I should have done...

 

But they didn't kick them back and tell you you couldn't publish till you did it over. That's something.

 

Oh, I think they'd let you publish with pretty much anything. They aren't too rigorous about the quality-control, I'm afraid.

 

Hi,

Sadly I'm not even sure what a search string is I'm afraid. If you mean keywords, I fairly much base them on the novel's content. But I do know that some keywords in conjunction with certain categories get your books placed in additional Amazon categories. "Elf" was one as I recall - though "Elves" was not. Currently I'm trying to work out why my two most recent epic fantasies have shown up in the category "Sword and Sorcery" when I didn't choose it - not that I'm complaining!

For more information on that you'll have to go to the writers cafe on Kindleboards and do a search.

Cheers, Greg.

 

@TWErvin2

 

I honestly don't know. My publisher deals with that sort of thing.

 

After a little more research, maybe what I'm thinking about isn't just keywords, but browse categories.

I just wish I could remember how I was able to bring them up for some of the books I was looking at on Amazon before.

 

Thanks. And please forgive me for my sieve-like mind, that I didn't tag you.

 

Me?

 

Catrin Lewis,
Not a problem. Hard to keep track of everyone, and with the end of the school year, and all that entails, I've not been super active on the boards here in the past month or two.

Terry

 

Sure. You've got your book up on Amazon, and I of course should have thought of that immediately.

 

Here's a little trick to find keywords on Amazon. Pick a topic/subject/item/keyword related to your book and run through the alphabet in single letters next to it. Amazon will show you what are the major search phrases.



Don't forget, you have 400 LETTERS in the keywords box. Stuff as many related keywords into there. Don't bother with repeated keyword phrases, drops the commas anywhere you want.

 

Problem with using other author's names or other books in your search terms is you run the risk of the other party filing a trademark or unfair competition claim. It's also a violation of Amazon' terms of service (likely because of the intellectual property issues) and could result in your work being pulled.

 

For "The Eagle and the Dragon" , I used Rome, China, Buddhism, Christianity, Silk Road, Action and Adventure. Amazon assigned an ASIN of B01MSEAC3I. And it is doing quite well.

 

Oy. ASIN is a term I need to learn. In good time, in good time.

 

Amazon Search Index Number. What is surprising is that E&D ranks in the double digits in Chinese historical fiction