Author Ads Pro

Guide

Auto vs manual campaigns for books

Auto campaigns let Amazon choose where your ad shows. Manual campaigns let you choose. Most profitable book accounts use both, for different jobs.

By Michael Cortez, PPC strategist · Updated November 8, 2026

Auto campaigns: discovery

Amazon reads your book's details and shows the ad where it thinks it fits, in four groups you can bid on separately:

  • Close match: searches closely related to your book.
  • Loose match: searches loosely related.
  • Substitutes: pages of books similar to yours.
  • Complements: pages of related books readers might buy alongside.

Auto is quick to set up and finds searches you'd never guess. It also wastes money on poor fits unless you add negatives.

Manual campaigns: control

You choose the keywords (broad, phrase, exact) or the book pages to target, and set a bid for each. Manual is where you scale what works, with bids set from what each click earns.

How to run both

  1. Run an auto campaign at a modest bid.
  2. Each week, find searches in its search term report that bring readers profitably.
  3. Add them as exact keywords in a manual campaign with their own bids.
  4. Add them as negative exact in the auto campaign so the two don't compete.
  5. Negate searches in auto that have enough clicks and no readers.

That loop is what the Kindle Author Ads Analyzer's Harvest and Negatives lists are for, and the bulk file applies both in one upload.

Run your own report through the Kindle Author Ads Analyzer

Free, runs in your browser, no signup. See which terms to negate, which bids to move and which keywords pay across the series.

Analyze my report

Questions

Are auto campaigns good for books?

Yes, for discovery. They find searches and book pages you wouldn't have thought of. Most authors keep one running at a modest bid and harvest its winners into manual campaigns.

What are close match, loose match, substitutes and complements?

The four groups in an auto campaign. Close and loose match target searches closely or loosely related to your book; substitutes and complements target product pages of similar or related books. Each can have its own bid.

Should I turn off my auto campaign once manual is running?

Usually not. Keep it at a lower bid as a discovery engine, and add proven searches to it as negative exact once they're in manual exact.

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