Episode 203: Amazon Ads for Authors with Janet Margot
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Coming Friday August 22 on audio platforms - Spotify, Apple Podcasts and more
Many authors wonder whether Amazon Ads can work for your book sales. In this essential episode of the Best of Book Marketing Podcast, we sit down with Janet Margot of Book Geeks Media.
As a former Amazon veteran with hands-on experience designing how book campaigns work for the book giant, Janet reveals the strategies that work, and how to decide if Amazon Ads can be a successful approach for you.
If you want a truly expert take on Amazon Ads for authors from the person who used to run them at Amazon, tune in to discover how to make this unique book marketing channel work for you.
About Janet Margot
From the halls of Conde Nast to the guidebooks of Lonely Planet, Janet Margot has built a decades-long career in media, publishing and book marketing. A veteran of Amazon, she helped build the advertising platform specialized for books and owned the advertiser experience, including international expansion.
Since then, Janet founded Book Geeks Media, a consultancy helping independent authors and publishers to grow their business on and off Amazon. From time to time, she also serves as a fractional Product Manager in the tech world where she gets to work on juicy things like using algorithms to solve book-related business and customer problems. When not consulting, she is busy writing about art, love, rock n roll and tattooing.
Episode Resources
Amazon Book Keyword Rules Explained from Kindlepreneur (2025 Update)
Why the Best Thing for Your Creativity Might Be a Break - Our Substack Post from July
Our new Merch store! Yes, Life Gets Lifey Sometimes! - And purchases here are a great way to support the Podcast.
Books Mentioned
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Note: next sections are mostly created by AI for your convenience - so please forgive any typos or inaccuracies!
Summary
Paulette Stout and Lainey Cameron discuss their recent work and personal updates before introducing Janet Margot, an Amazon ads expert. Janet explains the basics of Amazon ads, including their placement, types (sponsored products, brands, display), and the importance of metadata. She emphasizes the need for realistic bids, the use of negative targeting, and the importance of understanding the algorithm.
Janet advises against using too many keywords in a single campaign and suggests focusing on relevant targets. She also highlights the significance of cover design and the upcoming episode on book covers. Lainey mentions her upcoming book re-release and new course modules.
Understanding Amazon Ads
Janet explains where Amazon ads appear on the Amazon interface, including search results, detail pages, and off-Amazon.
Janet discusses the different types of Amazon ads: sponsored products, sponsored brands, and sponsored display.
Paulette asks about the effectiveness of Amazon ads, and Janet explains that while they can work, it depends on the book's metadata and targeting.
Janet shares examples of books that are difficult to target due to niche or metadata issues.
Optimizing Amazon Ads
Janet emphasizes the importance of metadata in determining the success of Amazon ads.
Paulette and Lainey discuss the challenges of running ads for books in a series or with specific themes.
Janet explains the concept of "cold start" and how to heat up a book's visibility on Amazon.
Janet advises authors to focus on impressions, click-through rates, and cost per click before worrying about advertising cost of sale (ACOS).
Targeting and Bidding Strategies
Janet explains the different types of targeting: automatic, manual, keyword, product (ASIN), and category targeting.
Janet discusses the importance of using negative targeting to exclude irrelevant or unprofitable keywords.
Paulette and Lainey ask about the optimal number of keywords per campaign, and Janet advises keeping it between 10 and 20 for better management.
Janet shares her bidding strategies, including starting with higher bids to get impressions and then adjusting downward if necessary.
Practical Tips and Common Misconceptions
Janet debunks common misconceptions about Amazon ads, such as the need for 100 keywords per campaign and the magical number of reviews.
Janet advises authors to focus on the "why" behind their ads and to use budgets as a primary cost guardrail.
Paulette and Lainey discuss the importance of understanding the algorithm and the role of machine learning in Amazon ads.
Janet emphasizes the need for authors to stay updated with changes in Amazon's policies and algorithms.
Janet's Book and Upcoming Events
Lainey highlights Janet's book, "Amazon Ads for Indie Authors," and encourages listeners to check it out.
Paulette and Lainey discuss upcoming episodes on book covers and the importance of cover design in attracting readers.
Janet shares information about her upcoming course modules and the benefits of signing up for her newsletter.
The hosts thank Janet for her insights and encourage listeners to reach out for further assistance with their Amazon ads.
Transcript
Paulette Stout 0:03
Hello everyone, and welcome to the Best of Book Marketing podcast. I'm Paulette Stout, it's the lovely Lainey Cameron who is getting us live in all the places as usual. So hopefully you will here to join us for this amazing episode. We are so so so excited to have our guest with us today to talk about Amazon ads. We'll introduce her after we do our personal updates. Are we ready for that?
Lainey Cameron 0:29
Lainey, yeah, we're ready. We're ready to go.
Paulette Stout 0:33
So for me, had a lot of like, work stuff going on last month, had a lot of international travel, so I'm just kind of getting back from that. I've had a really bad horse with my voice, a little horse today, because I've been coughing like crazy. But I'm on the other side of that, I think. But I'm still a little Brenda vacara going on, if you know who that is, from dating myself. Um, but I'm kind of deep into the edits of my second edition of my debut. Love only better, and it's just taking up a lot longer. I'm really loving where it is. I think it's going to be a great refresh. I think it's going to be really way more in line with with my last two novels. So just kind of taking the time I need for that, but it's a little bit annoying. Um, also working on an anthology that'll be coming out in November, and my story with that. And it's interesting. You sometimes write things and then it just doesn't work. So I ended up, like, cleaving the second half of the whole story. But I think it's much tighter, because I feel like the middle was, like, the climax, and I'm like,
Paulette Stout 1:30
You know what? I just don't even need any of this crap that comes after that. Um, and I, you know, I just, like, got a little bit of a side note. I've definitely been feeling a little burnout. Yeah, I just want to mention and be kind of really transparent. I've been I've been on social less, I've been doing stuff. And then I realized now that in a few months, I have would have had my ads turned off for almost a year like that on my books, and I'm getting like, this little trickle of reads, but it just like I had to focus on the art and not the selling a little bit, which is weird for a marketer. But I just want to make sure that, you know, we've had all these great episodes about mindset and goals and all those things, and sometimes you just have to kind of go with where, you know, respond and listen to how your body's feeling. So I know you know a lot about that. Lainey?
Lainey Cameron 2:11
Yeah, yeah. As someone with a chronic health condition, you know, I have to choose where to put my energy. And I will point out that there's a really interesting blog post we want. We wrote on our sub stack for July because I bet nobody noticed, but we didn't produce an episode in July. We took the month off, and we intended to do an episode every month, and we got to July and like, pull out was saying we both had a ton going on, and we just said, like, that is not our top priority this month, and it's fine. I bet everybody listening, nobody even noticed. So there you go. If you didn't notice, we did not produce a July episode, but there's an interesting substack article about why taking a break is good for your creativity as a writer.
