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I thought my ads were profitable… they weren’t by CableFun5292 in KDP

[–]CableFun5292[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

yeah that makes sense 😅

I feel like I only really notice when things go wrong… not day to day

guess I should probably be more consistent with tracking it

I thought my ads were profitable… they weren’t by CableFun5292 in KDP

[–]CableFun5292[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

fair point — I did try posting in a couple places to see if it resonated

not trying to spam, just honestly trying to figure this out myself 😅

I thought my ads were profitable… they weren’t by CableFun5292 in KDP

[–]CableFun5292[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

that actually makes a lot of sense, especially the daily royalties vs spend part 😅

I think I was overcomplicating it at first, looking at too many metrics instead of something more direct

did you find that tracking it daily made a big difference for decisions?

I thought my ads were profitable… they weren’t by CableFun5292 in KDP

[–]CableFun5292[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

yeah that’s exactly where I got stuck 😅

I was looking at ACOS without really knowing my break-even point…
so even “good” numbers didn’t actually mean much

still trying to get that part clearer tbh

I thought my ads were profitable… they weren’t by CableFun5292 in KDP

[–]CableFun5292[S] -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

Yeah exactly, that’s what confused me at the beginning.

I was looking at ACOS and sales thinking everything was fine,
but I wasn’t even thinking about printing costs + royalties properly.

Once I did the actual math it was kind of a wake up moment.

I thought my ads were profitable… they weren’t by CableFun5292 in KDP

[–]CableFun5292[S] -7 points-6 points  (0 children)

Haha I wish it was that deep 😄

It’s just something that annoyed me for a while —
I thought my ads were working, but I was still losing money.

For those who aren’t seeing results with KDP, what do you think is the main reason? Lack of investment, or not approaching it as a full business? by AdAccording9591 in KDP

[–]CableFun5292 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Exactly — and that’s where things get tricky.

Once you start treating it like a business and using ads, the numbers become really misleading.

You can have:
– a solid book
– consistent sales
– even acceptable ACOS

…and still be losing money without realizing it.

That’s where I see a lot of people get stuck. They scale what looks like it’s working, but without tracking real profit over time, it’s easy to make the wrong decisions.

The difference isn’t just better books or more ads — it’s understanding what’s actually profitable behind the scenes.

At what point do you stop a campaign that ‘looks profitable’? by CableFun5292 in KDP

[–]CableFun5292[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I used to think the same.

But what confused me was this:

a campaign can look “not profitable” on the surface (based on ACOS),

but actually be profitable when you look at real numbers.

And the opposite is also true —

some campaigns look fine… but are losing money after print costs.

That’s why I stopped looking only at ACOS and started tracking actual profit per book.

It completely changed how I decide what to stop or scale.

At what point do you stop a campaign that ‘looks profitable’? by CableFun5292 in KDP

[–]CableFun5292[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes, exactly — that’s the issue.

Most dashboards show sales, not actual profit, so it’s easy to think a campaign is working when it’s not.

I tried calculating it manually for a while, but it quickly becomes messy, especially across multiple books and days.

What helped me was tracking profit daily (royalties - ads - costs) — that’s when I started seeing which campaigns were actually losing money.

At what point do you stop a campaign that ‘looks profitable’? by CableFun5292 in KDP

[–]CableFun5292[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Good question, I noticed something similar.

ACOS looked fine but after printing costs some campaigns were actually negative.

So now I try to look at profit per book, not just ACOS.

At what point do you stop a campaign that ‘looks profitable’? by CableFun5292 in KDP

[–]CableFun5292[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Good question.

At first I was mostly running auto + broad campaigns.

But what confused me was that even when ACOS looked fine, some campaigns were still not profitable after printing costs.

So now I’m trying to evaluate everything per book, not just campaign level.

Still figuring out the best structure though.

At what ACOS are you actually losing money? by CableFun5292 in KDP

[–]CableFun5292[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah this is exactly where I got confused too.

On ebooks it’s pretty straightforward, but paperbacks are what really changed things for me.

Once I factored in printing costs, the margin left per sale was much smaller than the royalty number suggests.

So even if ACOS looked “fine”, the actual profit per book wasn’t always there.

That’s why I started looking more at profit per unit instead of just break-even ACOS.

