If you’re a self-published author and have a Kindle version of your book, you may have heard about a relatively new ad campaign service offered by Amazon Marketing Services as part of the KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) Select program.
Here’s how it works:
1. First, you first create an Amazon Marketing Services account on the KDP website.
2. You set the overall budget you’re willing to spend and the maximum amount you are willing to pay when a customer clicks on your ad. The minimum price you can set per click is 2 cents, but don’t get your hopes up. You’re competing in an online auction for clicks. As Amazon explains it, “Your book’s ads automatically compete in an online auction. You’ll choose your maximum cost-per-click (CPC) bid when you schedule your ad. Your CPC bid is the maximum amount you will be charged when a customer clicks your ad.”
I’ve set a maximum amount of 77 cents per click in my latest campaigns to market Psycho-Tropics, and Amazon tells me that the average amount I’m paying per click is about 70 cents. In just a few of months of using these campaigns, I’ve already noticed that as the program becomes more well-known and popular, bids for clicks appear to be increasing fairly rapidly.
3. You can target your ad campaigns in one of two ways: by interest (e.g., mystery, thriller, humor, romance, etc.) or by specific products. For a product-based campaign, you can search for and list as many products as you want. So, for example, I have one campaign listing books by other authors of zany Florida fiction and a much broader one where I selected about 150 books by authors whose readers might relate well to Psycho-Tropics in terms of either content or writing style. Because my book features a surfer protagonist and has a surfer on the cover, I even targeted a few non-book surfing products.
(Note that once a campaign expires, you have to start over. I learned this to my chagrin when I tried to re-run a product-targeted campaign and realized I had to go search for all of the books all over again. So if you have a product-targeted campaign that you’re happy with, be sure to extend it before it runs out, which you can easily do on the dashboard. Note to Amazon: Seems like this could be easily fixed.)
You can run multiple campaigns to experiment with what works best for your book. Since you only pay by the click, it does not cost any more to run multiple campaigns. You can terminate them at any time.
4. Your ad (see accompanying sample) will show your book title, author name, cover image, and number of Amazon reviews and average star-rating. Thus, it it might be worth waiting until you get several reviews before running a campaign. A great new feature allows you to include a headline. You can review campaign reports at any time, which will show you the number of page impressions, number of clicks, average price per click, and resulting sales.
5. Customers who click on your ad are taken to your book’s detail page where, hopefully, they decide to buy your book. Amazon recently added two features that are likely to boost sales. First, for ad campaigns targeting interests–but not for those targeting specific products–your ad may appear as a display ad on a person’s Kindle. No information is provided yet, however, as to how often this occurs. Second, as mentioned and shown by the image above, you can now include a short headline (60 characters max) to accompany your ad, which gives you the luxury of adding an attention-getting teaser of some sort.
Are Kindle ad campaigns worth the investment? It depends on what you are seeking. As a new fiction writer with a debut novel, I’m currently paying more for ad clicks than the royalties being generated by resulting sales. On the other hand, my ad campaigns have resulted in the sale of several dozen Kindle copies in a short time at a relatively low investment cost, which means several dozen more people are reading my book than otherwise would be.
As a self-published author, your best hope for success is to get as many people as possible to read your book and hope they like it enough to spread the word, by word of mouth, posting reviews, or otherwise.
Of course, there are other avenues to accomplish that, like giveaway programs on Goodreads and Amazon, etc. But there’s something to say for a program that helps indie-publishers get the attention of actual book-buyers on the world’s largest bookselling network. 
Very helpful, thank you.
Thank you, Tantra!
I run two ads and find the pay off complicated and can never get answers easily. For instance on my one ad campaign I see people in the select program choosing my book, I Saw the Face of God. I asked if I get paid for those selected groups on reading this book but can never get an answer. However I do get paid for actual books sold on the electronic Kindle. So I’ve come to the conclusion that people reading my book through the select program in these ad campaigns is a give away. I don’t know anything about the select group but I’m doubting seriously if the writers benefit from it. I don’t know if I’ll re-up on the ad campaigns I’m running. They do not seem to benefit the writers
Hi Joan – If you’re talking about Kindle Unlimited readers who read your books for free, you should be getting royalties from the KDP Select Global Fund based on the number of “normalized” pages they read. More info here: https://kdp.amazon.com/help?topicId=AI3QMVN4FMTXJ. Otherwise, I’m not really sure what you’re referring to. I’ve continued using Amazon ad campaigns since I wrote my post. As I mentioned, you’re going to spend more than you earn back in royalties. The primary advantage is that the ads are a way to get your book out there in front of people in a ridiculously competitive market. Good luck with your book! Dorian
There is no win win for authors here. With the large number of books in every category, sales are hard to get and then you run ads and they cost more than the royalties you earn. For many writing is a profession you will pay to do the job. I would not advise any one to author a book or write a blog at this stage in the Internet’s growth. But, with these poor returns the ads will not sell at the price points they are selling because it is not a cost effective form of advertising. In the end Google and Amazon will lose revenue unless they decrease the costs.
Erika – I can’t disagree with a single word you wrote. I guess it’s the love of writing and the fact that hope springs eternal that keeps us investing in books. Dorian
Dorian – I agree with all of your assessments if you favor distribution over immediate profit (Erika). There is something to be said for loyal readership which speaks volumes. The one note of caution is ‘free books’. People will read anything for free, even if it is outside their genre. Of course, they are more likely to be disappointed resulting in some unsolicited bad reviews. Never sell less than 0.99.
Sorry for the delayed reply, Wayne. I agree with all of that, especially about free books. I think most people assume if something is free, it’s not good.
Hello Dorian,
One of the problems you have with amazon ads is the marketing stats you get. If you ever advertised with Google Adwords you know what I am mean. The table data you get is accumulated and without downloading the campaign stats every day you are out of luck figuring out how to improve your ad performance and get a better ACoS.
I started to make screenshots to compare two days and get my daily stats. After that, I decided to brush up my programming skills and created some nice charts. This helped me to improve my ads, finally turn a profit, and I am happy to announce that this tool is now available for other authors as well.
https://www.bookadreport.com/
cheers
Thomas Herold