Lainey Cameron 2:48
And you should go read it, because it's actually got a lot of great ideas in it. They're in it for you. And we actually started that article by saying, we give you permission to not write all the time. Everybody talks about, you know, we must write every day, and we must always be marketing our books. Blah, blah, blah. We give you permission to not so go read it. I think you'll find it useful. Um, so on my side, tons going on, just like Paulette little less on the day job. Um, I basically hunkered down in July to get the beta version of my second novel finished. I have been working on this book for five flipping years. I am ready for it to go out the door. And I was like, I cannot wait any longer. I just threw overboard everything. And I joke not like from my personal life to like every other thing, I just threw it all over the edge and said I'm not going to do anything else until I get this book done. And I got it done, five years later, I sent out my beta version. So I'm super excited the book. Is called erasing grace, and I hope you'll see it in 2026 and I already have some great feedback from some of the beta readers that I'm so excited. But thank you.
Paulette Stout 3:49
I'm sorry. I have to just kind of, y'all this book's amazing. It is just, I'm getting chills on my back right now. It's like, I was like, I said I was laid up sick. Read this in two days. Delicious beyond it's just like pure Lainey. Can't Lainey camera's a must read. So if you have not read any of Lainey books, when exit strategy comes back out, go get that, and then get this, and you will just be like a very happy reader. I'm just saying
Lainey Cameron 4:13
Thank you. You are the sweetest. So two other things I said, there's a lot going on. So the second thing is my first novel, the exit strategy. I got back my rights. I now completely own my first book that came out five years ago. I'm making some slight revisions and release releasing a new edition, and it's going to come out in September, the second week of September. It has a brand new cover. I'm actually going to reveal the cover in my newsletter tomorrow, so if you're hearing this before Saturday, otherwise, you're gonna have to wait to see it on social media my newsletter. Subscribers always get to see the cool stuff first, and they helped me pick the cover. And so new cover, new edition coming in September. This is the book that won 15 Book Awards. It's been called a feminist anthem. It's fierce, fun feminist it's just a blast of a book. So I'm really excited about that. And if you're listening the.
Lainey Cameron 5:00
Most important thing for you to know is, if you're getting ready to launch a book in 2026 or 2027 I just reopened registration for my book marketing program for authors, so 12 Weeks to Book Launch Success. It's where I work personally with you and a small group of other authors to build your launch plan, to make sure that your book is successful. I've got 30 I have had 30 plus past students. I have testimonials from pretty much every single one, and I am welcome you to reach out to anyone who's ever taken this class, this program, 12 week program, with me. It gives me so much joy to teach this, and it gives me even more joy when I see the books come out and do so well in the world, and I get to feel like I was a little bit of a part of that with these authors.
Lainey Cameron 5:41
So it's open now. For registration, it normally sells out. So if you're interested, either now, for the two groups that are starting, or later, for like a future one, put yourself on the wait list so that you get the information first. Often people kind of subscribe right off that wait list before I even kind of take it out. Take it out. More broadly, 12 weeks to book launch success. Registration is open.
Lainey Cameron 6:03
One group will start in October and run through the end of 2025 so that's ideal if you're launching in 26 or 27 one group will start in March and run through May in 2026 that's ideal if you're launching in the second half of 26 or 27 so I find those are the best time frames for people, because when you're more than two years out, you're not really ready for this program, because it's very practical. We actually build your launch plan. It's not like, let me tell you some theoretical stuff you might want to know about marketing. So anyway, those are big, big news for me.
Lainey Cameron 6:32
So new book coming out in a new version coming out in October, class is open for registration, and five years later, I sent off my beta version. So happy. So let's get to today's content, because if anyone needs help on Amazon ads with her new version where she finally owns her rights and will get to do her own Amazon advertising, it's me, so I'm really looking forward to this episode.
Paulette Stout 6:52
Yeah, it's so great, great, great. And we are so happy to get connected with Janet Margot. She has built decades long career in media and publishing and book marketing. She's a veteran of Amazon y'all. She helped build the advertising platform that specializes for books and owned the advertiser experience. So if anyone knows Amazon, is she, she, since then, Jen has founded book geeks, media consulting, helping independent authors and publishers to grow their businesses on and off Amazon, and from time to time, she also serves as a fractional product manager in the tech world. So welcome Janet. Thank you so much for being here on the best of Book Marketing podcast. Thank
Janet Margot 7:35
Thank you for having me. I'm so happy to be here,
Paulette Stout 7:40
We're just we're so excited. We're gonna dive right in. We have so much.
Lainey Cameron 7:44
I don't know how we're gonna get through all of our questions in an hour, so we're gonna try, but it might so. So Janet, for those who are not familiar with you, and for all the different things you've done, can you tell us a little bit about your background and your history so they can understand? Sure.
Janet Margot 7:58
Well, I spent a decade at Amazon, and that really sets me apart from a lot of what you're what you're going to hear, because I joined Amazon ads really in its infancy back in 2012 I guess this was before there were even book ads. And then we modified the Amazon ads that were going on for all types of products.
Janet Margot 8:19
We modified them a bit for books, or tried to modify them for books. Brought in authors, brought in publishers of all sizes. I was first in marketing, trying to drive registrations and launches for authors and publishers. And then I moved on to the technical side to be a product manager. An engineer wouldn't call me technical, but in this context, I'm technical, and so I really I owned the advertiser experience. So I tried to work with a whole bunch of teams to make sure that everything was working properly for books. We know it's not, but I tried, and that meant, like, things from the dashboard to things, to the back end, to the registration process, to all of it.
Janet Margot 9:04
Obviously I didn't do all of it, but I was responsible for coordinating it, for understanding authors needs, making sure that our product, the ads platform, worked for authors and in the book space, it's very different, because you can imagine that selling a coffee table or a toothbrush is very different than selling a book, and there's all those nuances. So I have a really unique perspective. I like to focus on how things work and give when I work with authors, one on one, or whether I'm doing sessions at a conference or whatever, and hopefully today, I'll give more insight into how the back end works. It doesn't mean that things are going to work like magic, but my my goal is really to have authors understand things so that as the marketplace changes, which it does in books all the time. You can adapt, because there's no silver bullet that's going to work all the time.
Paulette Stout 10:06
Yeah. So for those who don't know, can you just explain a little bit about, like, what are Amazon ads and where do they appear in the Amazon interface?
Janet Margot 10:15
Yeah? So first I'm going to reverse that. I'm going to say where they appear and then describe them. So Amazon ads appear all throughout your experience on Amazon, and that means they will show up in search results. They will show up on detail pages. So when you're looking at one book, you might see a carousel of other of other ads they also can show up in so it's search and browse. They also show up sometimes off Amazon, although we can't really control what happens off Amazon, and then they might show like at the bottom of newsletters that Amazon sends out and all that kind of stuff. The primary thing that we're looking for is we're focusing on showing our books in the search and browse experience. And so
Paulette Stout 11:07
it's a cost quick question, a quick follow up question. So there are, if there are, obviously for Kindle, there's a device. So will the ads appear in the Kindle experience as well on on device there too.
