Three quick things to set up once, then a 1-minute daily habit. Here's exactly what we need from you.
That's it. Everything else runs on our side.
The dashboard asks for two break-even numbers. They sound similar but do different jobs — here's how to work out yours.
This is the ACoS at which the sale alone pays for the ad. Above it you lose money on the sale; below it you profit even before any read-through. Level 3 (Neutral) sits exactly on it, and Levels 1–5 scale around it.
Formula: the royalty you keep on one sale ÷ the book's list price.
Use a blended figure across your list (a common round default is 50%). Mostly 70% ebooks → set it higher; heavy on 35% or paperbacks → lower.
This is higher because the sale also earns KENP page-reads and series read-through (book 1 pulls sales through the rest of the series). It's the line the health colours use — green up to here, red past it. It doesn't change your bids; it tells you where you're winning or losing.
Everything is judged against this line, which is why an ACoS that looks high can still be healthy. With break-even at 80%: Scale up ≤ ~48% (winner, room to grow) · Healthy ≤ 80% (so a campaign at 60% is healthy — the sale plus read-through still profits) · Watch ≤ ~92% (just over) · Bleeding above that · Money-pit = spend with no sales. Move the break-even and all the bands move with it.
Formula: ads break-even × (1 + your read-through uplift), where the uplift is how much extra each sale earns beyond the direct royalty.
The exact number is your Publisher Champ Target ACOS (it computes read-through per book). No Publisher Champ? Estimate the uplift from how much your series reads through, and adjust the box up or down as your real numbers come in.
In short: ads break-even = royalty ÷ price; total break-even = that, scaled up by your read-through. Neither is required to be perfect on day one — sensible defaults are pre-filled, and you can refine them anytime.
Optional — a royalty-based bid ceiling. In the Max bid ceiling panel, upload your Publisher Champ Power Table export (Analytics → Power Table → Download → Flat CSV). The program reads each book's per-sale royalty and caps every bid at a share of it — the classic 10% ≈ 10 clicks to break even ($10 royalty → $1.00 max bid). Set a separate cap for e-books and choose to include or exclude them, with per-book overrides. It's a safety ceiling only (the engine still bids below it on your ACoS), it stays off until you turn it on, and any book without a royalty simply keeps the normal per-market cap. Prices rarely change, so you refresh it only occasionally — and if you automate the Publisher Champ uploads, the daily task keeps it current for you.
You don't have to set any of this. Every dial below ships with a proven default — the same numbers seasoned KDP authors run. Connect and go, and the engine works out of the box. The settings are there only if you want to fine-tune; you can change one, all, or none, any time.
CPC caps for lottery, cluster & video — tuned to your book type. Low-bid lottery, multi-book cluster and video campaigns get a CPC cap set as a % of the book's own per-sale royalty, so it adapts automatically: a coloring book (small royalty) gets a low cap, a nonfiction title (larger royalty) gets more room, fiction sits in between — no numbers hard-coded to one catalog. If a campaign's 7-day cost-per-click drifts above its cap, the engine bids it back down before ACoS runs away. Defaults: lottery 2%, cluster 4.5%, video 5% of royalty (video stays lowest because it converts differently per click). Prefer a hard number? Type a fixed $ for any type and it wins. If a book has no royalty on file, a sensible per-market default is used. Three dials in the Max bid ceiling panel, each with its own on/off checkbox. Running in several countries? Expand Per-country caps to set a different % for a single marketplace (e.g. a tighter video cap in the US, looser in the UK) — only the markets you actually run in are listed, and any blank cell just uses the global % above.
How patient before pausing — your call. The engine only pauses a non-converter (a keyword or campaign with zero orders) once it has hit both a click count and a wasted-spend amount you set in the Max bid ceiling panel — so nothing is cut on a thin test. Default is 15 clicks and $10 wasted. Lower the clicks (e.g. 10) to cut losers faster; raise it (e.g. 20) to give ads more room to prove themselves. The same setting applies to keywords and whole campaigns.
Seasonal? Reactivated‑campaign grace. When you switch an old winner back on for its season (e.g. a holiday or January title), its past success is older than the report window, so the engine can't see it yet — and would normally risk pausing it during the slow ramp before the season lands. The grace period (default 14 days, in the Max bid ceiling panel) tells the engine not to pause a newly (re)activated campaign or its keywords for that many days, giving every reactivated winner a fair run before the normal rules apply. Set it to 0 to turn it off.
On your dashboard, click "Connect your Amazon Ads account" and sign in with Amazon. You'll approve read access (and bid management, which stays off until you switch it on). You can disconnect anytime.
