on Writers in the Storm:

As an indie author you will have a tool kit. Whether it is for writing, publishing, formatting, or advertising, there are so many ways to do what needs to be done to publish your book. Today we are going to talk about part of the publishing tool kit.

One of the things you’ll be asked when you start publishing a book on KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) is what keywords and categories you want your book listed in. This is where it comes in really handy to know your genre and other authors you want to target. This is an important step because it tells Amazon where to place your book on their shelves. And you want to be on the right shelf.

Note: When you publish with a publisher, whether they are a small press or a large press, you will never see the KDP dashboard, only the publisher can see it, so you won’t have any control over where they place your books. As a self-published author, not only do you have control, but if your book is not doing well in one category, you can go in and tweak it and put it in another.