The Dilemma of KDP's Book Categories

Have you been frustrated with the limitations of KDP's book categories? Purportedly, the categories are limited in order to "prevent system abuse", because we authors are all suspect, you know. To me, if any author wants to "genre stuff", they can still do it. It wouldn't be to their advantage and would do more harm than good, but hey! Knock yourself out!  

More likely, it was an efficiency step for the company, which they've sold as a benefit. 

I'm generally okay with choosing primary categories, but if I want to drill down to better position my book, either relevant sub-genres don't exist or they're inappropriate. Scratch that first statement. I'm generally okay with choosing two primary categories, but the third ends up being either redundant or pretty much off target. (I suppose I could only pick two.)

For my latest novel, I consulted AI for that third category and it suggested either "women's psychological fiction" or just "psychological fiction". Those seem off. I think of psychological fiction as either Fatal Attraction or maybe a bad guy gaslighting a woman until she's driven insane. To be clear, my protagonist has no psychological dysfunction. I'm going to need to come up with different categories. (As an FYI, my novel performs poorly in the "my main character is nuts" arena.)

Therein lies the problem. Good old AI has some new suggestions, but I don't like them:

Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Women's Fiction > Domestic Life > Change & Growth

I'm fine with "change & growth", but my MC is not living a domestic lifestyle. On the contrary. 

Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > History & Criticism > Regional & Cultural > United States > Western 

What? Speaking of nuts.

Why not something like Women's Fiction > Career? Nope, no can do. Too accurate, I guess.

And really, if I went the suggestion of Contemporary Fiction > Regional > Western, know what readers would be expecting? For sure not a geographical area. 

 

As far as Literature & Fiction > Contemporary Fiction > Urban or Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction > Coming of Age > Small Town & Rural, well, which one? My story takes place in both.

If KDP only wanted to offer broad subcategories, they certainly chose the wrong ones. 

I imagine authors of other genres have a similar conundrum. Thus, we're told to just utilize our keywords to fill in the blanks. But as far as your book's ranking, you're still stuck with the three categories you chose. 

On that note, I'm also rethinking my longtail keywords. They're supposed to be aligned with a shopper's search terms (roughly), and I just might be missing some relevant ones. Hey, stuff away, right? I'm allowed 50 characters for each slot! Plus, I notice that I've repeated some words, which only takes up unnecessary space.

It's a shame that we're restricted from classifying our books as what they actually are, without having to resort to tricks or to "that kind of fits".  

In the long run, whatever changes I do make won't change anything, but the principle remains. KDP really should be asking my opinion. Shoot, they've got my email address. Hit me up, KDP! I'm just sitting here with nothing to do anyway.