Thank you all for being so wonderful and helping Grievous Deeds to get momentum!

Tonight, Grievous Deeds is:
#1 in the History of the Southern U.S.category
#1 in the Turn of the 19th century U.S. History category
#10 in the History of the U.S. category
#28 in the History category

🍀 And 🍀
#11 in the True Crime Biographies category

 

If you’re curious about Amazon categories, scroll on!

Book categories on Amazon are a strange and fascinating thing. If you’re curious about any particular book, you can look up the book, and scroll down to Product Details.

The last part of the section lists the categories where the book is competitive.  The categories are different for paperbacks, audiobooks, and Kindle books. The rankings change continuously throughout the day.

This is Grievous Deeds Kindle current ranking:

 

There are many Amazon categories. If you start at the top for Kindle books, Kindle eBooks is the broadest category, with 31 major subcategories. If you click on any of these sub-categories, you’ll see even more sub-sets.

The more you drill down, the more specific a category is. That’s good news if you write books because it’s easier it is to climb to the top of rankings in specific categories. Your book about rock-climbing might be #38 in Sports & Outdoors, but if you look in a specific sub-set like Extreme Sports, it’s probably at #1.

The history category is vast and it’s organized by location. At the top level, you can look at it by continent, by region, and by country.
History > Asia > India
History > Europe > Central Europe > Poland

Let’s say your book is #1 in the Poland category. You’re probably curious how it’s doing in Central Europe. You’ll see it’s much harder to be #1 in Central Europe because you have to compete with all books about Austria & Hungary, the Czech Republic, Germany, and Switzerland.

 

Let’s say your book is #1 in the Poland category and #18 in Central Europe. There’s a good chance you’re also in the top 100 for Europe but now you’re competing with a lot more books: every country category in Europe and all the major historical eras.

In a nutshell, the more general a category is, the harder it is to get near the top. Your ranking helps you sell books but it’s not always an accurate indicator of a book’s quality. Lots of factors matter, like:

• Is your book new or has it been out for ten years?
• Are you competing with other new releases in your categories?
• Are you promoting the book? (posting on social media, doing events, etc.)
• Are you offering any deals to buy the book?
• Do people support you with positive ratings and reviews?
• Are people talking about the book?

These things matter a lot! I’ve been very lucky because all of you have been so encouraging and shared great ideas for promoting the book–which I’m currently working on! Hopefully I’ll have an update for you soon. I’ll post links to any podcasts or interviews I do on the Media page. And now, I’m about 3/3 asleep! Good night all!