Janet Margot 11:21
They can, they can. They did shut down the program that let us go directly there. There used to be an ad type called Lock Screen ads. Now, if you want that, you have to go through it for there, for big spenders, it's called, we call it the AMG program, even though they don't really call it that anymore. Out in the offer world, we do, what we're going to focus on today, though, is the self service ad program, and that's called sponsored ads. Self Service means that you do not have a great contact at Amazon to help you. There is a customer support team, but you're not going to have, like, an account manager with it. It's a pay per click program, and that means that your ad can show it. Can have an impression, right?
Janet Margot 12:10
An impression means somebody views it. It will show throughout the experience. But you don't pay yet, until somebody clicks on the ad. Doesn't mean they're going to convert, but it's you're actually, literally paying for the click paper program. And there's three kinds of ads, but I'd prefer today to focus on one of those three. There's sponsored products, which shows in the search results, top of search results, bottom of search results, middle of search results, and the detail page. Most of what we talk about is on the carousel of the detail page. You can run those. If you just have one book. Doesn't matter it you don't have custom creative really. There you can have some custom text, but it's going to be the book covers, what's going to show so it's pulling your information straight from your KDP listing.
Janet Margot 13:00
There's sponsored brands, which is like the headline of search results that you have to have three books for. And then there's sponsored display, which is in beta, and that shows in various parts of the of the of the user experience, not really in search, it's more in browse. And also that one shows off Amazon, but that's in beta, so everybody doesn't have it. But today we're really going to talk about sponsored products.
Paulette Stout 13:26
Great. So curious just, you know, get the elephant out of the room early. You know, some people talk about Amazon ads, but they don't work for me. You know, they're they don't work as well as ads. They were in other places I've run ads, you know, on and off on Amazon. And so just talk us a little bit about the stuff that idea that Amazon ads don't work. Can they work for anyone? Is there a certain number of books that you need before they work? Well, that kind of thing.
Janet Margot 13:55
Okay, one thing you're going to find out about me is that I'm a realist. I don't come on here trying to sell ads. I don't even, not even, especially having worked there, I know ads are wonky, so there is some truth to the fact that Amazon ads don't work for me, right? There is definitely some truth there. I've worked with some clients where I don't know what the heck is going on. I have an idea, but I don't know how to fix it, and I'll get to that use case in a minute.
Janet Margot 14:26
But one of the core questions that I think everybody needs to ask themselves about the definition of work, what are you trying to do and what is not working right? So, you know, is the ad showing or is and you're not getting clicks, or are you getting the clicks and nobody's going to convert those are all things that we can we can work with. But occasionally, there's a book that's really wacky, often really niche, that for some reason it's just hard to get the right targets. Yeah. And there's, I mean, there's things that we can do with that, but every now and then, it's just like, I don't know, Amazon really does hate this book. There's something about the strange metadata.
Janet Margot 15:09
And I'll give you an example of one. Maybe I shouldn't give this example. It's a non fiction book that relates to porn. It's not promoting porn, but it's like to overcome a porn addiction. So very often, it is a very kind of, I'll just call it a wacky, super niche book that Amazon's kind of getting the wrong signals on, and that's difficult to overcome. But you know, what do you what are you looking for when you like Paulette, you said you go on and off Amazon ads like, what makes you go off? What? When are they not working that you decide you're going to turn them off.
Paulette Stout 15:51
So for me, it's when I get a gazillion impressions and no sales, and so then I'm like, Okay, let me work on my book pages or whatever. So, yeah, I you have been working, you know, with one of our other sponsors, you know, on doing book blurbs and getting those kind of in line. Yeah, also, and then I also thought, I'm sometimes running books later in a series, and I don't know, because they're stand alone, but they're numbered, and, you know, there's a kind of ones there that can get tricky, yeah. So now I'm in the middle of re of doing a second edition of my first book, so I can really try to focus on advertising book one, like I'm supposed to, and see if that, you know that process works better.
Janet Margot 16:35
You know, one of the best problems to have is a lot of impressions and no conversions. You know that is one because that's fixable. It's the if you're not getting impressions, that's where there's real problems, where you have to go back and fix your metadata and do all that
Lainey Cameron 16:55
kind of stuff. So what do you recommend? I'm just going to skip to because people are listening. Yeah, go ahead. So if someone is getting a lot of impressions and they're not getting any clicks, like, what do you recommend to do about
Janet Margot 17:06
it? You have to go back and look at your metadata, especially if it's a new book, right? So first, I want to say, though about Amazon ads, is that and Paulette, I don't know if this, this applies to your situation at all, but Amazon ads is really an amplifier. So you need, excuse me, you need, also need to consider what's happening organically, right? That means unpaid. So if your book is, you know, let's say it's new. It's not getting any organic traffic. It's maybe not showing up in search results, where you think it should show up in search results. These are things you really need to look at before you even start advertising. That problem is considered a cold start. So you need to look at how you can heat up your your your Asin. And for those of you who are listening, who are really new to Amazon, your asin is Amazon's identifier that it gives you for that for that book or that product, and it a cold start. If you have an organic cold start, you're not showing up in search results, or you're not getting any sales at all.
Janet Margot 18:13
It's going to be rough to get kickstart those ads, but you need to be looking at your metadata first and foremost, even before you advertise, you need to make sure your metadata is your it's really the core of what makes you function on Amazon, and that is your your seven keywords, your categorization, your title, your subtitle, especially for nonfiction, if you have a very creative subtitle or title where somebody doesn't know what it is, you better have a very clear subtitle, clarifying that title. And then it also looks at your book description a little bit less. But those things are really important. Amazon takes all that and then it identifies it what your book is and which customers to show it to. If you don't have that, you're not going to get impressions when you do your ads. So do a little diagnostic on your metadata. Search around.
Paulette Stout 19:14
Sorry, thanks for that, because you said two things that were super interesting. One is about they've just updated the rules for the metadata, like, I think, in the last month. So if you haven't checked that out, it's a good thing to go and make sure that you're not doing anything that Amazon doesn't want you to keep in your there were some words and like they're like they're not favoring those if you include those in your keywords. So it's always good to keep abreast of those. The other piece is that it's an amplifier I have, I have taken so many courses on Amazon. Y'all, I have never heard one person say that. And that is,
Janet Margot 19:46
that's partly because people are trying to sell courses. I mean, that's the reality of it, right? Like, that is the reality of it,
Lainey Cameron 19:55
yeah, yeah. I think that's a really interesting way to look at it. So, like, if you're fun to. If your book isn't getting attention, to start with, slapping ads on top of it isn't going to help. You're just going to exacerbate your problem. Versus, if your book's got some traction, putting an ad on top of it is going to help accelerate that traction. I think that's a really nice way to look at it. And I I just wanted to say one thing on keywords, for those who are kind of new to all of this, especially we have a lot of people who listen, who are maybe with small publishers or big publishers, and now they're going indie, and they didn't own all of this before, and now they own it. And I'm in this situation myself, getting my rights back for my debut. Like a common misperception is when we say keywords because it says words, people think it really is words. It's not. It's a whole phrase. You have a lot of space in that box.
Janet Margot 20:36
It's not even just a phrase. You can combine phrases, right? There's seven there's seven slots.
