By Frances Caballo
One of the benefits of belonging to a local chapter of the Independent Publishers Associations (IBPA) is the information you glean from your colleagues’ experience.
That’s what happened to me two months ago when I attended the Bay Area chapter of IBPA and heard two members share their thoughts on Amazon ads and their experience. Then a month later, a speaker shed additional light on the subject.
So I decided to try a few ads. Let me share with you what I’ve learned so far.
Amazon Product Display Ads
If you’re interested in purchasing an ad, don’t bother with the product display ads. I tried one, and it failed miserably. These ads show up beneath the “Buy with 1-Click,” “Give as a Gift,” and “Add to List,” buttons on the right column of the page.
Once someone has decided to purchase a book, if they’re anything like me, they go straight to the cart and then the purchase. I never realized there were suggestions in that space before I learned about them. That’s what tunnel vision I can have at times.
On the one product display ad that I purchased, I received 9,466 impressions, 19 clicks, no purchases, and spent $4.30. So I spent the price of a latte for a failed experiment.
Amazon Sponsored Products
If you want to buy advertising for your books on Amazon, purchase sponsored product ads.
The one I purchased has so far received 43,575 impressions and 32 clicks. I’ve spent $5.26 and received $25.98 in sales. For that ad, I used 87 keywords of my own. (You can also just use the keywords that Amazon suggests.)
Just yesterday I started a new sponsored product ad for the same book but instead used 125 keywords. It’s too soon to tell what will happen with that ad.
Keywords for Your Ads
My 125 keywords for my second sponsored product ad may sound like a lot, but it isn’t. Amazon allows advertisers to use up to 1,000 keywords. By that standard, my 125 keywords seem paltry, don’t they? They were at least a good start for a novice.
At first I set my budget in the higher range ($10/day), but then I reduced it to at most $2/day. What I discovered is that even when I established my budget at $10/day, I didn’t spend that much. I wouldn’t allocate less than $2/day
How to Find Keywords for You Amazon Ads
An easy way to find keywords is to review the ones that Amazon suggests and use the ones that make sense to you. But don’t stop there because Amazon’s suggestions tend to be too general and not specific enough.
Look at your book description to find more keywords. Then, use some of your keywords in Amazon’s search bar to find books similar to yours. For example, for my book Social Media Just for Writers, I searched using the terms social media for authors and Facebook for authors, etc.
If you write fiction, you could use some of the following keywords:
- romance
- Navy Seal romance
- thrillers
- historical fiction
- historical fiction romance
- science fiction
- military thrillers, etc.
Then look for keywords in your book’s description.
Using your keywords in the Amazon search bar, look for which books come up and which are recommended. Also look at the books in the sponsored ad area beneath the “also bought” line.
Then search the descriptions for those books for additional keywords. When you finish, search for other keywords on Amazon. When you exhaust your efforts, conduct similar searches on Goodreads. Remember that keywords are terms a reader would type in a browser to find a book like yours. Keywords can be multi-word, such as “social media authors.”
Aside from keywords, you can also use the names of authors who write in your genre, especially the names of bestselling writers.
You can also look for keywords using Yasiv.com and even Google Adwords. Yasiv created a map and a list on the right-hand side of the map.
Amazon Ad Requirements
Amazon doesn’t allow all books into its advertising program. This page describes fully what it allows and won’t accept into its program.
Amazon doesn’t allow:
- Images of human or animal abuse or mistreatment
- Book covers or titles that glorify or promote illicit drugs or drug paraphernalia
- Obscene, defamatory or libelous images or titles
- Images or titles that are threatening, abusive, or discriminate against a protected group
The headline and text for your advertising:
- Needs to be relevant to your book
- Can’t contain any pricing information
- Can’t contain depressing messages
- Customer reviews aren’t allowed
- Shouldn’t refer to your Amazon rating score
- Can’t refer to “forceful phrases” such as “Don’t miss out!” or “Hurry – Save Now.”
