What you're looking for
A good keyword is a phrase a reader really types when they're looking for a book like yours, that your title and subtitle don't already cover. You get seven boxes of up to 50 characters each. The aim is to fill them with specific phrases, not single broad words.
1. Write down how readers would describe your book
Before you search, list the words a reader would use, not the ones you'd use as the author. Think about:
- Genre and subgenre: cosy mystery, space opera, clean romance
- Setting and period: Cornish village, Victorian London
- Character types and tropes: amateur sleuth, enemies to lovers
- For non-fiction, the reader's problem and goal: anxiety at work, retire early
- Who it's bought for or why: gift for nurses, beginners, teenagers
2. Use Amazon's search suggestions
Go to Amazon, choose the Books or Kindle Store department, and start typing one of your ideas slowly. The suggestions that drop down are phrases shoppers have searched for. Note the ones that fit your book. Then try your phrase followed by each letter of the alphabet ("cosy mystery a", "cosy mystery b") to uncover more.
3. Check the results
KDP's own advice is to search your keywords on Amazon before you publish. Search each candidate phrase and look at what comes up. If the results are books like yours, it's a good keyword. If they're not, readers searching that phrase want something else, and your book won't convert even if it appears.
4. Borrow readers' own words
Read the reviews of books similar to yours. The words readers use to praise them ("slow-burn", "found family", "no-nonsense") are often the words other readers search. They make good additions to a phrase.
5. Look at search volume, if you want to
For a rough idea of how often a phrase is searched, Ahrefs' free keyword generator has an Amazon option that shows estimated volume bands without needing an account. Treat the numbers as a guide: for books, relevance matters more than volume.
6. Turn your list into seven boxes
- Use a few boxes for long, specific phrases that describe your book exactly.
- Use the rest for shorter phrases covering your niche, setting, themes and reader.
- Repeating a title word inside a phrase is fine: in Kindlepreneur's 120-book test it caused no penalty. A box that adds no new words at all is wasted.
- Leave out quality claims ("best"), time-sensitive words ("new"), "book", Amazon programme names and other authors' names. KDP asks you not to use them.
Our keyword helper shows what each box adds and flags anything KDP asks you to avoid.
7. Review them later
You can change keywords whenever you like. After a few weeks, search your phrases on Amazon again to see whether your book appears, and swap out any that aren't working.
Based on KDP's keyword guidance and Kindlepreneur's published keyword test, checked 28 October 2026.