I have mentioned the importance of Amazon Categories as far as rankings are concerned in my post, I Just Published my Book. Now What?

Here is a rough guide to how many copies a book needs to sell to reach a certain rank in Amazon US, courtesy of Jackie Weger.

This daunting figure, however, is only true when one thinks of the major categories – eg. “Books > Literature & Fiction.” The further one goes down the various subcategories, the easier it is to reach #1 in that sublisting.

I recently came across a great post on the subject by Jen Bresnick, so I thought I’d revisit this topic with a detailed how-to.

What is my Category?

When you look up a listing for a book on Amazon, scroll down past the reviews to the section titled “Look for similar items by category”.  If you visit the page…