The short answer
A thriller writer with a $200 monthly budget and moderate competition should open with about 24 starter targets: 6 exact, 8 phrase, and 10 broad, drawn from fixed genre stems. Suggested opening bids sit near $0.55 for exact, $0.44 for phrase, and $0.33 for broad, which works out to roughly 474 clicks for the month at a $0.42 blended average. Those phrases are starter stems for planning only. They are not live Amazon search-volume data, they do not predict sales, and the planner never connects to Amazon or sends your numbers anywhere.
What this planner actually gives you
New advertisers often stare at an empty keyword box and type whatever occurs to them in the moment. That produces a scattered list with three spellings of the same idea and nothing from the shelf next door. This planner hands you a tidy starting grid instead: six plain genre stems, each stretched into an exact row, a phrase row with "novel" added, and a broad row with "best" or "new" plus "series" or "novel" attached.
The grid exists so you can launch fast and read results cleanly. Exact rows tell you which shopper phrase earned the click. Phrase rows catch nearby word orders you did not think to type. Broad rows surface related shopping language you would never have guessed. You then keep the winners, pause the silent terms, and add the real shopper phrases from your advertising reports.
Nothing here claims to know what shoppers typed yesterday. The stems are fixed lists written into the tool, one set per genre. Treat them as scaffolding: good enough to buy your first clicks, meant to be replaced by evidence within weeks.
How the math works, step by step
The arithmetic has four stages, and each one uses only the three numbers you typed.
First, the tool counts starter targets. Every genre carries six stems, so exact always starts at 6. Phrase adds two, giving 8. Broad adds four, giving 10. The total is 24 for every genre at every budget. Budget never changes the count; it changes what the count costs to run.
Second, the tool sets bids from competition. Low competition uses $0.35 as the exact bid, moderate uses $0.55, and high uses $0.85. Phrase is set near 80 percent of exact, and broad near 60 percent. So a moderate plan shows $0.55 exact, $0.44 phrase, and $0.33 broad. A low plan shows $0.35, $0.28, and $0.21. A high plan shows $0.85, $0.68, and $0.51. These are illustrative planning assumptions, not market prices. Real auction prices move by hour, book, and rival bid.
Third, the tool blends those bids into one average. It weights each bid by its target count. For the moderate thriller, that is 6 times $0.55 plus 8 times $0.44 plus 10 times $0.33, which equals $10.12, divided by 24 targets, which equals about $0.42. That blended figure is the divisor for everything that follows.
Fourth, the tool converts money into clicks. Daily budget is monthly divided by 30, so $200 becomes $6.67 a day. Estimated monthly clicks are monthly divided by the blended bid, so $200 divided by $0.42 gives about 474 clicks. Estimated impressions divide those clicks by an illustrative 0.4 percent click-through rate, giving about 118,500 impressions. That rate is a planning placeholder so the schedule has a shape, not a forecast of your results.
Worked numbers for the default plan
Walk through the default inputs slowly: thriller, $200, moderate.
The six thriller stems are psychological thriller, crime thriller, spy thriller, domestic thriller, serial killer thriller, and political thriller. Exact keeps all six as-is. Phrase turns the first two into "psychological thriller novel" and "crime thriller novel" and continues the pattern across eight rows. Broad builds phrases such as "best psychological thriller series" and "new crime thriller novel" across ten rows.
Bids land at $0.55, $0.44, and $0.33. The weighted average is $0.42. Daily budget is $6.67. Monthly clicks come out near 474. Impressions at the illustrative 0.4 percent rate come out near 118,500.
Now change one input and watch the chain react. Drop the budget to $80 with everything else fixed. Daily budget falls to $2.67. Clicks fall to about 190. The 24 targets do not shrink, so each target now averages under 8 clicks for the whole month, which is too thin to judge. That is why the tool warns on budgets under $100: the arithmetic still runs, but the reading gets unreliable.
Raise competition to high at $200 instead. Bids jump to $0.85, $0.68, and $0.51, and the blended average rises to about $0.65. Clicks drop to about 307. Same money, fewer clicks, because each click costs more. That is the entire meaning of the competition setting: a dial on bid levels, not a measurement of your category.
Illustrative hypothetical example one: a debut thriller at $200
Consider a hypothetical debut thriller writer, used here as an illustrative example only. She types thriller, $200, moderate, and receives 24 starters at a $0.42 average with about 474 planned clicks.
Her instruction is plain. Week one, she launches only the six exact terms at $0.55. That spends roughly $6.67 a day across six targets instead of twenty-four, so each term gathers clicks fast enough to read. She checks the advertising report every three days and writes down clicks and spend per term.
By day fourteen, suppose two exact terms show steady clicks and the other four sit silent. She pauses the four silent terms, keeps the two winners, and adds the eight phrase rows at $0.44. The phrase rows now explore word orders around proven stems instead of exploring blindly. Broad stays off until one phrase row earns clicks two weeks running.
This sequence is hypothetical and illustrative. It shows the order of operations, not a promise. Real click counts will differ because real auctions, covers, prices, and review counts differ.
