How to Choose Your Seven KDP Keywords for a Coloring Book

You get seven keyword boxes, and the job of each one is to catch a search your title and your categories do not already catch.

That last part is the rule most people have backwards. Amazon says not to use words that are already in your title, your contributor names or your categories. Repeating them does not make you rank harder for them. It spends one of your seven boxes on a search you were already in.

So the seven are not a summary of your book. They are the seven things about it that are nowhere else on the listing.

They are search phrases, not tags

Think of each box as a sentence somebody types into Amazon, not a label you stick on your book.

"Coloring book" is a tag. "Coloring book for 4 year old boys" is a search. One of those is what a real person types when they are holding a phone in a shop queue trying to find a present.

Amazon's own guidance is that keywords should reflect the words customers use when they search, and should be in the order a person would say them. "Military science fiction" works. "Fiction science military" does not, because nobody types it that way.

This is the same thinking that runs through how to publish a coloring book on Amazon: being specific does not shrink your market, it makes you findable.

Start by writing down what is already covered

Before you fill in a single box, write out your title, your subtitle and your two categories. Leave the description out of this list: Amazon does not want keywords in there at all, so it is not doing this job for you. Your KDP book description has a different job: talking to a person.

Everything in that list is already working for you. A book titled "Tiny Town Helpers: A Community Helpers Coloring Adventure for Ages 4-6" is already findable for community helpers, for coloring, and for that age. Those words are spent. Putting them in a keyword box buys you nothing.

What is not covered is everything a buyer might type that is not about the subject at all. That is where your seven boxes go.

Where the phrases come from

Three places, none of which cost anything.

Amazon's own search bar. Start typing "coloring book for" into Amazon and it finishes the sentence for you, repeatedly, with the phrases people actually complete it with. Those suggestions are not guesses. They come from real searches. Write down every one that fits your book.

The buyer, not the reader. For a children's coloring book these are different people. A four-year-old does not buy anything. A grandmother, an aunt, a teacher or a parent does, and they type things like "gift for a 5 year old" and "quiet activity for kids", which have nothing to do with the subject of your book and everything to do with why they are shopping.

Your own shelf. If you have other books up, look at what you wrote for them and what is missing. Your listings teach you more than a keyword tool does once there are a few of them.

A worked example

Take Tiny Town Helpers. The title already carries the subject, the format and the age. So the seven boxes go somewhere else entirely.

These are seven I would test, not seven I promise will work:

1. gifts for 5 year olds
2. preschool activity book
3. firefighter police officer mail carrier
4. quiet activities for kids
5. gift from grandma
6. jobs and careers for kids
7. kindergarten readiness

Read them again and notice what they have in common. Four of the seven are about the occasion rather than the content. The buyer is not looking for a coloring book. They are looking for something to give a child, or something to keep one occupied on a Sunday afternoon, and a coloring book is one answer to that.

That is the shift. Your categories cover what your book is. Your keywords should cover why somebody is looking.

What Amazon will not accept

The list is short and worth reading once, because a rejected keyword is a wasted box.

• Words already in your title, contributors or categories
• Claims about quality, like "best coloring book ever"
• Anything time-sensitive, like "new" or "on sale"
• Generic category words on their own, like "book"
• Misspellings
• Other authors' names, or brand names you do not own
• Quotation marks
• Amazon programme names like Kindle Unlimited
• HTML tags

Most of these are the same mistake in different clothes: trying to borrow attention that belongs to somebody else, or to a promotion that will be over in a month.

Amazon does not publish a character count for these fields on its keyword help page. The box will stop you when you reach its limit. Keep each one to the length of something a person would really type anyway, which is shorter than the limit.

You can change them

Keywords are editable after publishing, and this is the part that should take the pressure off.

You go into your Bookshelf, open Edit book details, change the entries under Keywords, save, and republish from the Rights and Pricing page. Nothing about the book itself changes. No new file, no new cover. If you ever do need a new file, my guides to KDP bleed and margins and making a KDP cover walk you through both.

So do not sit on a finished book for three days trying to perfect seven phrases. Put your best guess in, publish, and come back in a month when you have some idea what people are actually typing.

Questions people ask about this

Do I have to fill in all seven?

No, but there is no reason not to. Each empty box is a search you are not in.

Can I use a phrase with several words in one box?

Yes. That is what they are for. Each box takes a keyword or a short phrase, and phrases do more work than single words.

Should I repeat my main keyword to rank higher for it?

No. Amazon specifically says not to use words already in your title or categories. Repetition does not strengthen anything, it just spends a box.

Can I use another author's name if my book is similar to theirs?

No. Amazon lists misleading information, including unauthorised author names, as something to avoid.

How long until new keywords take effect?

Amazon does not publish a timeframe on its keyword page. Change them and check back rather than watching the listing the same afternoon.

The listing is one step. If you want the rest of it in order, I wrote up what I learned into The Coloring Book Business Guide, which covers finding a niche that is not already flooded, the tools for generating pages, the pricing decision, and fifty prompts to start from. Twenty-five for adult books, twenty-five for children's. It is free.