A Genre Hidden From Readers
How Amazon has spent years ignoring deliberate miscategorization by unscrupulous authors
One of the best things about the advent of Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) program is it has given writers and readers alike the chance to explore genres that traditional publishing might consider too niche to take a chance on. While the big publishers are more concerned with the broadest possible market for a book, independent authors and publishers have lower costs, and with that comes the freedom to experiment a bit more. Western, LitRPG, harem/reverse harem, gaslamp, sea adventure, dinosaur erotica…these books probably wouldn’t get a second look by an acquisitions editor these days. But they have readerships — often very loyal ones — and independent publishing allows authors to find and serve those readerships.
Much has been said of Amazon’s ability to connect readers to the books they want to read through recommendations and targeted advertising, and this has also helped otherwise unknown authors find an audience for their books.
KDP’s categorization largely operates on the honor system. Through the KDP dashboard, Amazon allows publishers to select two main categories and then gives them seven keywords which can help get their book into additional categories. If a book sells high in its category, it can make it to that category’s bestseller page, even if it’s a drop in the bucket for the overall Amazon store. For example, say your niche genre book sales rank is 10,000. That’s not going to get you on Amazon’s Top 100 bestseller list. But it might be enough to get you on the Top 100 bestseller list for that niche genre. This means more potential exposure, both through new readers finding the book from the bestseller lists and Amazon recommending the book to other readers.
The categorization system does have an obvious flaw. If you can get into categories through keywords, then it opens the door to potential false positives. If you have a horror book involving demons and you put “demon” as a keyword, maybe your book accidentally gets classified as Christian fiction. In this case, a writer/publisher can simply email Amazon and tell them of the error, then it will be fixed.
But what happens when an author or publisher intentionally miscategorizes their book? What does Amazon do about that?
I haven’t been able to get a straight answer from Amazon about this. But after years of trying, I’ve concluded that their policy towards intentional miscategorization can be summed up in three words: “We don’t care.”
Where’s a superhero when you need one?
Superheroes are obviously a huge deal right now. They dominate the box office, they’re all over TV, and they’ve pretty much been in control of the comic industry for decades.
But did you know there are also superhero novels? And I don’t just mean novelizations of superhero movies or licensed books starring Marvel or DC characters. I mean authors writing and publishing their own original superhero stories. Amazon even has a Superhero book category. Go ahead and check out their bestseller page.
Wait…you did say this was the superhero category, right…?
If that was your reaction when viewing the category, I’d wager you’re not the only one. You no doubt saw a lot of different sub-genres in there. Urban fantasy, LitRPG, paranormal romance are all listed in that category and they’re all over-represented. In fact, at the time of this writing, do you know how many books in Amazon’s Top 100 bestselling superhero books are actual superhero books?
Seven.
No, that’s not a typo. I didn’t mean seventy or even seventeen. I meant literally there are only seven actual superhero books on the list of Top 100 superhero books.
Only 7% of the bestselling superhero books on Amazon are actual superhero books
How is that possible? If this was just a simple glitch, then surely it wouldn’t lead to such an egregious figure. Surely if this were brought to Amazon’s attention, they would do something about it. After all, if you went into a physical bookstore or a library and complained that the romance section was filled with horror books, the problem would not only be fixed as soon as possible, but the person responsible for the miscategorization would doubtlessly be chewed out, if not fired.
That was what I thought, at least. Four years ago, I noticed this problem and so I contacted Amazon about it. I emailed Jeff Bezos’ public email. I was contacted by a woman who worked in the Kindle Direct Publishing Executive Customer Relations department. She asked if we could speak on the phone and I was happy to oblige. We had a conversation and I explained the issue. She assured me she would open an investigation into the matter, but added the caveat that, “details about investigations into or actions taken against another publisher’s catalog can’t be shared due to security reasons.”
With the problem persisting after four years to the point that only 7% of the books actually belong there, I think we know what actions were taken — absolutely none.
Amazon’s continued non-action on this issue allows abuse of the system to flourish and makes it more difficult for customers to find what it is they’re looking for. If Amazon is going to pay lip-service to the notion that they care about their customers and the authors who publish through their platform, then they should at least do the bare minimum with a problem such as this. Not only is this unfair to the legitimate superhero authors who deserve to have their category respected, but it’s unfair to the readers who are looking for those kinds of books.
Urban fantasy and paranormal romance already have their own categories on Amazon. They shouldn’t be abusing the superhero category because their own is too competitive. Nor should Amazon let them get away with it.
If you are an author or a reader, this issue should be something that bothers you as well, even if you don’t care about superhero fiction. Because if unscrupulous authors can game one category for easy views to the point that the algorithms become corrupted, they can easily do it to another. Please contact KDP Support and tell them that the continuous miscategorization of superhero novels is a concern. Send them the link to this piece if you have to.
Amazon will only take action if people start speaking up.
Addendum
Thank you for those of you who have shared this. Since then, I was recently forwarded an email by someone who read this article. This email was sent from an author’s mailing list. In the email, the author bragged about their urban fantasy title achieving a high rank in the superhero category. Bragged.
That is as clear an example as you can get of category manipulation. That author knows their book doesn’t fit in the superhero category, yet deliberately put it there and then bragged about how well it’s doing in that category.
This is not okay.