Lainey Cameron 20:41
Right
Paulette Stout 20:45
It's exactly, and they have, and there's, it's almost like, you know, those game shows you see with before and after, you know, like you want to create these, like, multiple bundles of keyword phrases within the one box. There are certain ones that you want to keep, you know, more simple, but then there's other ones you can jam with all kinds of juicy things. So that's a whole other show on keywords. So yeah, dive into that right now. But there's a lot of really good information out on kilopreneur for free from Dave Chesson. So I would pop over there if you're interested in learning more about keywords, and then kind of dive in.
Lainey Cameron 21:19
I think they did a good video on the changes that just happened, the new roles. I think they just did a video on that. One
Janet Margot 21:25
thing also that's very confusing to newbies, that I just want to call out. There are two types of keywords that we're talking about. When you're working with the Amazon universe. It's very confusing. What we're talking about here are not advertising keywords, because there's that concept too. This is your the data associated with your KDP listing. Those are the keywords we're talking about. And when you go to kindle preneur, make sure you're listening to the right content about which type of keywords Exactly.
Paulette Stout 21:53
And if you're new, like Lainey said, when you set up your book in the Kindle Direct Publishing dashboard and you actually are entering the book, you're uploading the files, you're doing all of that, they ask you for lots of information. They ask you to choose categories, they ask you to put these keywords in so people who are searching for your book can find it and but there's like, there's lots of little nuances and tricks to doing that more effectively than not. So it sounds like it's simple, but it's not.
Lainey Cameron 22:20
So let's just talk for a second before we get dive deeper into Amazon ads, like compared to other options, right? So we could do Facebook ads, we could maybe do ads on Instagram or Tiktok, for example. Like, what are the pros and cons of doing Amazon ads versus other options?
Janet Margot 22:37
First off, I just want to say I don't look at it as an either or decision, okay, I think that, similar to how Amazon ads will amplify what's happening organically in search and discovery, these different ad platforms work together, right? When you're looking at your marketing plan, Lainey, when you're helping people with marketing, right? You're talking about all of it, right? You have to have an integrated marketing plan. You think about how you have gotten brand awareness of anything that you do in your in your daily life, you don't see it once. You don't see it in one place. You're getting messages all over the place. So I really like to hear when people are doing other social media ads in conjunction with Amazon ads, they are different. They serve a different purpose. Yes, you may want to invest, allocate your your marketing budget or your ads budget a little bit differently from time to time. Dial up on Amazon, dial down, dial up on Facebook, whatever. But they really do work well together and external traffic, which is the non Amazon stuff, the non Amazon ads that are driving traffic to Amazon will help you. If you have a cold asin, it heats it up.
Janet Margot 24:01
But Amazon is really where people are in the purchase mode. If you want them to buy your book, they're they're there to buy they're not usually there just to check out what's up on Amazon, right? So that is, that is a key thing to remember. But for each platform, have different considerations. But you know, like, if you look at something like um, tick tock, which is kind of the other end of the extreme, people really are um, influenced by that. You know, like we talk about influencers, like they're, you know, Gods and Goddesses on tick tock right now, like people are really paying attention to that. So that's like a book recommendation. That's like, you're standing in the library, and, you know, the librarian is like this. This is, like, my greatest read this year, or whatever. That's what Tiktok is like. But Amazon is really at the bottom of that purchase funnel. But it's great to be doing all of the
Lainey Cameron 24:56
above. That's great point. To drive people to Amazon is a really interesting point, and you
Janet Margot 25:03
may not always want to do that if you're selling directly. It's also really important to run ads direct to your site. But it depends where you are in your author life cycle. It depends where your book is in its life cycle. You might do one thing at launch and something else for the back list.
Paulette Stout 25:19
Yeah, it's really great point. So just before, we've already started dabbling in it, because we're talking a little bit, let's just go over some of the terminology. If you don't mind, for for Amazon, we've got impressions, we have clicks, and, you know, we've got, obviously, when you get into the dashboard, there's, you know, a cost and all kinds of different things. So with, sort of, like, some of the key terms you think that folks should know and what do they mean? Well,
Janet Margot 25:42
first, everybody needs to be aware of impressions, because impressions, I look at the ads. When you go into the ads dashboard, I know some of you out there, watching or listening today have not been in there yet. It's like this dashboard of all these columns of different metrics and can be overwhelming. So I look at things like a waterfall and metrics waterfall. So you have your impressions are up here at the top. You have to get impressions, which are customer views before any of that goodness can roll down into sales. Sales is like at the bottom of that river, right. Impressions are the view. Like I said, Amazon is actually so just because an ad appears on a page, that is not counted as an impression, until the customer actually scrolls through it and it's in their their view window.
Janet Margot 26:32
So there's an impression, and then there's a click, so the customer sees it Awesome, now they actually click on it awesome. Those two form, a click through rate. The click through rate can be very important too, because that's the customer feedback. So if you think about the that waterfall, the first few things there are super important impressions. That's what Amazon thinks of your book, right? Based on the metadata Amazon has looked at your book and thinks it's a it's made a good customer match. Who am I going to show this to? Right? So when you're that's why I said, Paulette, if you have a lot of impressions, man, that's that's awesome. That's the first step, because Amazon has to know what to think of your book. Then when you're looking at the click through rate you want that to be healthy, because it says, Yes, Amazon's made the good connection. I'm showing to some good customers.
Janet Margot 27:27
They like what they're seeing. And then you go down to the cost per click. That's, that's, that's a whole magical system in and of itself. And then the other thing that people focus on, but I'd advise you not to focus on it in the beginning is ACOs. ACOs stands for advertising cost of sale. So what kind of return? What kind of return are you getting on your ad spend? ACOs? Also, for those of you who are out there who have been advertising for a while, who are hyper focused on a cause, I would encourage you to look at a little bit different and not try to hit one metric on a cause, because the advertising cost of sale will and should differ based on the different campaigns you're running, why you're running them, why you're targeting that particular audience, right? If you're saying. You really need to be in front of this particular audience, even though it doesn't convert. Well, then you're going to accept a higher ACOs, which is higher a cost is not good.
Paulette Stout 28:35
But if you just talk to us a little bit about the number itself, what you know, if you are looking at an a cost. Now, you just said, don't look at an a cost. But, like, I've, you know, what is it? The it's a figure that's kind of over under 100 type thing, yeah,
Janet Margot 28:49
yeah. Except for when you look, you know, when you start getting deep into it, you're going to refine that, like, you know, you're going to want it to align with your royalty number, right? Like, because if you're getting 60% royalty, then you're going to want the ACOs below that to break even. I'd actually rather not dig into that today, because that is very nice. Part of the problem is. Part of the problem is, I, you know, it's tricky, because the the ACOs number, the advertising cost of sale does not today include Kindle Unlimited metrics. It doesn't include pages read.
Janet Margot 29:26
So if your book is enroll in enrolled in KDP Select which is Kindle Unlimited for the customers, that ACOs number is not the right number to calculate a blended one. And that's one part of the reason why I don't want to get into that today, but it is an important number, but not for people just starting out. They need to go down that waterfall. Check, are you getting good impressions next? What's your click through rate? Then what's your CPC you're going down the line? What are your orders looking like? And your page? Is red, so that's where, that's where we're going to fumble with a cause.
