Complete Guide for Advertising Your Book on Amazon

Hitting 'publish' on Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) is an amazing feeling, but it's just the starting line. With millions of books on Amazon, hoping readers will just stumble upon yours is a recipe for disappointment.

Amazon controls 67% of e-book sales in the United States and accounts for roughly 50% of all print book sales. When you realize Amazon sells around 300 million printed books every year, you get the picture. You have to be visible where readers are already shopping.

Get In Front of Readers Instantly

The single biggest hurdle for any author, new or established, is discoverability. Amazon's algorithm loves books with a solid history of sales and reviews. That's great for them, but it creates a tough cycle for new releases to break into.

Paid advertising is your shortcut. It lets you skip the line.

With Amazon PPC campaigns, your book can appear directly in search results and on the product pages of similar books, just like this:

This placement puts your book right next to the bestsellers in your genre. You’re catching the eye of readers who are literally in the process of deciding what to buy next. Think of it as getting prime shelf space at the front of the bookstore.

Kickstart Sales and Climb the Ranks

Amazon's ranking system is all about sales velocity, which is just a term for how many copies your book sells in a short period. A well-run ad campaign generates those early sales, sending a strong signal to the algorithm that your book is catching on.

This initial push from paid ads creates a powerful flywheel effect:

• Ads generate your first wave of sales.

• Those sales improve your Amazon Bestseller Rank (BSR).

• A better BSR leads to more organic visibility.

• More organic visibility leads to more organic sales.

This isn't just about stroking your ego with a nice-looking rank. It's a proven book marketing strategy: use paid traffic to ignite the organic discovery process that will give your book a real shot at long-term success.

To really get ahead, authors need to master Amazon advertising for books; it's absolutely essential for driving both visibility and sales.

Getting Your First Ad Campaign Live

Jumping into the Amazon Ads platform for the first time can feel like stepping into the cockpit of a 747. There are menus, strange acronyms, and a million options. Don't worry. We're going to cut through the noise and get your first Sponsored Products campaign off the ground.

The goal here isn’t perfection on day one. It’s about one thing: gathering real-world data on what your readers are actually searching for.

Start with an Automatic Campaign

When you go to create your campaign, Amazon will ask if you want "Automatic targeting" or "Manual targeting." For 99% of authors starting out, the answer is simple: Automatic.

Think of an Automatic campaign as your personal research assistant. You just give Amazon your book, a daily ad spend, and a default bid. Its algorithm then gets to work, showing your ad to shoppers based on your book's genre, the keywords in your description, and even on the product pages of similar books.

After a week or two, you'll get a search term report that is pure gold. This report shows you the exact phrases real shoppers typed into the search bar before clicking your ad. You can't guess this stuff. This is your first real step toward a killer book promotion tactic.

Setting a Sensible Budget and Bids

One of the biggest fears authors have is lighting money on fire. The good news is, you are in complete control of your Amazon advertising cost.

• Daily Budget: Start small. Pick an amount you're comfortable losing while you learn the ropes. A daily budget of $5 to $10 is a perfect starting point. It's enough to gather data without risking your shirt. You can always increase it later when you see what's working.

• Bidding Strategy: Amazon offers a few bid strategy options. For your first campaign, "Dynamic bids – down only" is the safest bet. This tells Amazon to lower your bid in real-time if a click seems less likely to convert into a sale, but it will never bid higher than your default. It's like having guardrails on your spending.

A Quick Note on Bids: Your bid is the most you're willing to pay for a single click (cost per click). Amazon will suggest a bid range; starting somewhere in the middle of that range is usually a good move. You can tweak this any time.

Why You Shouldn't Start with a Manual Campaign

So, what about that other option? A manual campaign is where you give Amazon a specific list of keywords or products you want to target. This offers more control, but it's a terrible place to start.

Why? Because right now, you're just guessing.

Your assumptions about how readers find books are often miles off from reality. The whole point of pay per click advertising is to pay for clicks that actually convert. If you want a deeper dive into the mechanics, you can learn more about what PPC on Amazon is and how it powers everything we're doing here.

The smartest approach is to let the Automatic targeting campaign do the heavy lifting for a couple of weeks. It will unearth the actual, proven search terms from real customers. Once you have that data, you can confidently move those winning keywords into a new, highly-optimized manual keyword targeting campaign. This simple two-step process turns guesswork into a data-driven strategy.

Finding Keywords and Products That Convert

This is where an effective book advertising strategy separates a profitable campaign from a costly mistake. If your Automatic campaign was the research phase, this is where you cash in on those learnings. It’s time to start spending your budget smarter, not bigger.

