Amazon Book Marketing Services

Fix the detail page before you buy traffic

Your Amazon detail page is your storefront, sales clerk and checkout counter in one. A reader who lands there from an ad decides in a few seconds, mostly from the cover, the title, the first lines of the description and the price. We audit all four before any ad goes live.

Titles get special care because Amazon polices them. KDP's metadata rules say the title must match the cover, and that the title and subtitle together must be under 200 characters. Words like "bestselling" or "free", stacked keywords and unauthorized references to other authors are not allowed. A subtitle that stuffs in search terms can get a listing suppressed, so we write subtitles that describe the book clearly and help it get found in search.

We also check the cover at thumbnail size, since that's how most shoppers first see it in search results. If it blurs into the genre wallpaper, our cover design team can suggest a refresh. Before you commit to a new title, run it through our book title checker.

Write a book description that earns the click

The description field holds up to 4,000 characters, but only the first few lines show before the "Read more" link. Those lines do the heavy lifting. We open with the hook, the stakes or the promise, then use short paragraphs, bold text and bullet points, which KDP supports through a limited set of HTML tags.

Amazon's rules shape what goes in. Reviews, quotes and testimonials don't belong in the description, and neither do URLs, contact details, pricing or time-sensitive news like tour dates. Editorial reviews have their own home in Author Central, which we'll get to.

Want to draft your own first? Our free book description builder walks you through the hook, the body and the closing line. We're happy to edit what you write rather than start from zero.

Choose keywords and categories readers actually use

KDP gives you seven keyword boxes and lets you choose up to three categories per format. Amazon's own guide to KDP keywords recommends short phrases in the order a reader would type them, like "military science fiction" rather than "fiction science military".

We build the list from real search behavior: Amazon's autocomplete suggestions, the categories and keywords of comparable books, and search term reports from any ads you have already run. We don't repeat words that are already in your title or categories, and we skip anything Amazon bans, such as other authors' names, program names or claims like "bestseller".

For categories, we look for honest fits where your book can be seen. A huge, crowded category might sound impressive, but a precise subcategory that matches the content usually serves readers better. Keywords and categories can be changed at any time, so we revisit them after the first month of data comes in.

Build out A+ Content and your Author Central page

A+ Content adds images, comparison tables and extra text to the "From the Publisher" section of your detail page. KDP offers a set of layout modules and lets you use up to five per page. It's a good place for a series chart, a map, interior samples or an author background block. It can't include customer reviews, pricing or "buy now" style language.

Author Central is free and often neglected. We help you claim every edition, write a bio that sounds like a person, add a current photo and post editorial reviews from credible sources. Claiming your books there also matters for advertising, since some ad types require it.

Together, these pieces make your page feel finished. Readers notice, and so do the shoppers who scroll down before deciding.

Run Amazon Ads that match your catalog

Amazon's book advertising guide lists two self-service ad types for authors. Sponsored Products ads appear in search results and on other books' detail pages, are open to authors in every marketplace and charge only when someone clicks. This is where nearly every author should start.

Sponsored Brands ads are banner-style placements that show off several books at once. For authors, Amazon currently limits them to the US, UK, Germany, France, Italy and Spain, and requires at least three eligible titles claimed in Author Central under the same author name. They work best for series and backlists.

Sponsored Display is a different case. Amazon's author pages don't list it as an author option, and most KDP accounts won't see it. If it appears in yours, we may test it, but we won't build a plan around it. One newer option worth knowing: since August 2026, US authors can advertise their audiobooks with Sponsored Products and Sponsored Brands, which helps if you've added an audiobook edition.

Structure campaigns, bids and budgets

We usually begin with a small automatic campaign to collect data and a few manual campaigns built on keywords and comparable books. Automatic campaigns let Amazon match your ad to searches it thinks are relevant. Manual campaigns give you control over exactly which terms and books you pay to appear next to.

Then the real work starts: reading search term reports, moving winning terms into manual campaigns, adding negative keywords to stop paying for irrelevant clicks, and adjusting bids up or down. We set daily budgets you're comfortable with and never raise them without asking.

Ad spend is paid by you directly to Amazon, separate from our fee. We'd rather you spend a modest amount well than a large amount loosely, especially in the first few months while the data is thin.

Decide whether KDP Select is right for your eBook

KDP Select is a free 90-day program that renews automatically unless you opt out. Enrolling puts your eBook in Kindle+, the reader subscription Amazon recently renamed from Kindle Unlimited, and you earn from pages read through the KDP Select Global Fund as well as from sales.

The trade-off is exclusivity. While enrolled, the digital edition must be sold only through Amazon, so no Apple Books, Kobo, Google Play or your own website. Print editions aren't affected, and ACX audiobooks added to Select don't take on extra exclusivity rules.

Select tends to suit genre fiction and series that page-read subscribers devour. Nonfiction, memoir and books aimed at libraries often do better going wide. We'll walk through both options with your genre and goals in mind, and you can review the publishing side on our book publishing page.

Use Countdown Deals and Free Book Promotions with a plan

Each 90-day Select term lets you run one of two promotions, not both. A Kindle Countdown Deal discounts your eBook for a limited time, with a clock on the page showing how long the price lasts. It runs only on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk, needs the book to have been enrolled for at least 30 days, and must end at least 14 days before the term ends.

A Free Book Promotion makes the eBook free for up to five days per term. Free downloads don't earn royalties, so the payoff has to come from somewhere else: reviews from new readers, sell-through to book two, or newsletter sign-ups from your back matter.

A promotion with no plan around it usually fades fast. We line up any deal with ads, your newsletter and, if it suits your budget, reputable promotion sites, and we often time it to a new release. Our launch planning guide shows how these pieces fit together.

Grow reviews without breaking Amazon's rules

Reviews matter, and shortcuts can get them removed or worse. Amazon's customer reviews policy for KDP authors allows you to give away free or discounted copies, as long as you don't require a review or try to influence what the reader writes. Paying for reviews, offering gift cards or swapping reviews breaks the rules. Federal Trade Commission rules also prohibit fake and bought reviews.

What works is slower and safer: an advance reader team who get early copies with no strings, a polite request in the back of the book, and outreach to genre bloggers and reviewers. We set up the process and write the outreach. We never buy reviews, post them ourselves or use review-swap groups.

Read the numbers: ACOS, royalties and page reads

ACOS, or advertising cost of sale, is ad spend divided by the sales your ads produced. Spend $50 to generate $200 in sales and your ACOS is 25 percent. The catch is that Amazon calculates sales at list price, not at your royalty, so a "good" ACOS depends on what you earn per copy.

Your break-even ACOS is your royalty divided by the list price. If a $4.99 eBook earns you about $3.40, you break even near 68 percent. A paperback with printing costs taken out may break even far lower. Our royalty calculator helps you work out the figures for each format.

We also track what the ad console doesn't show on its face: page reads from Kindle+ readers, read-through to later books in a series, and organic sales that rise when ads lift visibility. Each monthly report tells you what we spent, what it earned as best we can measure it, what we changed and what we plan to test next.

Know what to expect in the first 90 days

The first month is setup and learning: listing fixes, keyword research and small test campaigns. The second month is pruning, where most of the wasted spend gets cut. By the third month you'll have a clear picture of which books, terms and placements are worth paying for.

Some books respond quickly. Others need a new cover, a sharper description or a sequel before ads can pay off, and if that's the case we'll tell you plainly instead of spending more. To talk through your book, request a fixed quote after a free consultation.