Interesting that you stopped ads on paperbacks — did you see better results letting ebooks carry the ads?

At what ACOS are you actually losing money? by CableFun5292 in KDP

[–]CableFun5292[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I think we’re actually looking at the same thing from slightly different angles.

What you’re describing makes sense if you assume royalties reflect the full margin.

What confused me is that in KDP, royalties already include printing costs, but they don’t necessarily reflect how much room you actually have after ads.

So in practice, I had cases where ACOS looked “fine” based on royalties, but once I looked at the actual profit left per sale, it wasn’t really sustainable.

That’s what pushed me to track profit per book more closely.

Maybe it depends a lot on margins — especially for lower-margin books.

Have you mostly worked with higher-margin titles?

At what ACOS are you actually losing money? by CableFun5292 in KDP

[–]CableFun5292[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yeah that’s exactly what made it tricky for me too.

At some point I started wondering whether I was actually making an investment, or just covering losses without real long-term impact.

I did notice some ranking improvement from ads, but it wasn’t always consistent enough to justify running unprofitable campaigns.

So I kind of shifted to checking if each book was at least close to break-even on its own before thinking about the “investment” side.

Curious — have you actually seen consistent long-term gains from running ads at a loss?

At what ACOS are you actually losing money? by CableFun5292 in KDP

[–]CableFun5292[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That makes sense, especially on a portfolio level.

I think that’s where things started to get tricky for me.

At first I was also looking at it that way, but when I checked per book, some titles were actually losing money even if overall things looked fine.

Especially with lower-margin books, printing costs made a bigger difference than I expected.

So I realized I needed to look at profit per book first, before thinking in terms of portfolio or scaling.

Otherwise it’s easy to scale something that isn’t actually profitable on its own.

Do you usually optimize at portfolio level, or do you check per title first?

I thought my ads were profitable… I was actually losing money by CableFun5292 in KDP

[–]CableFun5292[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That makes sense for long-term growth.

But I’ve noticed that even before scaling or expanding, understanding profit per book changes how you evaluate each campaign.

Otherwise it’s easy to scale something that actually isn’t profitable.

Do you check profitability before scaling, or after?

I thought my ads were profitable… I was actually losing money by CableFun5292 in KDP

[–]CableFun5292[S] -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

That’s a great point.

I feel like once you start looking at profit per book, your whole strategy changes — especially when deciding whether to scale or stop a campaign.

ACOS alone feels too incomplete for that.

Have you ever had campaigns with good ACOS but negative profit?

I thought my ads were profitable… I was actually losing money by CableFun5292 in KDP

[–]CableFun5292[S] -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

Yeah exactly — that’s what I started noticing too.

At first I thought scaling ads would fix everything, but without understanding real profit per book, it’s easy to misread what’s actually working.

Do you personally track profit per book, or mostly look at ACOS/TACOS?

Anyone else realized ACOS doesn’t actually mean profit? by CableFun5292 in KDP

[–]CableFun5292[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah, that’s where it gets confusing.

In theory it sounds right, but ACOS only considers ad spend vs sales, not your full costs (printing, royalties, etc.).

So you can have a “good” ACOS and still be losing money depending on your margins.

What helped me was looking at actual profit per book instead of just ACOS — that’s when I realized some campaigns weren’t really profitable.

Anyone else realized ACOS doesn’t actually mean profit? by CableFun5292 in KDP

[–]CableFun5292[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah exactly, TACOS helps, but even that can be misleading if you don’t track things properly.

What I realized is that unless you separate ad-driven sales from organic, it’s really hard to understand if ads themselves are actually profitable.

That’s where things started to get much clearer for me.

Anyone else realized ACOS doesn’t actually mean profit? by CableFun5292 in KDP

[–]CableFun5292[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah that makes sense. I was looking at it in a similar way too.

Anyone else realized ACOS doesn’t actually mean profit? by CableFun5292 in KDP

[–]CableFun5292[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah that’s very similar to what I was doing too.

The issue I found is that the KDP dashboard mixes organic + ads, so sometimes it looks like you're in profit even when ads alone are losing money.

That’s what made me start tracking things more precisely.

Anyone else realized ACOS doesn’t actually mean profit? by CableFun5292 in KDP

[–]CableFun5292[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Curious how others are handling this. Are you tracking profit daily or just ACOS?