Publishing Erotica Part 12 – Keywords

Click here for Publishing Erotica Part 11 – How to Avoid the Adult Dungeon.

Today we’re talking about keywords. Now, this will focus solely on Amazon’s keyword system. You are allowed 7 keywords (once it was separated by commas, but now it is seven fields). You might think keyword is a single word, and this is where you are wrong. You need to use all those characters to increase the visibility of your product.

So what kind of keywords should you use. They come in two types. The first type is the keywords that get you into different categories on amazon. There are a lot of subcategories for each genre. While the genre you select when publishing will get you into the main category, that might not be good enough to get you into the subcategory you want. If you’re writing gay erotica, you need to have the word gay in your keywords somewhere. If you want to be in the bisexual, the lesbian, or tansgender category, the same thing applies. Getting into subcategories is important. Often it is easier to rank higher in the lists in subcategories than the main one.

And that gets you more visibility.

Now you might be wondering which words are the right ones to get you into the various subcategories. Luckily, Amazon in their KDP help pages has a list of words and what subcategory that will place you in depending on the genre you selected for your book (Erotica, Romance, Fantasy, Women’s Lit, Children, etc). So your first order of business is figuring out what categories you want your book to be in and putting those keywords in first.

Click here to see the category lists.

There is one important thing to note about category keywords. Now while the vast majority are a single word (lesbian, gay, transgender, cowboy, billionaire, werewolf, cop, doctor, etc.) there are a few that are two words. The one most applicable to Erotica/Romance author is Alpha Male. You need to put that in its own field by its self with no other words in it.

Now that leaves you with the rest of your keywords fields to use FOr instance, you can use hot wife swinging orgy. That’s a keyword string. I’m hoping that people will be searching for hot wives swinging and having orgies and my book will then pop up. This is the second type of category of keywords. These are the keywords of what you think people will type into the amazon search bar to find the type of story you’ve written.

One way to come up with these keywords is to figure out a phrase you think people will search for. Pull out anything that isn’t a noun, adjective, or verb. Don’t worry about verb tense or plural, the amazon search algorithm doesn’t care about that. It also doesn’t care about the other words. Just nouns, verbs, adjective. Use words that describe your work. Words that people will search for.

There are a number of ways to figure out what those words are. The easiest type “hot wife” in the amazon search bar and sees what it suggest for search terms. These are all things consumers have searched for a lot on Amazon. Another way, check out porn hub and find the popular words and slangs to describe the kinks of your book. There are also websites and software out there that claim to give you good keyword suggestions to help your books shine. Learn about SEO (search engine optimization) and apply those lessons to Amazon.

You have seven fields to use. And you should use every single bit of them you can. Stuff that keyword box. And remember, anything in your title will already be part of the search. Many authors list parenthetical with the titles showing the story’s kinks (the ones safe from getting you in trouble with Amazon) to let readers know what the story is about. Those are like free keywords. But don’t go overboard with too many of them.

And here is the last thing to remember. You can be as filthy in the keywords as you want. They are not visible to the customers in any way. There is no way for a backlash for Amazon to fear, so fill free to put “step-father fucking barely legal step-daughter” in your keyword if that’s what your writing. The only words you will get in trouble putting into your keywords are: Kindle, Unlimited, and using the names of famous authors or books (50 Shades of Gray). Kindle and Unlimited will automatically apply and Amazon hates it when you put them in your keywords. They also don’t want you trying to piggy back on another author’s success.

NOTE: I have heard some authors getting banned for their keywords, so while i have no proof, you might want to tone done your keywords just to be safe.

So that is the basic of keywords. They are a complicated thing. Figuring them out is one of the things that helps sell your books. It’s what gives you the visibility so your amazing cover and awesome blurb will be noticed and people will buy your book. It is as essential as staying out of the Adult Dungeon to being successful on Amazon.

Next time we’ll get into the nuts and bolts on publication from what to charge to how to do your bundles.

Click here for Part 13: Publication

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