The whole game is about getting inside a reader’s head to find the keyword phrases and product pages that actually lead to book sales.

Your goal now is to stop guessing and start targeting with real data. An Automatic campaign that’s been running for a couple of weeks should have given you a Search Term Report filled with some surprising phrases. Some will be duds, sure, but others are pure gold, showing you the exact, and sometimes quirky, language real shoppers use to find books just like yours.

Keyword Targeting: The Language of Your Readers

The keywords you choose are the foundation of your manual Sponsored Products campaigns. Get this right, and your ad shows up for super-relevant searches, which increases your click through rate (CTR) and tells Amazon your book is a great match for that reader.

This is where keyword research tools become your best friend. For a deeper look at hunting down the perfect terms, check out our complete guide on keyword research for Amazon.

One of the most popular tools in an author's toolkit is Publisher Rocket. It’s built to help you see what readers are actually typing into Amazon’s search bar, size up the competition for those terms, and even scout out profitable book categories you might have missed.

Here’s a look at what you might find when researching keywords for a new thriller novel.

The tool provides a list of descriptive keyword phrases, complete with data on keyword search volume and how tough the competition is. This information is invaluable for building a campaign that targets an engaged niche audience.

A classic mistake is targeting keywords that are way too broad. Bidding on a term like "thriller" is not only expensive but also pits you against thousands of established bestsellers. You'll get burned. Instead, focus on more specific, long-tail keywords that signal stronger buyer intent. Think about phrases like "psychological thriller with a female lead" or "spy thriller set in Cold War Berlin."

Understanding Keyword Match Types

When you set up a manual campaign, Amazon will ask you to choose a match type. This just tells the algorithm how closely a shopper's search needs to align with your keyword.

• Broad Match: This gives Amazon the most freedom. If your keyword is "sci-fi books," your ad could pop up for searches like "space opera novels" or "dystopian fiction." It’s great for discovery, but you risk wasting money on irrelevant clicks.

• Phrase Match: This tightens the leash a bit. The customer’s search must contain your exact keyword phrase, but it can have other words before or after it. Targeting "historical mystery" in phrase match would trigger an ad for "best historical mystery books 2024" but not for "mystery in historical settings."

• Exact Match: This is as precise as it gets. The search term has to be an identical match to your keyword. If you target "vegan cookbook for beginners," your ad will only show up for that specific search, guaranteeing high ad relevance.

A solid strategy for a new manual campaign is to start with a mix. Use Phrase Match for the proven, high-performing keywords you gathered from your auto campaign. Then, use Exact Match for the top 3-5 absolute killer terms that you know are converting into sales.

Product Targeting: Placing Your Book on the Right Shelves

Beyond keywords, you can target specific products or entire categories directly. This is called ASIN targeting (an ASIN is just Amazon's unique ID for any product), and it's a powerful way to advertise a book on Amazon.

Think of it like placing your book on a virtual shelf right next to a competitor's bestseller. If you’ve written a romance novel that's very similar to a popular author's work, you can make your ad appear directly on their book’s product page. It’s the ultimate way to catch a reader at the perfect moment.

You can get creative with this, too.

• Does your non-fiction book on productivity appeal to readers of business biographies? Target those books.

• Have you written a fantasy novel that fans of a certain video game would love? If there are guidebooks for that game on Amazon, target them.

Product targeting lets you find your audience where they're already hanging out, making your ad feel less like an interruption and more like a helpful suggestion.

Turning Clicks Into Actual Book Sales

Getting a reader to click your ad is only half the battle. Now you have to convince them to hit that “Buy Now” button.

You could send thousands of clicks to your book's product page, but if the page isn’t set up to convert, you're just lighting your ad spend on fire.

This is where the real work begins. The average book sales conversion rate for Amazon Ads hovers around 10.33%, but that number can swing wildly based on your genre and how well your book page is put together. For authors, a solid product page means every dollar of your ad budget goes that much further.

Your Book Cover and Description

Let's just get this out of the way: a professional, genre-appropriate book cover is completely non-negotiable. It’s the first thing a shopper sees in the search results and it dominates the screen on your product page. If your book cover optimization isn't on point, readers will assume the writing is amateur, and they'll leave without a second thought.

Your book description is your sales pitch. The first couple of lines are critical; they need to hook the reader immediately with a compelling question, a shocking statement, or a promise of the experience to come. Don't just summarize the plot. Tap into what your ideal reader wants or fears.

Pro Tip: Use simple HTML tags like <b> for bold and <i> for italics to break up the text. Short paragraphs and bullet points make your description much easier to scan on mobile, which is where a huge chunk of Amazon shoppers browse.

