KDP Keyword Checker

When you publish a book on Kindle Direct Publishing, the details page gives you 7 keyword boxes. Amazon uses them, together with your title, subtitle, and categories, to decide which searches your book appears in. Each box holds one word or one short phrase, and KDP recommends phrases of two or three words in the order a reader would type them.

The KDP form shows a character limit for each box. KDP's help pages do not print the number, so this checker uses 50 characters, the limit the form commonly enforces. A book can also be listed in up to 3 categories, and the words in those categories are already searchable.

KDP asks you to leave these out of your keywords, and can reject a listing that includes them:

• Other authors, series names, and the titles of other authors' books.
• Brands you do not own or are not authorized to use.
• Sales rank claims such as "bestselling", and promotions such as "free".
• Time-sensitive statements such as "new", "on sale", or "available now".
• Subjective claims about quality, and anything misleading or unrelated to the book.
• Amazon program names such as Kindle Unlimited or KDP Select.
• Information already in your title, contributors, or categories, and words common to every book.
• Spelling errors and HTML tags.

Good keywords describe the reader and the problem, not the book. Before you open KDP, write down who your reader is, what they want to do, and the situation they are in. Then start typing those words into the Amazon search bar and note the suggestions that match your book, because those suggestions come from real searches. Keep the phrases that a reader of your book would actually type, and drop the ones that only sound related.

Three rewrites show the difference:

• budget book becomes family budget for beginners

  "Book" fits every listing. Say who the reader is instead.

• best money guide 2026 becomes saving money on one income

  Quality claims and years are not allowed. Name the situation the reader is in.

• budgeting for new parents becomes cost of raising a baby

  When the title is "Budgeting for New Parents", those words are already searchable.

Spread the seven boxes across different angles: the reader, the problem, the goal, and the method. Seven versions of the same phrase reach the same searches seven times.

Keywords are one part of the listing. Your description has its own rules and a 4,000-character limit, and the book description generator formats it and checks it. KDP also asks you to disclose AI-generated text, images, or translations when you publish a new book or republish an edited one, even if you edited the AI output heavily. TailoredRead books are AI-generated, so you tick the AI disclosure box when you publish them. KDP limits each account to 2 new titles per format per week.