Discoverability: Our First Frontier - How to Get Found in the Amazon

After launching a book on Amazon, one of the first challenges every author faces is discoverability. With so many titles available, how do we ensure that our book stands out and reaches the right readers?

In this post, we’ll take a systematic approach to understanding discoverability, starting with how Amazon’s algorithms help readers find books organically—through browsing, searching, and personalized recommendations. We’ll then move on to practical ways to test our book’s visibility on Amazon and make adjustments based on keyword indexing and category rank.

After launching a book on Amazon, one of the first challenges every author faces is discoverability. With so many titles available, how do we ensure that our book stands out and reaches the right readers?

In this post, we’ll take a systematic approach to understanding discoverability, starting with how Amazon’s algorithms help readers find books organically—through browsing, searching, and personalized recommendations. We’ll then move on to practical ways to test our book’s visibility on Amazon and make adjustments based on keyword indexing and category rank.

Organic Discoverability

A direct way to discover a book on Amazon is by browsing through books according to genres, categories, and themes. These browsing paths include sections like “Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought” and “Frequently Bought Together,” enhancing a book’s discoverability by connecting products that are commonly purchased in the same browsing session.

Alternatively a book can be discovered outside of the browsing paths by using the search function. The keyword settings configured in Amazon KDP during the setup of a book (see Fig. 0, for example):

are the keywords for which the book eventually becomes indexed, helping identify the book’s niche and target audience. Keyword indexing determines if a book will be returned in the results lists for a user’s search query.

Finally, our book can be discovered through Amazon Recommendations. Recommendations are personalized suggestions based on a user’s purchase history, browsing behavior, and other activities on Amazon. This includes “Recommended for You” sections and custom product suggestions that show up on the homepage or in personalized emails. Whether found through browsing or searching, we are talking about organic discovery.

Practical Tests for Organic Discoverability

Keyword Indexing Test

To check if a particular book is indexed for a specific keyword, go to the Amazon search bar and enter the keyword in question, along with the book’s ASIN. If the book appears in the results, Amazon has indexed it, meaning it has a chance of being found organically for that term. This test helps to confirm that Amazon is associating our book with the specific keywords most relevant to our niche.

Running this test for keyword “cat picture books for kids“ on Sammy’s Voyage (eBook format) is show in Fig. 1:

…and the results demonstrate that Sammy’s Voyage has been indexed for “cat picture books for kids“:

Organic Placement Check (in Search Results)

Go to the Amazon search bar and enter the keyword without the ASIN, and then check how our book ranks organically among all search results. This helps us evaluate how competitive our book is for different search terms, and detect if/where we can benefit from keywords adjustments (among the keywords we selected during setup in KDP).

To do this, I used KDSpy. For example, running the "children's book about moving” keyword phrase in the search bar, KDSpy shows us that Sammy’s Voyage is number 79 in the search results:

Interestingly, I noticed that by simply removing the apostraphe from “children’s“ and turning it into “childrens“, I’m getting a result set in which Sammy’s Voyage is ranking 27:

For most of my keywords, however, Sammy’s Voyage is not appearing in this list. Despite being indexed for these terms, our book is ranking outside of the top 100, causing us to hit our limitations with KDSpy.

This tool is designed to analyze the top 20 results, which can be expanded to the top 100 — but not beyond that. From this, we can derive that Sammy’s Voyage is ranking outside of the top 100 for those terms (which need adjustments), or our book has a very long way to go on its rise to the top. I hope to report on a better tool for this, in a future post.

Category Rankings Assessment

Navigate to our book’s product page and scroll down to the Product Details section to check our rankings in the chosen categories :

A book ranking within the top 100 for a category are more likely to be discovered by readers browsing that genre. Therefore, the above example is more likely to be discovered in Children’s Explore United States Fiction, than to be discovered in the other two categories. (This is the eBook by the way. The rankings for the softcover look vastly differently.)

Evaluating Amazon Recommendations Placement

First, identify books that are comparable, in our genre. Choose a few that align well with your book’s topic, style, and audience. These books should ideally be popular, as they’re more likely to have active recommendation sections in which our book might appear. Therefore, check the “Recommended for You” section as well as the “Also Bought” section on each of their product pages to see if our book is there.

Appearing in the “Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought“ shows that Amazon’s algorithm sees a connection between your book and this popular title.

Influence the recommendations by clicking on books similar to yours to influence the algorithm to suggest related books. Over time, this could help our book appear here naturally. However, if we don’t find our book anywhere near a popular comparable book’s product page, we need to make adjustments according to [refinements in] our book’s metadata, drive external traffic to our Amazon book page or resort to other forms of inorganic discoverability enhancements.

Inorganic Discoverability

Outside of organic channels, there are a few ways for our book to be discovered which include external, curated, and sponsored discoverability.

External traffic can also be directed to an Amazon book page via social media, email marketing, and websites. This category includes links shared by Amazon affiliates, bloggers, or influencers that direct traffic to a book’s Amazon page.

Among curated recommendations, we have Amazon’s Best Sellers, Teachers Picks, and Editorial recommendations, to name a few. “Products Related to This Item” is a section of curated recommendations.

Sponsored discoverability takes us into the world of Amazon Ads, a topic for which this post is a prerequisite. These include Sponsored Product Ads, Brand Ads, and Display Ads.

Sponsored Product Ads place our book prominently in search results and on competitor product pages based on our chosen keywords. Sponsored Brand Ads are banner ads that are more expensive but with higher visibility. They’re appropriate for multi-product offers and are effective in raising brand awareness. Sponsored Display Ads appear on and off Amazon, such as on third-party sites that Amazon partners with. These go beyond keyword targeting and utilize customer behavior data to reach audiences.

In the next post, I intend to do a deep dive into discovering Sammy’s competitors, or comparable titles. From there, we’ll cover options for inorganic discoverability, looking at how external traffic, curated recommendations, and sponsored ads can help further boost our book’s visibility. Throughout, we’ll use Sammy’s Voyage as our example, observing where it ranks, how it performs for specific keywords, and what changes may improve its discoverability. This post serves as a foundational overview, setting us up for a deep dive into identifying competitive and comparable titles in the next post as we prepare to discuss Amazon Ads in detail.

Join us as we continue explore the path to making Sammy’s Voyage more discoverable, step-by-step.