This is something that's been on my mind for a while, and have two different opinions on it. When authors upload and publish their books to Amazon, there are two ways to get the book into the author's desired categories. The first is selecting them manually, from a long list of options. The second is through using specific tags. Both options are under the author's complete control, and it's something I both love and despise.
When you upload your book to Amazon, one of the first things you do is select the categories it belongs to. Amazon only allows you to pick two from the list, which is not a complete list of all the categories on their Kindle store. For new users especially, this can be very confusing because the second way to list your book into categories isn't immediately clear until you go digging around in the KDP help section.
Authors can select subcategories and niche categories based off their selections in the list by using certain tags. For example, fantasy has a sub section for mythology and legends, which has more subsections for Greek and Roman, Asian, Arthurian, and Norse and Viking. It's not uncommon to go browsing through the Norse section, and finding Greek and Roman stories in there, because those subsections share a few tags. It can be a little irritating if you're looking for books about Thor, but if you don't care which gods you read about, it's quite nice. Once you get the hang of using tags on Amazon, getting your book into multiple niche categories is easy. It's great for the author, to get more visibility, and it's great for readers who tend to only stick to certain categories when they read.
And because authors can choose where their book shows up on the site, it gives them complete control over who sees their book. Which is great, because it lets some books which might wallow in a niche category, unseen for years, gain exposure by being placed in a larger category with more traffic. It's become a fairly common tactic used by erotica authors, since the erotica category is hidden in literature and fiction, rather than under romance where readers might expect to find it. You'll actually find erotica just about anywhere. Since shapeshifters are popular, you get a lot of erotica in fantasy. The fact that Amazon gives authors this ability to give their books more exposure (with risks, such as having your book adult-locked so it doesn't show up in searches) is great. This is a tough industry, so if you can find a way to get an edge over the competition, take it.
But as a reader, this is the most irritating thing on the whole of Amazon. There is a LOT of erotica in fantasy. Most of it is easy to tell, because the covers and titles tend to follow certain conventions. It's easy to scroll past, but if you want to read about shapeshifters, it can be fairly difficult to find books about shapeshifters that aren't erotica.
So it's weird. As a reader, I don't care about all these billionaire bears and the women who tame them. Get out of my way so I can find stories about shapeshifters just fucking shit up for everything else. Go back to erotica where you belong. But when I'm in writer mode, I'm trying to find ways to do the same thing. I want my book in as many categories as possible, because it means more people will see it, and possibly buy it. I don't think there's ever going to be a middle ground on this either. Amazon will never implement a way to filter out erotica, since in theory, that filter already exists, and it's not a filter anybody wants to be put on.
I love Amazon's category selection and I hate it. It just seems to depend on the time of day, and what I'm doing.
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