Lainey Cameron 30:04
And CPC is cost per click for sorry, yes, yes. Okay. Well, this is exciting. We're getting geeky. I love it because we want to get real practical. On this podcast, we're going to take a little break and do a little sponsor break here for a second, and when we come back, we're going to talk about targeting. What do we do if a campaign isn't getting results? And just get a little bit more specific about some of this. But before we do that, let me just introduce our sponsor, who is Linda laudner, and you can appreciate this one, Margo, and you can tell people why. So I'm encouraging people to come to Mexico in this sponsored segment.
Janet Margot 30:38
Where are you? Mexico City.
Lainey Cameron 30:42
Next to Mexico City, the most fun, exciting place in all of Mexico is San Miguel de Allende, and Margo is sitting in Mexico City, and I am sitting in San Miguel de Allende. But they're both fabulous cities. I encourage you to visit them both. But I want to let you know that lingalana is running a retreat here in San Miguel in San Miguel in January, 2026 it goes from January 17 to 24th 2026 and if you've been thinking about how to invest in your author career, how to invest in your writing, how to really like Treat yourself to an amazing experience that will boost boost your creativity and just send you home refreshed and raring to go again, I would encourage you to Look at this retreat. You come here to San Miguel. When you get here, you basically pay for your flight down here, and when you get there, they have organized everything from transport to the airport.
Lainey Cameron 31:29
They know where you're staying. It's a beautiful guest house called Casa de la nache, with all these gorgeous little writing spaces and terraces. It's really pretty walkable right into the center of town. You get a welcome dinner. You get readings with New York Times bestsellers. You get gated visits to Guanajuato. You get a half day at the hot springs. I'm reading this off my list because it's so many things. You get an authentic Mexican cooking class. You get rooftop dining, mountain hikes, visit to the Botanical Garden, one on one with a writing instructor, tons of writing time, small group workshops, lots of craft things, and you're in this gorgeous guest house with these gardens and these terraces, and it's just absolutely lovely. So if you've been thinking about like, what do I do to kick start my own creativity? What do I deserve? What do I want to treat myself to? I would encourage you to really consider this one. San Miguel is just a fabulous spot. Many people believe, I gotta admit, I'm a little bit of a cynic on this one.
Lainey Cameron 32:26
Many people believe that this whole town is built on crystals, and that is why it has got this creativity. Since the 1950s people have been coming here, artists, writers. It's got a huge Writers Conference. It's one of the biggest writing in artistic cities in the world in terms of the population here, many people believe it's because, because it's based in crystals. I just believe it's because creatives like to be around other creatives, and it's a beautiful, inspiring, colorful place. So anyway, if you've been thinking about it, our sponsor what? Why do we have sponsors? Let me just say this for a second. So does a decent amount of money to run this podcast. We don't make any money off this podcast. I just want to get that preconception out of there, like we do not do this for money. This is a love not money thing, and so it helps us pay some of our costs, like the cost of the transcription, the cost of the website, just the cost of running this thing. And so that's why we have sponsors, and that's why we're grateful to them for helping us not be so out of pocket on it. So thank you very much to Lynn. She's been our sponsor for the last three months, and go check it out. You can find all the information on our webpage, on our episode page for this episode, on Best of bookmarketing.com and now we get into the mix stuff.
Paulette Stout 33:28
Yes, so And thank you to Lynn. You know we enjoy our sponsors, and if you're interested in sponsoring us, just reach out. We love
Janet Margot 33:37
Can I just say that sounds amazing?
Lainey Cameron 33:43
I think it's gonna be amazing. And unfortunately, I will be there for the whole thing, because my son, gosh darn it, decided to get married at the same time. And so I'll be there for the end of the week, not the beginning of the week.
Paulette Stout 33:54
I know it sounds really It sounds really amazing. The other way, you can sponsor our podcast, help our podcast. If you're not going to send me, although you should, is to buy some of our swag. Our life get life gets life e swag is up at the store. You can get there from our website. We've got t shirts, we have socks, we have all kinds of things. So if you want to support us at a smaller level, that's a great way to do that too. But back back to Amazon ads, so you've got, um, when I've started, people sometimes say, start with automatic targeting. That's a way for, you know, Amazon to kind of help you get going, and to try to identify maybe some keywords that might be interesting. So you talk a little bit about, you know, Amazon targeting, like I'm getting started, and automatic targeting, if that's a way to go, yeah. So
Janet Margot 34:39
I love auto ads. I absolutely do, and I think people should be running auto ads no matter how new you are, how experienced you are, whatever. Also, you know, when Amazon is testing different things on the back end with their algorithm, they're going to push it out to auto ads first. So. They do change over time. I've seen in the past about approximately a year I've seen auto ads perform better. I think they used to do really well, and then they kind of took a nosedive for a while, and now they're doing well. But let's go back to something else, something I was talking about a minute ago, with respect to impressions. You know, Amazon ads are all about matchmaking, right? It's trying to take your book and match it with the right customer. So the first thing you need to know is, what does Amazon think of my book? How are you going to figure that one out? Auto ads. That is the way to go. So for me, I recommend on every new book, run auto ads. What's that going to do? It's going to do two things. One of them you mentioned. First, it's going to validate your metadata, right? All the stuff you're doing. If you go over to Kindlepreneur and work on your metadata, you want to go validate it. If you're like, Oh my God, you're stuck in analysis paralysis. Analysis, paralysis. Did I do it? Right? Are my keywords? Right? Is my categorization? Right?
Janet Margot 36:06
Go run an auto ad. You're going to validate it. You're going to see what Amazon thinks of your book. The next poet you mentioned this, you're going to find good targets. You're going to find so when you do auto ads, you're letting Amazon do the work. You're going to say, This is my bid. There's some kind of sub match types within there. And you can set your bids the same thing across all match types. Or you can just set it for the ad. I do it just for the ad, and then you're so Amazon's just going to do its work. Your hands off. And if you're somebody who, like, doesn't understand the ads game or whatever, it's especially nice, because it's like, hands off, right?
Janet Margot 36:47
So you don't have any control there. You don't want control there, because you need to see what's going on. And then you're going to, once you've validated your keywords, you might see things that are fantastic, that are working really well, and you want to invest in them further. In auto ads, you don't have the opportunity to invest in them because you're just bidding at this big bucket. So then you take that keyword and you put it in another campaign, keyword or target, whatever. You put it in another campaign, and then you might add some related stuff. And then you go into a manual a manual campaign where you can control and you can say, hey, you know what? I was only bidding 60 cents in this auto ad. If I bid 80 cents in this manual ad, can I get more impressions there and more conversions there? So that's how I use auto ads.