To really nail this, it helps to understand the psychology of advertising and what makes a reader connect with a story.

Beyond the Basics: A+ Content and Social Proof

Once you have the fundamentals locked down, you can start adding layers that build trust and make your page look like it belongs to a bestseller.

• A+ Content: This feature, available to KDP authors through Author Central, is a big deal. It lets you add custom images and text modules to your product page, giving you a chance to create a visually rich experience. You can showcase character art, share author insights, or highlight glowing reviews. This enhanced book content instantly makes your page feel like it's from a major publisher.

• Social Proof (Reviews): Nothing sells a book like other readers saying they loved it. Reviews are the single most powerful form of social proof on Amazon. While you can't pay for them, you can encourage them by adding a polite note at the end of your book. A book with 20+ reviews will almost always convert better than a book with two, even if the ad targeting is identical. Your star rating is crucial.

Metadata: The Engine of Discoverability

Your product page isn't just for human readers; it's also for Amazon's algorithm. Getting your metadata optimization right is important for long-term organic success and making your ads more effective.

This includes two key areas:

• Categories: Choosing two highly specific, relevant book categories helps your book find the right readers. It also gives you a much better shot at hitting a bestseller list in a smaller, more achievable niche.

• Backend Keywords: You get seven fields in your KDP dashboard to add keywords. Use every single one. This is the place for author name targeting, related book titles, and descriptive keyword phrases that you couldn't fit into your title or description.

All these elements work together. A great cover earns the click, a gripping description hooks the reader, and strong reviews and A+ Content close the sale. A well-optimized book listing is the foundation of any successful advertising campaign.

Reading Your Campaign Data and Making Smart Decisions

This is where you stop being just an author and start becoming a data-driven marketer. Launching a campaign is the easy part. The real skill is learning to read the numbers, understand what they’re telling you, and make small, smart adjustments along the way.

Let’s pull back the curtain on your ad reports and figure out exactly what matters. For now, forget vanity metrics like impressions. We’re focusing on the one metric that directly impacts your wallet: your Advertising Cost of Sale (ACoS).

What Is a Good ACoS for a Book?

ACoS is just the percentage of your book sales you spent on advertising to get those sales. The formula is simple: (Total Ad Spend / Total Sales from Ads) x 100.

So, if you spent $20 on ads and that generated $50 in sales, your ACoS is 40%. Easy enough.

But what’s a “good” ACoS? This isn't a one-size-fits-all answer. It comes down to your royalty rate and your goals for the campaign.

To figure out your break-even ACoS, just look at your royalty percentage. If you earn a 70% royalty on your ebook, your break-even ACoS is 70%. Any ACoS below that number means you’re making a profit on every sale driven by your ads. For a print book with a much lower royalty, say 35%, your target ACoS for profitability has to be below 35%.

Many authors aim for an ACoS between 30% and 40% for established books. For a new book launch, though, it’s normal to accept a much higher ACoS, even up to 100%. The goal there isn't immediate profit, but driving that initial sales velocity to climb the organic rankings.

It's also useful to know how ACoS stacks up against other ad performance metrics. You can learn more about its relationship with another common metric, ROAS, in our detailed guide comparing ACoS vs. ROAS.

Before we get into your ad reports, it helps to have a quick reference for the key stats. This table breaks down the essentials to help you quickly understand what's happening with your ad campaign performance.

Key Amazon Ads Metrics for Authors

Think of these metrics as the dashboard of your advertising car. Each one tells you something different, and learning to read them together is what makes you a great driver.

Digging Into Your Search Term Report

Okay, once your campaigns have been running for a week or two, it’s time to put on your detective hat and open up the Search Term Report. This is the goldmine. It shows you the exact phrases shoppers typed into Amazon right before they clicked your ad.

Your job here is to look for two things:

• Money Pits: Find the search terms that have eaten up a decent chunk of your budget but haven't led to a single sale.

• Gold Nuggets: Identify the terms that are consistently driving sales at a low, profitable ACoS. These are your winners.

For any keyword that's just wasting your money, add it to your negative keywords list. This tells Amazon to stop showing your ad for that specific search, which instantly makes your campaign more efficient.

The winners, on the other hand, deserve special treatment. Take those high-converting search terms and move them from your automatic campaign into a new manual campaign. There, you can give them a slightly higher bid to make sure you're capturing as much of that profitable reader traffic as possible.