Easiest — no report setup at all. On your dashboard, under Run automatically every day, set Report source to “Pull from Amazon automatically.” Once your Amazon Ads account is connected, the cloud pulls a fresh 90-day report straight from Amazon each morning and runs the engine — you never create, download, email or upload anything. It's a little slower each morning (Amazon builds the report on request), but it runs in the background, so there's nothing for you to do. New here and don't want to fiddle with reports? Choose this.
Or set up the recurring email report — slightly faster each morning, and it doubles as a file you own. Keep Report source on “My report, API as backup” (the default) and the two work together: your emailed report is used first, and if it's ever late the cloud pulls from Amazon so a day is never missed.
In the Amazon Ads console → Reports, create one report that covers both Sponsored Products and Sponsored Brands and save it so you can re-download it each day. The engine reads a single report with an “Ad product” column and manages both ad types from it. Use these settings:
See the exact report setup → — a clean, printable one-pager with every setting laid out.
Give the report a clear name (e.g. KDP-30-day-report) so it's easy to find if you ever want to edit its settings. Once it's saved and running, it delivers itself daily — you never re-open or download it.
While creating the report, set the schedule to Recurring → Daily and enter the delivery email shown on your dashboard under "Hands-free delivery" (it looks like r-xxxx@reports.lifebalancepub.com). From then on, Amazon emails your report to us automatically — you never download or upload anything.
Important — run it once now. When you're done, click “Save and run” (not just “Save”). That sends the first report right away, so it flows into the app today and you can see it working — instead of waiting until tomorrow's scheduled run.
Prefer to do it by hand instead? You can always just download the report and drag it onto the dashboard. Both work.
You'll see exactly what the engine would change — every bid up or down, pauses, new keywords — as a safe preview. When you're comfortable, flip on Auto-apply and the cloud makes those changes in your account for you. Until you do, nothing is ever pushed.
Nothing. Once your recurring report is set up, it arrives every morning on its own, the engine runs, and (when you've turned it on) the bid changes are applied for you. You just glance at the dashboard whenever you like.
Skipped the auto-delivery setup? Then it's a 1-minute habit: download your report and drop it on the dashboard.
Install the app on your phone in one tap. Open this site on your phone, then choose “Add to Home Screen” (iPhone/Safari) or tap “Install” (Android/Chrome). It opens full-screen like a real app, with the same live numbers as your desktop.
Free to view. On the free plan you can see everything on your phone — your account, health, and the recommended plan. Applying changes from the phone is part of Autopilot; until you turn that on, the app is view-only and never touches your account.
Once you're connected, the top of your dashboard gives you the whole picture at a glance — updated daily:
Below that, campaign & keyword health, the account check, and the exact plan the engine applies each day.
To see net profit, ROI, TACoS and the Profit-panel report view, you also need your Publisher Champ Book Stats export. It carries your real royalties and KENP read-through, which Amazon's ad report doesn't have. Without it the ads engine still runs fully and you get the Dashboard and every bid table — you just won't see the profit figures. Upload it right in the program, in the Book profit panel on your dashboard (the “Upload Book Stats” button) — one upload powers both the on-screen profit cards and the cloud Profit-panel report view.
Book stats … .xlsx file. That's it — the profit cards and the cloud Profit-panel report view switch on. Re-upload a fresh export whenever you like to keep it current.The three Publisher Champ files — All my books (break-even), Power Table (royalty ceiling) and Book Stats (profit) — are a manual upload by default: drop them in on your dashboard whenever you want to refresh. Publisher Champ has no public API, so the app can't fetch them for you on the server side.
If you'd rather never think about it, you can have them uploaded automatically every morning. Any assistant that can drive your browser on a schedule — for example Claude — can log into Publisher Champ, download all three exports, and upload them to your dashboard before your daily apply runs, so your break-even, royalty ceiling and profit always stay current with zero clicks. You stay logged into Publisher Champ and the app, and it does the rest.
Manual upload works perfectly on its own — this is just for those who want the Publisher Champ side on autopilot too. The ads side (Amazon report pull + daily apply) is already fully automatic regardless.
All optional — sensible defaults are already in place, so you can ignore these until you want them:
Turn this on and the engine leans your bids into each book's season and eases off in the slow months — always inside your break-even and bid caps. Off by default; one switch to enable, and off.
Do I have to download anything each day? No. You set up the recurring report once, and Amazon emails it to us automatically every day. (If you'd rather not set that up, you can download and drop it in by hand — your choice.)
Will it change my bids without asking? No. Auto-apply is off by default. You see a preview first, and you turn it on only when you're ready.
Is my account safe? Yes — we use Amazon's official secure sign-in, never see your password, and you can disconnect or turn off auto-apply anytime.
What if I skip a day? No problem — nothing breaks. Just upload again the next morning.
Questions? Just reply and we'll help. Welcome aboard.