Lainey Cameron 37:38
Can we talk a little bit about targeting so and I've done some Amazon ads on my previous book, even though I weren't going to make money because I just wanted to be familiar with how to do it. And the reason I say they couldn't make money is I was with a small publisher who was taking most of my royalties. Yeah, normal with the small publishers, it's going to, like, tell people this. If you're with a small publisher or a big publisher, if you're going to go running around Amazon ads, your ability to break even is going to be almost impossible, right? Impossible, right? Never happened, but I
Janet Margot 38:04
work with a lot of hybrid authors who are, who are working with hybrid publishers, I should say. And yeah, it's you look at them differently, and that's one reason why I don't have a single formula across everyone, because different use cases. Right? Anyway, you gotta
Lainey Cameron 38:20
consider what your royalties are to start with, right? You're only making 20% of the books price on an ebook. You're gonna have a really hard time breaking even on an ad, right, because you're only making 20% of it. So anyway, yeah, can we talk about targeting? So there's different ways of targeting, at least what I remember from when I was doing ads. So you can target authors, right? You can say this author is the readers of the people searching from that particular author are more likely to like my book. You can target keywords. Are there different ways categories, right? No,
Janet Margot 38:47
authors are keywords. Let's be clear. Authors are not a type of targeting, okay? It is a type of keyword. So the big type so you have automatic and manual, and then once you get into manual, you have keyword targeting, product targeting, also known as asin targeting and category targeting.
Janet Margot 39:06
Now, if we're talking just about keywords, you can target authors who are similar to you in some way, authors who are best sellers. There's all dimensions of authors that you can do. And then you can do things like genre terms. You can use tropes if you want. You can use general book terms, like best sellers, 2025 or fiction, nonfiction. So you can think of it as well. There is a classic way of looking at it like where there's head terms that are really specific and that are not really specific, there's a whole funnel of more general to narrower terms, right? For a while, narrow terms worked really well. So if your book is A. Um, you know, if you're going to go down to tropes or you're going to go down to paranormal romance, those things were working really well. Now I'm and sometimes they're more expensive to do that too. Now I'm seeing, actually, with the introduction of more machine learning and more AI and whatnot. I actually think some of them more the broader terms are doing quite well. Like, I see people do phenomenal on things like fiction book or best seller books. Like it's It's bizarre. And the only
Paulette Stout 40:35
I'm sorry, so when you say I was thinking you meant long tail keywords, but you're saying broader category terms is that when
Janet Margot 40:42
you're Yeah, it used to be the other I don't say category terms only just because I don't want to confuse
Paulette Stout 40:47
categories, confuse people. You know broader, broader choice of terms, which
Janet Margot 40:53
doesn't I know. It doesn't seem like it makes sense. And my just because I'm seeing this across so many different accounts, it must be because they're machine learning, right? They're looking they're starting to match people really well. I think
Lainey Cameron 41:09
cover batch is starting to make a difference. Is it? Cover? I've heard people talk about always, well, cover, like the specifics of what's on the cover.
Paulette Stout 41:20
Well, although they're scraping the cover and
Lainey Cameron 41:22
use that, they're understanding like, true, but it's,
Janet Margot 41:27
it's very possible. It's very possible, because So traditionally, cover would have nothing to do with whether or not you're getting an impression, right? Exactly. I believe, wait, I believe cover still has nothing to do if you're getting an impression, but the getting the right customer, that dimension could have to do with the cover. I don't know about that. I don't have anything to support that, but what I can say is that they have introduced machine I mean, machine learning has been going on in Amazon ads since day one, but it's gotten so good now with AI coming into the game, that I think that's why some of the broader keywords are doing better in ways that and for, honestly, for for some of my clients who don't have that much data, I work with people who have no data, and that means they're not selling a lot, and I work with people who have a boatload of data and and the people who have a boatload of data, they're kind of like easier to have ads work, right? Amazon knows so much about their book because there's so much sales volume, so much customer engagement. Customer Engagement is huge. So when I see a lot of authors doing well with broad keywords or broad targets that don't have all that data that's suspect in a good way. Okay, Amazon's actually the ads algorithm is actually getting
Lainey Cameron 42:52
smarter there, right? It knows who to put it in front of, so, yeah, really relying just on those keywords, yeah? Plus everything else it knows about the book.
Janet Margot 43:00
Yeah, well, as your book starts to get more engagement, typically, they're building on the back end. They're like, building a customer profile. They know who to show it to. But now it's looks like they're, they're, what's the word? They're like, forecasting. They're predicting this customer model better and better for even for the books that don't have as much
Lainey Cameron 43:21
traction. So going back to the category the targeting targeting keywords, which lets you go after authors and etc, and then you can do category targeting within Amazon,
Janet Margot 43:32
category targeting. So one thing I want to note also about when you're I'm also seeing like author targeting, like I just said, it's not a type of targeting, using authors in your keywords and seeing that work less and less for everyone. So that's, that's an interest. That's,
Paulette Stout 43:50
that's what I was finding. So it's really interesting. You're seeing that because I noticed that on my own stuff. Yeah, again,
Janet Margot 43:56
I have no I do not work for Amazon anymore. I do not have that internal data anymore. So this is all anecdotal, but I do see a ton of accounts, and that's one thing that seems to have flipped in the past year or two. So what about categories? Are you saying categories now? Categories are just categories are wacky. Category ads are really wacky. I like them for two reasons that I'll get to in a second, but they're wacky because categories, as we know on Amazon, are polluted. Right? You're not only showing up.
Janet Margot 44:34
You might put something in KDP and say, I want to be in this category, and then Amazon moves you, you see, you know, you see in thrillers, maybe a romance book, they an author says, Well, I have some, I have some mystery in here, and then they put it in thrillers. And it's like, well, that's not really right. So categories get polluted. There's also bad actors out there who are trying to gain categories. So categories. Are the pollution is a problem category. Ads are a big blast into the category, but into a polluted category, so lots of times, you'll get lots of impressions and not a crazy high cost per click, which is cool, but they don't convert, because it's a big blast. So remember when I was saying earlier, like it's not a binary either or decision when you're doing Amazon versus other other platforms, ads. I also look at the Amazon sponsored ads universe as not a binary decision. So each ad type each targeting tactic. Use it at different times. You have to think strategically about this. So when I use category ads, it's I'm doing a book launch. I want a broad blast ad. I want my book in front of everybody in that category. And I want to see what works, right? So first I'm going loud and proud, and then I want to scale back, and then I'm really looking to see what works there. And then I'll stop the category. I never do category ads long term.
Janet Margot 46:10
Some people do. Some people do. There's there's some folks out there, especially for non fiction books, they'll keep category at Wait, if the if their category is relatively clean, they'll keep category ads on long term at a very low bid, because they don't care if they get remnant traffic. It's just kind of like happening there in the background. But for me, I keep them on for a short term, two to four weeks, Max, closer to two weeks around launch time, and then I move them into something more precise, like either targeting or an asin ad
Lainey Cameron 46:45
that makes sense so quickly.
Paulette Stout 46:47
Before we go into our next topic around bidding, I just want to close out on the number of keywords you recommend per campaign, because I've been in courses that say you have to have 100 keywords in every campaign. And I'm sitting there and I'm in Google Keyword out I like, I can't even come up with that many so no, super curious about what your thoughts are there.
