How to lose $1,000 with a Kindle Monthly Deal

Hi everyone, in the interests of helping you not make my mistakes, I wanted to share the full results of my Kindle Monthly Deal promotion with you all. I obviously have so much more to learn.

First and foremost, watch that ad ROI and stop low-performing ads sooner. I’m looking at you, AMS.

Second, PublishDrive is not good. Reporting is extremely delayed and often wildly inaccurate. I spot-checked with Google Partners. I will be going direct with Apple, Google, and Kobo. I was already direct with Amazon.

My “complete trilogy” sci-fi climate change box set was selected for a Kindle Monthly Deal in May 2022. I was ecstatic, and wanted to use the opportunity to run a few ads experiments as well as go wide. Amazon set the price at $1.49 May 1–31 and I updated PublishDrive stores to reflect it, off to the races.

You can see the full results in the sheet, Along with daily ad spends and engagements. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1fcAyZA34M5HG456pRexGNG5ZY5g1c-a27PfFgFK9Ohg/edit?usp=sharing

I’d be happy to answer any questions and discuss what else I did wrong!