Illustrative hypothetical example two: a memoir at $80 with low competition
Consider a hypothetical memoir writer, again an illustrative example. He types memoir, $80, low, and receives 24 starters with bids near $0.35 exact, $0.28 phrase, and $0.21 broad, a blended average near $0.27, and about 296 planned clicks on paper.
On paper looks fine; in practice it is fragile. At $2.67 a day, a single $0.35 click consumes an eighth of the day. Two accidental clicks on a broad term such as "best childhood memoir series" can eat the morning before the exact terms ever show. That is why the tool flags budgets under $100 even when competition is low.
His instruction is narrower. He launches with three exact stems only, for instance "childhood memoir," "family memoir," and "grief memoir," at $0.35. He leaves phrase and broad off entirely for the first month. When the monthly amount can rise to $100 or more, he adds phrase rows one shelf at a time. The hypothetical numbers show the pacing logic; they do not predict his sales or rank.
What exact, phrase, and broad actually do
Exact is the strictest setting. Your ad becomes eligible when the shopper phrase closely matches your term. A bid on "crime thriller" competes for shoppers who typed close variants of those two words. Use exact when you want clean reads: each click belongs to one idea.
Phrase is looser. Your ad becomes eligible when the shopper phrase contains your phrase with extra words before or after. A phrase term "crime thriller novel" can match "new crime thriller novel Kindle" and similar orders. Use phrase when exact winners need room to stretch without opening the floodgates.
Broad is the loosest. Your ad becomes eligible for related meanings, including wording you did not type. A broad term "best crime thriller series" might match shoppers looking for box sets, saga bundles, or authors you never named. Use broad as a discovery net, with the lowest bid of the three, and mine its reports for new exact terms weekly.
Bid order follows strictness. Exact gets the highest bid because its clicks carry the most information. Phrase gets about four-fifths of exact. Broad gets about three-fifths. That ladder is an illustrative convention inside this planner, not an Amazon rule.
How to pick your competition setting honestly
Low fits a quiet corner: a narrow nonfiction method, a regional memoir, a small cozy sub-shelf with few sponsored slots. Choose low when you rarely see sponsored badges on your category pages and when also-bought carousels show mostly indie covers with modest review counts.
Moderate fits the normal case: most thriller, romance, fantasy, and mystery shelves. Choose moderate when sponsored slots appear on most searches, when some also-bought books carry thousands of reviews, and when your book has a professional cover, a clear description, and at least a handful of reviews.
High fits a crowded shelf: billionaire romance, serial killer thriller, epic dragon fantasy, big personal finance topics. Choose high when every search shows a wall of sponsored books, when the top organic books carry tens of thousands of ratings, and when your daily budget cannot yet survive $0.85 clicks. If high describes your shelf and your budget sits under $300, the tool warns you for a reason: start exact-only and expand later.
When unsure, pick moderate. It is easier to lower bids after cheap clicks than to recover from a high-bid broad test that burned a week of budget in two days.
Genre-by-genre starting guidance
Thriller starters lean on sub-type words: psychological, crime, spy, domestic, serial killer, political. Shoppers in this shelf type the sub-type first, so keep those words inside every term. Avoid clever invented labels in week one; "gripping page-turner thriller" is not how shoppers search. Add trope words like "twist ending" only after reports show shoppers arriving through them.
Romance starters lean on relationship frames: contemporary, romantic comedy, second chance, enemies to lovers, small town, billionaire. This shelf searches tropes directly, so trope-exact terms deserve your first dollars. Keep heat level out of keyword stems unless your reports prove shoppers use those words; put heat level in the description where it converts browsers.
Fantasy starters lean on world scale: epic, dark, urban, dragon, sword and sorcery, cozy. Creature and magic-system words pull weight here, so watch broad reports for dragon, academy, and fae variants, then promote proven ones to exact. Cozy fantasy behaves like a separate shelf from epic, so do not mix their stems in one campaign; split them and bid each cleanly.
Mystery starters lean on detective shape: cozy, detective, murder, police procedural, amateur sleuth, historical. "Cozy" shoppers and "police procedural" shoppers rarely overlap, so running both stem families in one campaign muddies the read. Start with the family that matches your cover and opening chapter, then test the second family only after the first produces clicks.
Nonfiction starters lean on outcome words: productivity habits, personal finance guide, healthy habits, leadership skills, time management, mindfulness guide. Shoppers here type problems and outcomes, so each term should name the result. A memoir-style title on a how-to book confuses both keyword reads and browsers; keep the outcome inside the term and the story inside the description.
Memoir starters lean on life stage: childhood, family, grief, travel, recovery, coming of age. This shelf has the softest keyword intent, because shoppers often browse by theme rather than typing exact phrases. Expect fewer clicks per impression than thriller or romance, bid patiently at low competition levels, and judge winners over four weeks instead of two.
Budgets, daily pacing, and click expectations
A monthly budget is a promise you make to yourself, and daily budget is how Amazon spends it. Divide monthly by 30 before you judge anything. A $200 month is $6.67 a day. A $90 month is $3.00 a day. A $500 month is $16.67 a day. Small daily numbers fail silently: the campaign looks live while individual terms never gather enough clicks to read.