Janet Margot 47:07
So that, to me, was one of the biggest myths that I wanted to bust the minute I busted out of Amazon, because, and I actually, when I was talking one on one with authors, I used to when I was at Amazon, I used to tell them, that's BS. That was some person had some shtick for this is how you're going to do things, and it's going to all be great. And we're not. It isn't just one person. Is the thing. I'm not. I'm not calling out anybody. It's there's some weird prevailing stuff that it's like, Where the heck did this come from? So more keywords or more targets in a particular campaign is not good, and I have data to support this that I'm not going to get into all this data, but I can tell you for sure that Amazon, if you create a campaign, whether you have 10 keywords or 100 keywords, Amazon, when your campaign starts, is only going to pull a smallish percentage of those targets in a meaningful way.
Lainey Cameron 48:21
Okay, you mean, we put all this energy into coming up with this that only uses a few
Janet Margot 48:27
well, you can come up with a big list, but just don't put them all in the same campaign. Okay, so that's, that's number one to know about this topic anyway. Number two to know is that you're going to drive yourself crazy trying to optimize that campaign. And my goal, when I go into an ads account, I'd rather have 100 small campaigns than one big campaign, because I can more easily see what's working and what's not working. And that's what this is about. We want to write. We don't want to mess with ads all day. Isn't
Lainey Cameron 49:01
that the truth, right?
Paulette Stout 49:02
And it makes so much sense. Because, like, when you're trying to start getting stretched, the relevance starts getting really thin when you're trying to get all of these things to
Janet Margot 49:14
me, because you have, like, if you have 100 you're gonna have 10 to 20 that are always serving and then you're gonna have this long list of five impressions, 10 impressions. I want you to impressions over months
Paulette Stout 49:27
or and then you'll have, like, a lot of zero. Yeah, it's
Janet Margot 49:30
like, what? Like, what? What are you doing this for? Like, why are you even advertising? And so a few months ago, I updated my ads book that I had done an ADS book in 2021 and I updated it, and I really modeled my teaching on Simon. Cynics start with the why. So I want everybody, when they are advertising, to consciously be thinking, Why? Why am I advertising? Why am I advertising? This. Why am I using this targeting? Start with the why. So, going back to the why on this 100 keywords, what are you trying to do here with each each target? Why don't just do it, you know? And then sometimes you go into those and you you look at some of those campaigns, and people just put in all the suggested keywords, and they turns out they have 100 so they haven't even done their research, and that's fine, but then you'll find things like, there'll be a keyword that says this, I'm sorry. That's a great WHY, and I think that's
Lainey Cameron 50:38
kill it. Yeah, okay. I have a, I have a related question. It's not really an Amazon ads. I have to because
Janet Margot 50:43
I know there's going to be a follow up question on this. Somebody's going to be really annoyed. I said, don't do 100 then how many? I never do more than 10 or 20 in a campaign. And if I'm leaning towards 20, chances are I'm going to break out half of them later
Lainey Cameron 50:57
on. Interesting. Yeah. Thank you. My God, you just like, completely, like, freed us to do this better. So I haven't
Janet Margot 51:04
really just relaxed about ads. Relaxed about ads. Okay, when you start with the why on your ads, you are going to start to relax. There's no more like, oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, oh my god. It's just be cool. Okay,
Lainey Cameron 51:17
so this is not a nice question, but it's an Amazon question and, but it's very related, because one of the things that happens is authors want to help each other, and they hear something, and then they repeat it to each other, like, this 100 keywords thing, right? Like, and then everybody tells everybody else they have to have 100 keywords. We're all doing it, but nobody knows where it came from, right? Yeah. So my related question,
Paulette Stout 51:38
I know where it came from. I know where
Janet Margot 51:41
it came from. There was a cap. And when somebody found out the cap of keywords, it became, it became, this is what's recommended and and also, the other thing to note is that some people, when they're going out there with incredibly authoritative voices, for some reason, are getting information from the seller side, which we're not considered sellers as KDP authors, and that it works differently on non books. Okay, so that's that's part of the problem, which, you know, that's life.
Lainey Cameron 52:15
Let me ask you my question, because this one that I tell my students in my marketing class, this is bullshit. Don't listen to people on this one. So okay, more reviews is better. We're not debating that more reviews is better. I do not believe there is a magical computer there isn't you were writing news that suddenly someone switches and your book blows up, and the number I see killing themselves because they're at 47 and if I just get to 50, it will make all the difference in my book will do so well. And I tell them, No, that is not true. There is a magical bar at 50 reviews. Do you agree? I totally agree. Oh, thank God, I'm giving
Janet Margot 52:48
them good information. Yeah, I totally agree. Okay,
Lainey Cameron 52:53
yeah, but it's another one that gets repeated all the time. I see all the other social media posts. Once you get 50 reviews, this happens. I'm like, No, it doesn't.
Janet Margot 53:01
Yeah, that's why I don't even follow a book Social Media anymore. Like, I I mute stuff because it's like people are just talking nonsense, and I'm not gonna argue with it, okay?
Lainey Cameron 53:16
Forms like this. Yes, exactly. So this is why we love to debunk some of these things. Yeah, because I hate when authors are, like, wrapping themselves in the loops over something that isn't even true. Like, like, God, we've got enough real things to worry about. Yeah, um, okay, bidding process. Let's talk a little bit about the bidding process. Is there a good way to approach a minimum and maximum bids that you recommend?
Janet Margot 53:37
Oh, gosh. You know, this is the thing I hate talking about publicly. And the reason why I hate talking about publicly is because there's no set rule. This is one of those things that's, I know, so frustrating to everybody. I would say that I'm not going to give actual numbers, but I can tell you that Cheap bids suck, to use technical term. So when people are doing campaigns with very low bids, and we'll just say under 50 cents for now, okay, like, I'll go in sometimes, and I'll see these campaigns that are done with, you know, 100 plus keywords, all at 35 cents, go back and ask your Why? Why am I doing this? What am I trying to do here?
Janet Margot 54:24
Am I going to get an impression off of this? You know? So sometimes people are saying, well, 35 cents is all I can afford. And I go back to, why are you advertising that don't use bids as your major cost guardrail. Use budgets as your major cost guardrail. Using bids is going to shoot yourself in the foot. If they're too low, you have to say, Okay, I'm advertising, and I'm only going to put I'm just going to use this big number. Now, because I see it a lot, actually, I'm only going to put 35 cents, and so at 35 cents, you're probably not going to get many impressions. So why are you advertising? And then at 35 cents, if you do get impressions, you're probably not going to get the customer that's most likely to convert, because this is an auction, when you bid, you're going into an auction. You are now vying for that customer, that set of customer eyes, or that impression. You're vying against your competitors who have been more than you.
Janet Margot 55:36
So if you get an impression you're getting, you may not get the best customer, or you may not get the best slot. Sponsored ad slot is a carousel. Mo, the most common placement is the carousel on the detail page. You can either bid high and get slot one, or because, you know, let's say, relevance being equal between your your competitors, you can bid high and get slot one, or you can bid very low and be lucky to get an impression on slot 50 when the customer has less purchase intent at that point. Interesting. So yeah, there's different ways to go about it. In my book, I talk about two, two overall methods, either slow dial, which is where you start, where you're more comfortable, like, psychologically, you may only be comfortable with starting at 50 cents or 65 cents. And then if you're not getting impressions, you just keep cranking that up, you know, like the your inputs there, you can just dial, like an old stereo, dial it up, okay, you know, and I understand there's a psychological thing with that.