- Can’t contain special offers, promotions, or contests
Amazon Bans These Books
If you write any of the following genres, you can’t purchase advertising on Amazon:
- Erotica or books containing pornography
- Books that glorify the use of illicit drugs
- Books with content that is obscene, defamatory or illegal
- Books with content that it threatening, abuse, or harassing
Please share your experience using Amazon advertising.
For an indie author, advertising on Amazon via the AMS program for KDP can be extremely beneficial. It does take time to tinker with the range of advertising options and it does cost some money to experiment with different ad types, bidding and ad creative, but it can make a huge difference in sales. For me, it’s by far the #1 driver of sales for my two fiction books…and the most profitable.
K. Patrick: Thanks so much for adding your input. For me, sales have improved but as you say, I’m still tinkering around with it.
Rule of thumb in business: an ad should generate 5x its cost in pre-tax revenue (i.e., royalties). You don’t seem to be there yet. Whether an ad seems “cheap” has nothing to do with it–it’s all about ROI.
Mike: I agree with you. I’m still spending too much for sales. I keep playing around with the cost of the ad and recently reduced the cost to $1/click. But I need I tinker with it further. I’m wondering what your experience has been.
Mike: This seems like a bit of a generalization. I don’t know that an advertising campaign or strategy should be considered a failure if it fails to achieve a 5x revenue return.
Especially when selling ebooks when the marginal cost of each additional unit is essentially zero. This may hold true if you have additional production costs but I fail to see any in selling ebooks.
Maybe I’m missing something but I think if you’re returning $2 for every $1 you’re investing go for it. I know I’d like to double my money every day.
Wouldn’t you?
Amazon ads are not available to everyone. It’s one of the closed doors of the Amazon platform. Sponsored Products is only open to, “Amazon Advantage book sellers, an eligible KDP author and for select Publishers.” If you’re Joe Schmoe with a book and no KDP account, you’re out of luck. (Unless I’ve missed a secret door somewhere).
As of right now, all you need is a ebook published through Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP). It used to be that you needed to have your book under Kindle Select, but that isn’t true anymore.
If ads are that inexpensive, I guess I don’t know why I haven’t been using them. Other than I have no idea how to put one together, what information goes in it. Is the process of building the ad on Amazon intuitive and menu driven? Where do you go to find where to do this. That’s what I could use a tutorial on: just getting started with an Amazon ad, or an ad on any other platform that seems to have a positive return.
Said the technophobe.
David: To get started, go to https://ams.amazon.com. The process is intuitive. I’m not really techie and I found the steps easy to follow. If I can do it, so can you. Regarding the price of the ads, some people spend as little as $.75 per click and still find that the ads help to drive sales. Good luck and let us know what happens!
Trying it now but a little alarmed that I haven’t yet had the opportunity to add my own keywords – will that be after review?
Idle question, really, while I wait!
Elegsabiff: it’s the last section you fill out. Amazon will suggest keywords then there’s a tab you can open to add your own.
Michael: Thank you for joining the conversation. While I don’t agree with you, I do respect your opinion.
Authors should consider another factor. Space on Amazon webpages is a zero-sum game. In practical terms, displaying one book means another is not displayed, a book that might be their own absent any advertising charge.
In a nutshell, advertising on Amazon is a bad idea. It is a book retailer and the money it makes from each sale should be sufficient to give that book all the visibility it deserves. Linking to books should be based on their relevance to a customer’s rather than an advertising payoff.
That is why this advertising scheme cheats book customers as well as authors.
One thing I’d add Michael, that wasn’t covered above is that AMS gives book’s a relevancy score. They don’t tell us what this score is, but if your book is VERY relevant to the term, then you won’t have to pay a higher Cost Per Click. But if you aren’t relevant per their assessment, you’ll end up paying more.
This is what helps Amazon ensure that searches still provide relevant results. So, I don’t think this system “cheats book customers as well as authors.”