Goodreads Authors/Readers discussion

I am stymied, fellow authors. What role do the 7 keywords we are asked to provide for KDP publications actually play? Is general better ("cozy mystery") or highly specific ("found family narrative")? Has anyone any wisdom to offer me?

Keywords used to be important back in the early-'00s to expand the capabilities of search algorithms. Those early algorithms had limitations and needed user prompts (keywords) to help categorize items. Today, search engines can use AI, which is more sophisticated and can figure out where KDP wants to place books. Put in all 7 keywords, and for the most part, their AI bot will ignore them and do its own thing. So, maybe it's best just to make your keywords generic and not to waste time trying to make them too specific. Mind you, this is my opinion based on my personal experiences with KDP. But overall, I think KDP is good.

I have a PDF guide from Kindlepreneur that actually tells you what to put in each of the 7 Keyword boxes in order to potentially see the best results from it.

Boxes 1-3: Enter exact phrases you truly want to rank the highest for.

Boxes 4&5: Fill in these two spots with phrases that weren't good enough for boxes 1 and 2 but are still decent enough to use.

Boxes 6&7: In these two boxes you put keywords that fit your category so that you stay within them and Amazon will sync your keywords and categories together.

Your keywords should relate to your categories.

Not sure I got this part right when I posted 1804 last year, but I've gotten at least a DOZEN 'offers' from people/groups that want to help me 'promote' my book (for 'nominal' fees that were never clear upfront!). Amazing how many of them had really hard to understand bad accents...

Can you edit your keywords once your book has been published or do you need to "unpublish" and start all over again? I read an article that mentioned playing around with the keywords you use, but I'm wondering if that is doable.

According to Google, you can edit after publishing your book on KDP Amazon. Go to your bookshelf and edit book details. Once you change the keywords and save/continue, then publish ... you will "technically" REpublish the book (although that's all internal with Amazon). They'll then let you know that your book is "live" but, again, that's an internal process.