by Susan U. Neal RN, MBA, MHS @SusanNealYoga
Would you like to attain higher book sales? You can by creating sponsored Amazon ads, so your book shows up in the top of the feed when a buyer is searching for a topic similar to what is included in your book. It can feel daunting to learn the Amazon ad system and create your first ad. This article will teach you how to set up sponsored Amazon ads for both traditionally published and self-published authors.
What better way to snag a sale than when the reader is already searching to purchase an item similar to yours? They simply need to find your book. I have had exceptional success with Amazon ads. I created my first ad in 2017, but it took six months of monitoring the ads and figuring out the system to make a profit. But since then, for every hundred dollars I’ve spent on ads, I’ve made almost $200 in profit.
Set up Sponsored Amazon Ads
Sponsored ads are fairly easy to create, and authors have had higher success rates, so that is the type of ad covered in this article. First, you can create ads on two different platforms. If you are self-published, you can create ads through Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP.com). If you are traditionally published, you can set up ads through your author central account at authorcentral.amazon.com. If you don’t have an account, you can establish one for free at Amazon Author Central.
As of March 2022, any author with a verified Amazon Author Central account can place Amazon ads for any book, including traditionally published books. For now, this is only for the US marketplace. This is how Amazon has finally allowed traditionally published authors to create Amazon ads. If you would like further information, please read Amazon Opens Advertising to Traditionally Published Authors.
To set up ads in KDP.com login to your account and find your book that you want to create an ad for and click Promote and Advertise. Next, click Run Ad and Choose a Marketplace; then click Create an Ad Campaign. The first time you set up an ad, Amazon will ask you for some account information including how you will pay for the ads.
To set up an ad on your Amazon Author Central account, login and click on the Reports + Marketing tab and look on the lower-right side under Amazon Advertising for the button, Goes to the Ads Console. The next page will open in your Amazon ads console. Click the second icon on the top left and Sponsored ads will appear. Click Campaign Creation. Then follow these steps:
Steps to Create an Amazon Ad for Your Book
- Next, click Sponsored Products. You will enter the area to set up your ad.
- Choose your Ad Format. Select Standard ad.
- Ad Groups: Give your ad a group name.
- Products: Choose the book you want to promote.
- Targeting (2 options): Automatic Targeting where Amazon targets keywords and other products similar to your book. Or Manual Targeting where you choose keywords or similar books. (I chose automatic targeting because I already determined my book’s keywords and incorporated those into the book’s title and description when I uploaded my book to KDP.com.)
- Automatic Targeting (2 options): Either set default bid or set bids by targeting groups to match your ads to shoppers looking for your product. Choose Set default bid for 25 to 35 cents.
- Negative Keyword targeting and Negative Product targeting are optional. For example, you could choose the negative keyword, “free,” so your book would not be listed when anyone searches for a free item on Amazon. I don’t use this option.
- Campaign bidding strategy (3 options): Dynamic bids down only (Amazon can move your bid price down but not up), Dynamic bids up and down (Amazon can move your bid price up and down), or Fixed bids. Choose Dynamic bids down only until you get comfortable with monitoring your ads.
- Settings: Includes campaign name, start and end date. Choose no end date. Add a daily budget of $5 to start with until you are sure the ad is profitable.
- Click Launch Campaign.
- Amazon will email you and let you know you submitted a campaign ad, and it is under review. In one to three days, Amazon will notify you if your campaign was approved and that it is live.
Select Keywords
You can choose to determine and select keywords or allow Amazon to do this for you. I chose the latter and have been successful. However, I’ve put a lot of work in to determining the best keywords to include in my books’ title and description, and I uploaded those keywords to the KDP.com publishing platform.
If you need to determine your book’s keywords, take my course, Increase Your Book’s Amazon Rank by Expanding Categories and Keywords at CIPA.Podia.com. This course is free to members of Christian Indie Publishing Association (CIPA).
For your Amazon ads, choose about 300 keywords. The best system I found to do this is Publisher Rocket. You can receive a 30 percent discount on this software by joining CIPA at christianpublishers.net. This savings will cover one third of your association membership cost.
Monitor Amazon Ads
You can spend a lot of money on Amazon ads. If you are new to placing ads, I suggest checking your ads a couple of times a week. Since I’ve been doing this since 2017, I monitor my ads monthly. To access your Amazon ads dashboard go to Advertising.Amazon.com/cm/campaigns and login.
The top of the page shows all of your ads’ general metrics and graphics combined, which gives you a snapshot of how the ads are performing. Underneath are your individual campaigns. From left to right, you will find the following column terms:
- Status: Tells you if your ad is running or paused. If you want to pause a campaign, click the toggle switch in this column. You can turn an ad back on here too.
- Campaign: Your ad is called a campaign. And sometimes you create a group of ads under one advertising campaign. Ad groups organize your products’ ads.
- Budget: How much you’re willing to spend per day on this campaign. I start with $5, but when an ad becomes profitable, I increase it to $100.
- Spend: The total charges derived from all the people who clicked on your ad/campaign during the date range that is in the top right of this section.
- Orders: The number of Amazon orders that shoppers submitted within 14 days after clicking on your ad.
- Sales: Sales is the total value of products sold to shoppers within 14 days that resulted from them clicking on your ads.
- Advertising Cost of Sales (ACOS): The percentage of your sales that you spend on advertising. This is calculated by dividing how much you spent on an ad divided by the sales attributed to the ads. The lower the percentage, the more profitable the campaign. For an ad to be profitable, your ACOS should be <70% if your eBook sells for $2.99–$9.99. If your eBook price is <$2.99 or >$9.99 your ACOS need to be < 35%. My ads ACOS range from 12% to 44%.
- Kindle Edition Normalized Pages Read (KENP): The estimated number of pages read by Kindle Unlimited customers attributed to your ads.
- Copy: If you want to duplicate an ad, click copy.
As you monitor your ads, you may need to adjust your bid. If you have had no impressions, clicks, or sales then you need to increase your bid. If you have had impressions and sales, but are losing money, you need to lower your bid.
If increasing your bid does not cause your ad to work, then look at the copywriting of your book’s description. Have you added your keywords into the book’s Amazon description? You or your publisher can do this through the KDP.com publishing platform. Do you need a more dynamic book cover? These things must be taken into consideration when assessing the profitability of your ad.
The first six months I ran Amazon ads I lost money, but thereafter, I made money. Amazon wants its cut of your profits. If your book sells well and you are willing to split the profit, Amazon will display your book to more potential buyers, which results in more sales. If you are not willing to split the profit, don’t run Amazon ads, but you will have few overall book sales. If you want to learn more about Amazon ads, I recommend the free course by Dave Chesson with Kindlepreneur at https://courses.kindlepreneur.com/courses/AMS.
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Thank you for the simple and clear instructions!
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