Thursday, July 9, 2015

Amazon Categories are Sometimes WTF

So, I know a lot of authors will pad their keywords to get into as many categories as possible. I consider this a "black hat" tactic, as it misrepresents a book. I try to keep it to exactly what's IN the book so that people know what they're getting. Makes sense, yeah? Because, y'know, I'm sorry... if I want a horror book, and it's not horror, I'd get mad. If I want romance and it's not really romance, I'd get mad.

With Primal Urges, there's a menage scene in it that consists of our hero of the book, and two ladies he happens to meet who are bisexual lovers living together. There are a couple of paragraphs of just the two ladies making out, then more with pussy eating and whatnot during the menage... and that's it. Of course, I wasn't thinking and put lesbian in the keywords because they are, or rather bisexual. Maybe I put bisexual in there. I'd have to check that, actually. Anyway, it got categorized under literature & fiction > Horror > LGBT / Lesbian. I was like... Ooookaaaay?

It is in there, but it's not the focus of the book, so I feel that I must apologize for any misrepresentation of it. Yes, it technically is in there, so it could technically be in that category, but it's not the focus. I don't want to misrepresent what I wrote: it's horror with a paranormal romance and lots of hot sex. I'm still wondering if that one keyword was enough to bump it into that category. Sometimes, I really don't understand how Amazon determines where goes what, and if people even look at the content at all for all those authors jampacking whatever keywords they can to get into all those categories. I really don't think they do.

1 comment:

  1. I don't think Amazon looks at the content of a book at all unless they receive a complaint. I was researching books in a niche earlier and came across (HA! No, not really) this author whose books are nothing but copy and pastes of Google Translate. They're more unreadable than Finnegan's Wake.

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