Keeping Your Costs in Check

The ad game is always changing, but the fundamentals of cost and conversion don't. As of 2025, the average cost per click (CPC) on Amazon Ads is around $1.04. And with a platform-wide conversion rate between 10% and 15% for a well-optimized book page, it remains a very effective way to promote your work.

What does that mean in practical terms? For every 100 ad clicks, a good book page should be generating 10 to 15 sales. You can dig deeper into these numbers by checking out the latest Amazon advertising stats from AdBadger.

This is exactly why having a polished, professional book page is non-negotiable. A higher conversion rate directly lowers your ACoS because you need fewer clicks to land a sale. It all works together.

A Simple Weekly Check-In Routine

You don't need to live inside your ad dashboard. Honestly, a focused 15-minute check-in once a week is more than enough to keep things on track.

Here’s a simple routine to follow:

• Check Overall ACoS: Is it where you want it to be?

• Scan the Search Term Report: Find any new money-wasters to add to your negative keywords list.

• Adjust Bids: Are your winning keywords getting enough eyeballs? Maybe nudge their bids up a bit to get more impressions.

• Pause Underperformers: Got any ad groups or entire campaigns that are consistently bleeding money with a high ACoS? It might be time to pause them and rethink your targeting.

By making these small, consistent tweaks based on real data, you'll steadily improve your campaign's performance over time. You’ll trim the wasted spend and double down on what’s actually connecting with readers and selling your books.

Got Questions About Amazon Ads? You're Not Alone.

Once you get your first few campaigns up and running, a whole new set of questions starts to bubble up. It happens to every author, so don't sweat it. Let's tackle some of the most common ones I hear so you can manage your ads with a lot more confidence.

How Much Should I Really Be Spending on My Ads?

There's no magic number here, but a solid starting point for a new book ad is $5 to $10 per day for each campaign.

Think of this initial budget as tuition. It's just enough to start gathering meaningful data without risking a ton of cash. For the first few weeks, your goal isn't profit; it's learning. You're paying Amazon to tell you which keywords and targets actually get readers to click.

Once you spot the winners, you can start funneling more of your advertising budget into those high-performing campaigns and pause the ones that are just eating up your cash. Always, and I mean always, keep your royalty rate in mind. It's the key to calculating your break-even ACoS and knowing for sure if you're actually making money.

Should I Start with an Automatic or a Manual Campaign?

For nearly every author I've ever worked with, starting with an automatic targeting campaign is the smartest move. Don't overthink it; just let Amazon do the heavy lifting for you.

Amazon's algorithm will test your book against a huge range of keywords and product pages, many of which you'd never dream up on your own. Let it run for at least two to four weeks.

Then, the real work begins. Dive into the search term report that Amazon generates. This report is a goldmine. It shows you the exact phrases real shoppers typed into the search bar right before they found and clicked on your ad. Cherry-pick those proven keywords and plug them into a brand-new manual campaign. This is where you get to take back control, fine-tuning your bids for much better performance.

My Ads Get a Ton of Impressions but No Clicks. What Gives?

It's a frustrating spot to be in, but seeing lots of impressions with a dismal click through rate (CTR) almost always boils down to one of two things: your cover or your ad's relevance.

First, your cover. Pull up your ad and look at the thumbnail as if you were a shopper. Does it pop off the page? Is the title legible even when it's tiny? Does it scream the right genre to your target audience? If the answer is no to any of these, readers will scroll right past it without a second thought. Your cover is your single most important marketing tool in this context.

Second, check your targeting. If you're running ads for a sweet, cozy mystery but you're showing up in searches for gritty psychological thrillers, you've got a major disconnect. The targeting is off. Try using more specific, long-tail keywords or targeting very similar authors (using ASIN targeting). The goal is to make sure your ad only appears in front of readers who are already looking for a book just like yours.

What Is a Good ACoS for a Book?

This is the million-dollar question, and the answer is: it depends entirely on your goal. A "good" ACoS is completely personal.

If your only goal is immediate profit, then your ACoS must be lower than your royalty percentage. For example, if you're earning a 70% royalty on an ebook through Kindle Direct Publishing, any ACoS under 70% means you're in the black for every ad-driven sale. Simple as that.

But here’s where it gets interesting. During a big book launch, many authors are perfectly happy with a much higher ACoS, sometimes even over 100%. Why? Because the goal isn't profit; it's sales velocity. They're spending to goose their sales numbers, which in turn helps boost their book's organic ranking on Amazon.

And for authors with a long series, it can be a brilliant strategy to lose money on ads for book one. They know that once a reader is hooked, they'll likely buy the rest of the series at full price, making the initial ad spend wildly profitable in the long run. The goal completely changes the definition of "good."