Ad Keywords
Paid advertising is one of the things indie authors are most afraid of doing wrong and one of the things that most moves a book once it’s done right. Amazon Ads and Facebook Ads both work on keyword targeting, but the two platforms think about keywords differently — Amazon keywords are product-adjacent (comp titles, author names, subgenres, series names), Facebook keywords are interest-adjacent (what your target reader’s Facebook interests are, which is a completely different signal). The wrong keyword in either platform burns money on clicks from readers who were never going to buy your book. The right keyword gets you sales for pennies per click. The difference between “right” and “wrong” isn’t obvious until you’ve spent money and measured, and most authors don’t want to spend money to learn. The Ad Keywords subtab is the place where keyword research happens before the ad spend.
It’s not an ad management tool. It doesn’t buy ads for you. It doesn’t track your ad campaigns or your conversion rates — those live inside Amazon Ads Manager and Facebook Ads Manager, and integrating with either would require API access Ishvana doesn’t have. What the subtab does is help you draft the keyword lists so that when you actually go set up a campaign, you’re copying from a researched, project-specific list instead of guessing.
Amazon Ads keywords
Section titled “Amazon Ads keywords”Amazon’s ad platform lets you bid on keyword phrases that trigger your ad when a shopper searches for that phrase or browses a product matching it. The keywords fall into several categories:
Comp title keywords. Names of other books that are similar to yours. If you write sword-and-sorcery fantasy and [Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn] is a comp, then “mistborn” as an Amazon keyword will trigger your ad on Mistborn-adjacent pages. This is the most directly useful category for most authors — your ad shows up to readers who are literally looking at books like yours.
Author name keywords. Names of authors in your genre. Similar to comp titles but one level of abstraction up. “Brandon Sanderson” as a keyword targets any reader looking at any Sanderson book.
Subgenre keywords. Terms that describe your niche. “Epic fantasy,” “progression fantasy,” “dark academia,” “cozy mystery.” Broader than comp titles but also more expensive because more authors bid on them.
Trope keywords. Romance especially — “enemies to lovers,” “fake dating,” “single dad romance,” “found family.” Trope keywords are where romance authors find most of their reader matches because romance is heavily trope-driven and Amazon shoppers search by trope.
Brand keywords. Your own name, your own book titles. Cheap and usually unnecessary (why pay to show up on your own page?) but sometimes worth bidding on to block competitors from bidding on your brand.
Long-tail keywords. Phrases that are too specific to be competitive — “fantasy book about a reluctant king with a dark magic curse.” Cheap, low volume, but sometimes valuable for hyper-targeted matching.
The subtab’s Amazon keyword editor has a slot for each category, pulls suggestions from Market Intel’s comp-title data, and shows estimated competition levels per keyword. You can add, remove, or override any suggestion.
Facebook Ads interests
Section titled “Facebook Ads interests”Facebook Ads works differently. Instead of product-adjacent keywords, Facebook targets users by interests — things they’ve indicated they care about, based on their profile activity. So instead of bidding on “mistborn” like you would on Amazon, on Facebook you bid on “Brandon Sanderson (author)” as an interest that some readers have marked in their profile.
Interest categories for book ads typically include:
- Author names. Specific authors your target reader follows.
- Book titles. Specific books marked as “read” or “favorite.”
- Genre pages. Facebook pages for genre communities (epic fantasy, romance, mystery).
- Publisher pages. Facebook pages for publishers (Tor, Orbit, Penguin Random House).
- Related interests. Non-book interests that correlate with your target audience. Readers of dark fantasy often also show interests in certain music genres, TV shows, or subcultures.
The subtab’s Facebook interest editor works the same way — slots for each category, suggestions pulled from comp-title data, ability to add or remove.
Conversion estimates
Section titled “Conversion estimates”Neither platform gives you a real conversion estimate for a keyword until you’ve actually run the ad. But based on historical data, the subtab can give you a rough conversion likelihood tier for each keyword: high, medium, low, or unknown.
- High means keywords that have historically converted well for books in your genre — usually comp titles and direct subgenre terms.
- Medium means keywords that sometimes convert well depending on your book and your ad copy.
- Low means keywords that almost never convert for most books — too broad, too expensive, or too far from your target audience.
- Unknown means the subtab doesn’t have historical data for this keyword and can’t tier it.
The tier is a rough guide, not a guarantee. Some low-tier keywords will convert great for a specific book and some high-tier keywords will flop. The value is in filtering out the “probably burning money” candidates before you commit spend to them.
Match types and negative keywords
Section titled “Match types and negative keywords”Amazon Ads has three match types: exact, phrase, and broad. Exact means the shopper’s query has to match your keyword literally. Phrase means it has to contain your keyword phrase. Broad means it just has to be conceptually related. Each match type has different cost and conversion profiles.
The subtab tracks match type per keyword so you can copy your research list into Amazon’s campaign builder with the match types already decided. Typical pattern: comp title keywords run as exact match (precise, cheap, high conversion); subgenre keywords run as phrase or broad (wider reach, more expensive, lower conversion but more volume).
Negative keywords are the inverse — keywords you want to exclude from triggering your ad. If you write fantasy for adults, you might add “kids,” “children,” “young adult” as negative keywords to avoid wasting ad spend on readers looking for the wrong age bracket. Negative keywords live in a separate list in the subtab and feed into your Amazon campaign setup.
When to use it
Section titled “When to use it”A few specific moments where keyword research in this subtab is worth the time:
Before launching your first ad campaign. If you’ve never run ads for your book, spending an hour in this subtab before you create your first Amazon Ads campaign will save you significant money in the early weeks. Going in blind with generic keywords is the most expensive way to learn.
After a book’s organic sales plateau. If your book has been out for a few months and organic sales have slowed, paid ads are often the next move to keep momentum. Review your Market Intel, refresh the keyword list, and set up a new campaign.
When your genre shifts. If you’ve been writing in one subgenre and you’re pivoting to a new one, your old keyword research doesn’t apply. Redo the research for the new subgenre before you commit ad spend.
For each new book. Don’t reuse the same keyword list across every book you publish. Each book has its own comp titles, its own voice, its own reader audience. Fresh keyword research per book.
What the subtab isn’t doing
Section titled “What the subtab isn’t doing”- No ad campaign management. No integration with Amazon Ads or Facebook Ads APIs. You copy keyword lists out of Ishvana and paste them into the respective ad platforms yourself.
- No ROI tracking. The subtab doesn’t know how much you’ve spent or earned on ads. For ROI, use each platform’s native reporting.
- No bid optimization. Amazon’s auction has its own dynamics, and optimal bids shift based on competition and seasonality. The subtab doesn’t suggest specific bid amounts — it just flags high/medium/low tier.
- No competitor ad snooping. The subtab doesn’t show you what your competitors are bidding on or what their ad copy looks like. For that, you’d use a dedicated tool like Publisher Rocket.