Who Should Run Your Amazon Ads: DIY, Agency, or Fractional Help
Seven kinds of indie author, three ways to get Amazon ads handled. How to work out which one fits your catalog — and when the answer is nobody yet.
The question isn't who has the best credentials. It's whether the person touching your account understands how your catalog makes money — and for a fair number of authors, the honest answer is that nobody should touch it yet.
Where I stand: I work with authors as a fractional partner — audits, coaching, and hands-on time inside ad accounts, paid from a minor share of net royalties rather than a retainer. So I'm one of the options described below, and you should read this knowing that. I've tried to write the version that tells you when hiring anyone is the wrong move; the Passion Project section is where that starts.
Key takeaways
- Which kind of author you are decides who should run your ads. A volume publisher and a memoirist have almost nothing in common at the account level.
- Three routes exist — run them yourself, hire an agency, or bring in fractional help — and they fail in different, predictable ways.
- The fastest way to test anyone is to ask what a good ACOS looks like for your setup. A single number, offered before they've asked about your catalog, is the wrong answer.
- Settle fees, reporting, account ownership, and budget approval limits in writing before any money moves.
Start with which author you are
Ad advice goes wrong when it assumes one business model. Most of what circulates assumes a long fiction series in Kindle Unlimited, because that's the case where paid traffic scales most obviously. It's also a minority of the people reading it.
These are the seven archetypes that show up across KDP, and what each one changes about who should be at the controls.
The Volume Publisher
Books ship fast, into genres where readers binge. Deep in Kindle Unlimited, where page reads compound across a growing backlist. The ad problem here is sprawl: every release adds campaigns, and within a year the account has more moving parts than any one person can watch while also writing.
Highest return on outside help — and the case where the ACOS test below matters most.
The Niche Specialist
Owns a lane, and the also-boughts do a lot of the work unpaid. The risk here is paying for traffic Amazon was already handing over, which is easy to do and hard to notice, because the sales appear either way.
Usually DIY. Bring in help when a competitor moves into the lane, not before.
The Subject Matter Expert
The book is the lead magnet; the money is in the coaching, the course, the speaking. Which means the console cannot see your actual revenue at all. Judged on book royalties alone, campaigns that fill your pipeline will look like failures, and a manager measuring the wrong thing will switch them off.
Only hire someone who will measure past the book. Most won't.
The Entrepreneur
Already fluent — tracks the metrics, tests covers, knows the terminology. The constraint isn't skill, it's hours, and handing the account to someone less rigorous than you is a downgrade dressed as delegation.
Fractional partnership or consulting. You want structure and a second opinion, not a driver.
The Industry Veteran
Traditionally published, now running your own backlist and calling your own shots. The ads work is brand-name targeting and backlist reactivation, which is genuinely different from launching an unknown. You will also hate ceding control more than most, and you're right to.
Whoever you hire, the account stays in your name. Get that in writing first.
The Passion Project
A memoir, a family history, years of work for an audience you could name individually. Paid advertising is largely the wrong instrument here — the audience is too small and too specific for auction traffic to find efficiently.
Don't hire anyone. Be wary of anyone happy to take the money.
The Worldbuilder
Sprawling series, box sets, audiobooks through ACX, readers who invest years. Your value sits in read-through and in formats the ads console reports unevenly — audio especially, which frequently doesn't attribute back to the campaign that earned it at all.
Needs someone who models a reader across formats, not per title.
The three ways to get ads handled
Each route has a characteristic failure. Pick the failure you can live with.
| Route | Suits | How it fails |
|---|---|---|
| Run them yourself | Small catalogs, tight budgets, anyone who wants to understand the account before delegating it. | Attention. Campaigns left unattended lose money faster than campaigns run imperfectly, and writing always wins the calendar fight. |
| Agency | Large catalogs, multiple pen names or marketplaces, spend high enough that a few points of efficiency covers a retainer. | Fit. Most bill on a percentage of spend, which rewards spending more of your money, and most have never advertised a book. |
| Fractional partner | Authors who want expert hands without a retainer, or a second opinion on an account they intend to keep running themselves. | Cadence. It works when the account has structure to build on, and is the wrong call for one that needs daily triage. |
A split works more often than either extreme. Keep targeting and creative, where knowing your genre is the whole advantage, and buy help for structure, bid management, and the reporting you're never going to build. If you're staying DIY for now, the five strategies here are the place to start.
How to tell whether someone understands books
Advertising competence and publishing competence are different skills, and the certifications only test the first one. Three questions separate them.
1. What does a good ACOS look like for my setup?
If a number arrives before any questions about your catalog, keep looking. The 30% figure that circulates comes from physical products, where every sale lands as revenue in the same dashboard that reports the spend. The two sides of the ratio match.
