The Flaws of AMS

It’s Friday, so time to talk AMS.  And writing. And life.

A few things happened this week that have me thinking. (Nothing new there. If my mind isn’t off on about ten tracks at once I don’t know what to do with myself.)

First, I almost wrote a post called “Maybe Indie Writing Isn’t For You” after seeing one too many authors losing their shit over stuff you can’t control. Namely, reviews. Oh, and going back a couple weeks, price matching. (This does tie back to AMS, just give me a minute.)

Second, this week Amazon issued a credit to some users of AMS for over-reporting estimated sales on certain Product Display ads. I’m pretty sure my credit related to ads I ran in 2015 and 2016 and estimated sales isn’t how I judge ad performance anyway so I was quite happy to take my $50 and continue doing what I’m doing.

Third, someone made a comment in a thread on one of the writing forums about how people claim to be doing well with AMS and then you go and look at their book ranking and they’re only selling a couple books a day.

So, let’s start with that third point first.

I kind of have a love/hate relationship with that writing forum. Every once in a while I pick up some little bit of information there that helps me move my writing one step further along the path, so there’s value in being there for me.

But I get heartily sick of the “if you’re not selling thousands of books a day you’re not worth listening to” mindset that pervades the place. I know far more self-published writers who would be happy with a sale or two a day than I do authors who sell thousands of copies. And, quite frankly, a lot of what those who sell thousands of copies a day have to say doesn’t apply to newer writers.

This summer I listened to a presentation by someone who is full-time self-published and their advice was that you could write a book a year and do well. All you had to do was launch it with a Bookbub on the first in series, which had happened for them every single time they published.

Oh, is that all? Yeah, okay. I’ll get right on giving away 25,000 copies of my novel so people read the rest of the series and I gain a lot of new fans.

Before that little pep talk I ‘d read another post about “how I launched my book into the top 1000 of the Amazon store.” Step one, mail your 15,000-person mailing list and tell them the book is out.

Oh, right. Okay. I just need a 15,000-person mailing list of people who like my books. I’ll get right on that.

(Neither of these were on that forum, by the way.)

I appreciate that someone who is selling hundreds of books a day and wants to get to selling thousands of books a day isn’t going to view the information of someone selling a handful of books each day as worth listening to.

And because of that I can even go farther and say that AMS won’t have as much value for them.

AMS does not scale well for most people or for most ads. I have the one romance ad that was willing to spend up to $50 a day a while back. I’ve dialed it back some so now it’s willing to spend up to $30 a day.  Which for me is big money.  That’s $900 a month on one book. That’s plenty for me to spend, thanks.  But for a heavy hitter who wants to spend $10,000 a month it’s a waste of their time to try to get AMS to scale to that level.

I have twenty-plus ads running at any given time and only one or two of them perform like that. For someone trying to generate hundreds of sales, yeah, my advice won’t help.

For someone where I was a year ago who just wants to see steady sales? AMS are great.

Also, because of the horrid reporting, AMS are a much better tool for someone going from basically nothing to having sales as a result of AMS. Before I started running the ads a lot of my books were only selling maybe a copy a week. Which makes me comfortable attributing all of my paperback and ebook sales to the ads while they’re running.  For someone further along than me, that wouldn’t work.

(It’s like when I was in KU a while back and I could say that most people read my novels in about two days. A more successful author wouldn’t be able to say that. I could at the time because I would see one borrow and a full-read and then nothing for a few days. We are not all seeing or experiencing things the same way and that’s too often forgotten. Fortunately? My page reads are now to steady for that.)

There was some discussion when those credits were issued this week about how horrible Amazon is and how we can’t trust them.  And, it being the 15th of the month, I’m sure there’ll be a nice juicy thread about KU and page reads today that says similar things.

But here’s the deal. The way I judge AMS has nothing to do with what that dashboard says about sales. I ask, “What did I spend on an ad on that book for this period of time?” And then I ask, “What did I earn on that book for the same period of time for ebook sales, KU page reads, and paperback sales?”  If what I earned is more than what I spent, who gives a *bleep* about the rest of it?

I get really analytical at the keyword level for AMS ads because I’m trying to refine them the best I can.  But in terms of keeping an ad going? What did I spend?  What did I make?  For me, I get to make those calculations about every ten days when I get billed by AMS.  Everyone can make those judgements monthly if they’re running the ads.

Is Amazon flawed? Sure. Absolutely. KU is a cluster half the time. AMS reporting is shit. But at the end of the day, it’s very simple. Are you making more participating than it’s costing you? If so, continue. If not, bail. Find another solution. Accept that it’s a flawed system and judge by the outcome alone.

At least that’s what I do. And sorry this was a bit blathery. I’m still recovering from writing and publishing those Excel guides.

Bottom-line: Accept the system as it is and judge whether you can work within it, no matter how flawed. Also, know that what works for someone at one level may not work for someone at another level so factor that into who you listen to and what weight you give what they say.