Setting up book advertising on Amazon (PPC)

Amazon is not just a platform for publishing books, it is a full search engine in which advertising plays a key role in promotion. Even if you have a good text, a good cover and a good description, without properly set up PPC advertising (Pay-Per-Click) your book can stay invisible to most potential readers.

Why almost every author needs advertising on Amazon

In the first days after publication a book falls into what is known as the dead zone: it has no reviews yet, it does not reach the charts and nobody sees it. PPC advertising is what brings the book out of the shadows and starts the first traffic. This matters especially in the English language market, where competition is extremely high.

Paid advertising makes it possible to:

• get the first impressions and clicks on the very first day;
• test the title, the cover and the description in real conditions;
• push the book into the top of its category through initial sales;
• increase the number of page views, which improves the ranking.

Types of Amazon Ads campaigns: which one to choose

Amazon offers several advertising formats, but book authors most often use two of them.

Sponsored Products (automatic and manual)

• This is advertising inside the Amazon catalogue: in the search results, in similar products and on the pages of competing books.
• An automatic campaign means Amazon chooses the keywords and the placements itself. It is ideal for the start and for collecting statistics.
• A manual campaign means you set the keywords and the match type yourself. It works best once you already have data.

Sponsored Brands

Advertising for a brand or for several books at once. It works better for authors with a series or when a personal brand has already been established.

The tools we use

• Publisher Rocket, to check search volume and cost per click;
• Amazon AutoSuggest, for real prompts from the search box;
• PPC reports of competitors where they are available;
• data from previous campaigns, which lowers the CPC through optimisation.

How we measure the effectiveness of the advertising

One of the most common mistakes authors make is to look only at the number of clicks. Our goal is not simply to launch a campaign but to make it profitable, so we analyse it as a whole:

1. ACOS (Advertising Cost of Sales), the ratio of spend to return;
2. CTR (Click Through Rate), how often people click on the book;
3. Conversion Rate, how many clicks end in a purchase;
4. Impressions, whether your advertising is being seen at all;
5. Sales lift, whether the advertising affects organic sales.

Mistakes worth avoiding

1. Advertising a book without SEO optimisation of its page.
2. Setting a high bid without testing.
3. Ignoring a low CTR, which is a signal of a weak description or cover.
4. Leaving a campaign unattended for two or three weeks.
5. Using only broad keywords with no long tail.