They stop matching the moment your business runs on anything else. In Kindle Unlimited, a borrow reports as zero sales while still paying a page-read royalty, in a different report, weeks later — so the console is dividing your ad spend by a revenue figure with most of the revenue missing, and true break-even for a series with decent read-through routinely sits above 100%. Publishing wide, reported sales are much closer to your real revenue, but Amazon can't see what its ads drove on Kobo or Apple. Selling a book that sells a service, the entire return happens somewhere the console will never look.
The right answer is a set of questions, not a figure: how many books, what read-through between them, borrows or purchases, what happens after someone reads it.
2. What would you do with my backlist?
Ads spend is easy to point at a new release. The harder skill is knowing which older titles are worth reactivating, which are quietly cannibalizing each other in the same auction, and which should stay dark. A generalist will treat every ASIN as an independent product, which is exactly how authors end up bidding against themselves.
3. What would make you tell me to spend less?
Everyone has an answer for how they'd grow the account. Ask for the conditions under which they'd recommend cutting spend, and listen for whether their fee structure makes that answer expensive for them.
Fees, reporting, and who owns the account
Fee structure
A percentage of spend rewards someone for spending more of your money. A flat rate rewards them for spending less of their time. Neither disqualifies anyone, but know which pressure you're buying, and ask what happens to the fee if halving your budget turns out to be the right call.
Account ownership
Campaigns live in your Amazon Advertising account, with access granted to whoever you hire — not the reverse. Structure and campaign history are assets, and they should still be yours the day the arrangement ends.
Reporting
Ask what's in a monthly report before you agree to anything. Console figures alone describe a fraction of your business. Depending on which archetype you are, the report needs to reach into KENP page reads, other retailers, audiobook royalties, or your own funnel — otherwise you're both grading the wrong exam.
Approval limits
Agree who can raise a daily budget, by how much, without asking. Most unpleasant surprises are budget changes nobody wrote down.
Questions to ask before you sign
- Which books have you advertised, in which genres, and what happened?
- How would you measure success for an author like me specifically?
- What break-even would you expect for my catalog, and how did you get there?
- How do you handle read-through across a series?
- What's your fee, what changes it, and what isn't included?
- Whose account do the campaigns live in, and what do I keep if we part ways?
- What's in the monthly report, and which data sources feed it?
- Who can change budgets without asking me, and up to what limit?
- What does the first ninety days look like, and what would tell us it isn't working?
- How much notice does either of us need to give?
Frequently asked questions
Should I hire someone to run my Amazon ads or learn it myself?
It depends far more on your catalog than your budget. One series, one marketplace, and a few campaigns is learnable, and understanding the account makes you a better client later. Several pen names, a rapid release schedule, or spend high enough that small efficiency gains outweigh a fee are the conditions where help pays for itself. If you have one book and no series yet, the answer is almost always to wait — there's no read-through to spread the cost of acquiring a reader across.
What's the difference between an agency and a fractional partner?
An agency takes the account, usually on a retainer or a percentage of ad spend, and assigns a team. A fractional partner works inside an account you still own, paid from a share of what the ads actually earn rather than a retainer, with no layer between you and the person doing the work. Agencies suit large, complex catalogs that need daily attention. A fractional partner suits authors who want expert judgment applied to an account they intend to keep understanding.
Does Amazon Ads Partner status matter when choosing help?
It confirms someone has met Amazon's requirements around advertising knowledge and spend under management — a real signal about advertising competence, and no signal at all about publishing competence. The program is built for advertisers selling physical products, so most partners have never encountered a royalty rate or a page-read report. The better question is whether whoever you're talking to can explain how your read-through changes what a click is worth.
Does this advice apply if my books aren't in Kindle Unlimited?
Yes, with one adjustment. Without page reads in the mix, Amazon's reported sales sit close to your real revenue, so the ACOS figure in the console is far more trustworthy than it is for a KU author. Your blind spot is the opposite one: Amazon can't see sales its ads drive on Apple, Kobo, or your own store. Ask anyone you're considering how they account for that.
Are Amazon ads worth it for nonfiction?
Often, but not for the reason the dashboard will show you. If your book leads to coaching, courses, or consulting, the royalty is a rounding error against the value of a reader who becomes a client. Campaigns judged on book sales alone will look unprofitable while working perfectly, so agree upfront on what gets measured, or you'll spend the relationship arguing about a number that was never the point.
Who owns the ad account if I hire someone?
You should. Campaigns belong in your own Amazon Advertising account with access granted to whoever manages them, so the structure, history, and performance data stay with you when the arrangement ends. Anyone who insists on running your books through their account is asking you to rent your own data back from them.
Not sure which archetype you're reading this as? Start with the seven types, or send me the account and I'll tell you what I see — the audit is free, and it comes straight to me rather than a form.
Whichever of the three routes fits, the arithmetic underneath does not change. You still need to know what you can afford to pay for a click before anyone starts bidding on your behalf — the break-even calculator gives you that number.
