which department for niche / PDF Cover upload

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Hi,
I'm a bit new, I have just published my first 2 notebooks on KDP this week so it's the beginning of the journey, a learning curve...! Questions please:

  1. So I found a good niche, using Titans Quick view on Amazon.com showing me a good niche score for all related keywords and I based everything on this. Was happy with myself! I made my search in 'all departments'. But just at the time of publishing, when looking at categories (I realised KDP only gives you categories within the Book department), I did exactly the same search (keywords) but under 'Books' in the Amazon search bar and the niche score went down by about 30 points!!! So, really the question is, when checking keywords and niche etc, is it only all supposed to be done under the 'Books' department or in 'all departments'? Quite a number of journals for example are listed in the 'Office Products department' or in 'Paper and printable media' which can't be selected in the KDP account.

  2. when uploading the PDF bookcover onto KDP platform, I've been uploading as CMYK as this is going to be the file used by KDP for printing. My concern is that Amazon will then use this CMYK Cover to show as the main image for the listing but it doesn't render as well as the RGB digitally. Someone said to just upload RGB on KDP and KDP will convert this themselves into CMYK when printing (??). What is the best way to go about this, as you want the listing to look good but also the printing to be done properly and you can only upload 1 file!

I would really appreciate your help on this, thank you very much!
(And apologies if this has been covered already, I haven't taken the time to look through all the Q&A yet sorry!)

Amy3
2 Answers

Never do research under books. That is not where 99% of shoppers start their research. You want to see what the buyer is seeing. You want to see the search results and competition for people on page one that is shown to most people when they are on Amazon.

And with 2. I am no expert with that stuff, but I do believe you can do that in Canva settings. Also just an optinion but with low content books I do not think this is a big issue either way. I think this could possibly be a bigger concern for Coloring Books and covers with lots of colors and details.

Hope this helps. :)

Corvin Van Stone246

Thanks Corvin! I am glad my new found niche wasn't in vain then!

With the book cover, I have been doing some research now. So Canva doesn't let you create/edit in CMYK, only in RGB. You can save a Pdf as CMYK on pro account, but then it makes the cover quite dull, the colours aren't the ones I chose when designing the cover. Quite disappointing as KDP says it needs cover in CMYK for printing, which is normal practice for printing anyways.
I saw online many people have the same question and some people end up uploading their book cover as RGB (which isn't supposed to be for print) and just take a chance having it printed like this (and take a chance with the final result as to how KDP will convert it into CMYK), they say it doesn't really matter, and the result isn't that bad, saying there's no much difference with their original design. It's probably a good idea then to order an author copy to check how was the printing really, and then adjust accordingly.
Others say it's best to design as CMYK yourself if you want full control, with other software like Adobe or Affinity... the other option if only using Canva is to go online and choose the CMYK colours Hex code that suit your design so when you save it there is no surprise -which is what I'm going to try now! And when needed for a digital file (RGB), converting CMYK to RGB is much simpler than converting RGB to CMYK. All CMYK colours are apparently available in RGB but not vice versa, hence the trouble with converting.

I'm trying to get this right as the Book cover is very important, the first thing shoppers look at!

I thought to share this in case someone in the community has that same struggle! Also, I'd be pleased to hear if anyone decided to use one or the other with RGB/CMYK and the outcome.

I may come back to update if I learn anything else on this :-)

***update: I tried to pick the CMYK colours Hex code I wanted for my design on Canva hoping the pdf will come out just the way I designed it as CMYK... but it didn't make any difference and the PDF was still horrible! Very frustrating.
After more research it seems it could have to do with the setting in Adober pdf viewer... couldn't get my head round tricky Adobe settings so will just try to upload RGB Cover design onto KDP...
If anyone has faced the same issue and has an answer, I'd love to hear from you!

Amy3