Janet Margot 56:44
What I'm more of a fan of is fail fast, which means go out there at a high bid to get the impressions, to see if you're getting the right impressions, to see if people are interested in clicking through. And then if you're paying too much, then dial down in the cost a little bit to make sure that your your home, the math is right. I like that. There's also a way that I won't get into this now, but it is in my book about bidding to value, and saying, I think I'm going to get high value off of this and lower value off of this. The high value stuff, I'm going to bid higher, the low value stuff, I'm going to bid lower, and that's really for people who've been advertising for a long time,
Paulette Stout 57:25
right, right? So we're talking about people who you are advertising you've got a campaign, even if it's one auto, whatever. What should people do to optimize their campaign? So you started out, and then what do you do after that? So
Janet Margot 57:43
in theory, at a high level, it's very simple. You're going to look at what's working and you're going to try to invest more in what's working, and you're going to look at what's not working and you're going to kill it. And killing it means pausing a target or negating keywords. This is where negative targeting is, oddly, the feature that I feel like most I see the least use in most accounts, and negative targeting is this is the one time where I'm like, Hey, guys, focus on the negative. Okay. And this means if you're in especially for Category ads and auto ads, you're getting all these impressions across all these wacky targets or good targets that just aren't confused, just aren't converting. You go in and include them in negative targeting. And this is where the power of negative is actually really strong in the Amazon system. It means that you will not show against that customer search term or that target period end. And
Paulette Stout 58:51
one of the things I really liked about targeting when, like, I was first starting with auto ads, is, you know, from one of my books, I have a black heroine, but I've been very intentional. You know, there's a term, you know, kind of like a black, you know, black romance, whatever, and that that implies that the book is written by a black author. And I didn't want my book to show for those terms, because I didn't want to mislead people, so I went in and put, like, a negative term against, you know, black screen, because I didn't want to, like, mislead readers. So this, I guess there's lots of other terms that you might reasons you might want
Janet Margot 59:22
to, yeah, like, free. You know, free is one of the most important ones. So you can use negative targeting at different points in your campaign setup, right? Like, or in your campaign life time. Um, you should have a list of negative keywords or negative targets. Always keep that list in every in the beginning of every auto ad. If my book is not free, I'm going to have free negate it, right? But I also like to negate brand terms, which those are your own terms. Those are. Are your author, name, your book title, name, your series name, those are great to be negated if you want to put money into your brand ads later, do it in a separate campaign, but make sure that the especially auto campaigns are really working to find other things, because you know your name works, put the money you know consciously elsewhere.
Lainey Cameron 1:00:20
Good tip. Colette, we have so many amazing questions here, so I'm going to let you pick the next one while I hold up something very important, which is Janet's book. Grab it because I am actually reading it right now, and it's really good. I'm only about a quarter of the way through because life, but, the hold up for people, because it's really good and helpful, it's Amazon ads for indie authors. Learn the way from an ex Amazon books ads Insider, and it's excellent. So look for the gray and red. Thank you.
Paulette Stout 1:00:52
So I'm gonna hop to one of these. What is, what is the one thing you wish people did differently or understood better about how Amazon ads work.
Janet Margot 1:01:03
Can I say two things? You're the guest, the Cheap bids. The Cheap bids, you're just shooting yourself in the foot, unless you don't really care, and you're advertising because you have nothing else to do. Cheap beds are going to shoot you in the foot. And I see too many people doing that, even even average even authors who are doing really well do that. And then the other thing that we talked about too is too many keywords in a campaign. Cut down the number of keywords in a campaign and make them, make them not only relevant to your book, but relevant to one another. So I do little clusters. That's how I like to do it. Those are my two biggest things today.
Paulette Stout 1:01:44
I'm sorry I have another quick question. It's not on here, so feel, forgive me, Lainey, what are your thoughts about using portfolio and bidding, which is, when you put multiple campaigns, I kind of almost into one folder with one budget? Do you think that that's I love them.
Janet Margot 1:01:59
I think it's one of the best guardrails. And that's why I was saying, like, manage costs via, not via bids, but via budgets. And budgets not it's just not the campaign budget. It's the portfolio budget I love. It's my file system. And I'm gonna, you know, you can set it monthly, which I love to do, and it just refreshes every month. I only want to set, you know, I want to spend $700 a month on these ads. Then you can do whatever you want with the numbers in there, and you're still capping your spend. It's a very hard cap. So I think it's great, great question.
Lainey Cameron 1:02:34
So we're kind of getting to the end of our time, and I want to make sure that we ask you, how do we work with you? I'm actually sitting here going like so how do you work with authors? What are the different approaches you have? In addition to, obviously, everybody could start with
Janet Margot 1:02:48
I really like that. People start with the book. It's it's rough when a client comes to me and hasn't even looked at the book. But I do currently, right now, I'm doing one on one coaching. I'm actually trying to cut back on that a little bit. And I'm I am developing course material. I'm talking about how everybody wants to buy a course. I'm going to do my course structure a little bit differently, where you can buy separate modules. I don't expect everybody to come in with the same level of knowledge and the same need. So if you sign up for my newsletter on my site, bookcakes, media.com/newsletter, you'll be the first in the know. You'll get early access when it comes out. I'm trying to launch by mid September on the course stuff. Oh,
Paulette Stout 1:03:35
great timing.
Lainey Cameron 1:03:36
And we have a link Exactly. We have a link to your newsletter on our website. There's an episode page as the link to your book. It will have the full transcript of this episode. Find it on Best of bookmarketing.com or you can get to it from our sub stack as well, and we're wrapping up here. So we're just going to say a couple of things about what's coming soon. Very relevant to this, we kind of touched on cover. Cover is incredibly important, right? It influences whether you get those purchases off of the clicks, right when people see the cover.
Lainey Cameron 1:04:05
So we have our episode coming September 14. This one's going to be in the evening, at 6pm Eastern, all about book covers and fun thing, it's actually with demandza, who is an agency out of New Zealand that I have been working with on my cover for my second book. So for my my second cover for my first book, sorry, so for my re release of the exit strategy. So I'll get to share a little bit of the insider process of what it was like working on that cover, and how many iterations we went through and why I went with the one I did. And it actually got quite complicated at one point, and I had two different sets of testing I did that gave me two different, completely different results. So I will share in that episode why that was, why what I learned from the process, which I think will be helpful to other people. And we've got an expert on book cover design coming on to talk about, how do you approach this the right way, whatever you're whether you're doing yourself or working with a designer, how do you approach it? So I think that's going to be a really great episode. And Janet, I'm off to check out your website and see if you might be able to help the real. My book.
Janet Margot 1:05:00
Thank you guys for having me. This is a really good discussion.
Paulette Stout 1:05:04
Awesome. Thank you so much, and we'll see you next time for our episode on book covers. Thanks, everybody.
Janet Margot 1:05:10
Thanks.
Lainey Cameron 1:05:11
Thanks.