As a pacing rule, each active target needs roughly 10 to 20 clicks before you call it a winner or a loser. With 24 targets live, that means 240 to 480 clicks before the full grid is judged. At a $0.42 average, that costs $100 to $200. This is why the planner pairs 24 starters with a $200 default: the count and the money fit each other.
When money is short, shrink the live count instead of shrinking bids to pennies. Three exact terms at $0.55 with $80 will teach you more than twenty-four terms at $0.20 that never win an impression. Raise bids toward readability, reduce targets toward affordability, and expand only when one term earns clicks repeatedly.
Click-through rate enters only as an illustrative 0.4 percent placeholder for impressions. It lets the tool show an impression figure alongside clicks. It does not describe your cover, your price, or your position. If your real reports later show a different rate, use the real one and ignore the placeholder forever.
Edge cases that break naive plans
Zero budget breaks everything downstream. Daily budget reads $0.00, clicks read zero, and no bid ladder matters. The tool answers with an informational verdict rather than a warning, because there is nothing to warn about: enter the amount you will truly spend before reading further.
Tiny budgets under $100 run but mislead. The arithmetic returns clicks in the low hundreds, which sounds workable until divided across 24 targets. Each target then averages single-digit clicks per month, and single-digit counts cannot separate winners from noise. Treat sub-$100 months as exact-only trials with three to six live terms.
High competition with mid budgets creates the cruelest trap. Bids near $0.85 exact consume $200 in about 300 clicks, and spread across 24 targets that leaves roughly a dozen clicks per term. A dozen clicks can look like failure when it is only thin data. Either raise the month toward $300 or cut live targets to exact plus a few phrase rows.
Same-stem overlap wastes money quietly. Running "spy thriller" as exact, phrase, and broad in one campaign lets the three match types bid against overlapping shopper phrases. Stagger the launch: exact first, phrase second, broad last. When a broad term starts earning, move its exact wording into the exact group and pause or lower the broad version.
New books with no reviews convert clicks poorly. Keywords buy visits, not trust. If ten shoppers click and none buy, the keyword did its job and the product page did not. Pause expansion, fix cover, description, price, and review count first, then resume buying clicks.
Nonfiction outcome mismatch burns broad fastest. A broad term "best productivity habits series" on a single short guide invites shoppers hunting for bundles and box sets. They click, see one slim book, and leave. Keep nonfiction broad terms tightly bound to the outcome your book delivers, and demote any broad term whose clicks never reach the sample chapter.
Memoir theme drift needs the longest leash. Shoppers may click "travel memoir" while dreaming of three different continents. Give memoir terms four weeks and at least 15 clicks before judging, because theme browsing converts slower than trope shopping in romance or sub-type shopping in thriller.
Failure modes to watch in your first month
The most common failure is launching all 24 targets on day one with a $100 month. Every term gets a click or two, nothing looks like a winner, and the writer concludes ads do not work. The failure was measurement, not advertising. Launch six or fewer terms, read them, then expand.
The second failure is bidding broad highest. Broad discovery clicks feel exciting because volume arrives fast, but the clicks scatter across intents. When broad outbids exact, the loosest terms win your budget while the strictest terms starve. Keep the ladder: exact highest, phrase middle, broad lowest.
The third failure is editing daily. Changing bids every morning on three clicks of data is noise-chasing. Set a reading schedule: check spend every three days, judge bids every fourteen days, and promote or pause terms only on that slower rhythm.
The fourth failure is ignoring search-term reports. The stems in this planner are starting guesses. The reports show the actual phrases shoppers typed before clicking. Every week, copy each new converting shopper phrase into exact, and pause each spending phrase that never converts after 15 to 20 clicks.
The fifth failure is running ads to a broken page. A cover that blurs at thumbnail size, a description that opens with biography instead of promise, or a price far above shelf norms will eat clicks without sales. Fix the page before scaling the keyword list.
The sixth failure is treating illustrative numbers as guarantees. The $0.55 moderate bid, the 0.4 percent rate, and the 474-click estimate are planning assumptions that make scheduling possible. They do not bind Amazon, shoppers, or rivals. Replace each assumption with your own reported figure the moment you have one.
Reading your reports and promoting winners
After two weeks, open the advertised-product search-term report and sort by clicks. Any shopper phrase with clicks and at least one order becomes an exact candidate at your exact bid. Any phrase with 15 to 20 clicks and no orders goes on a pause list. Any phrase with one or two clicks stays live for another cycle.
Promote carefully. When a broad term such as "new crime thriller novel" earns repeated clicks, add "new crime thriller novel" as an exact term at $0.55 rather than raising the broad bid. This moves proven wording into the strictest, highest-bid slot while the broad net keeps fishing for the next discovery.
Demote symmetrically. When a phrase term spends without orders across two full reading cycles, lower its bid one step or pause it. Do not delete it immediately; paused terms cost nothing and preserve history if the book, cover, or price later changes.
Track spend per term in a plain sheet: term, match type, bid, clicks, spend, orders. After a month, that sheet replaces this planner entirely. The planner bought your first grid; the sheet grows your second one from evidence.
Frequently explored questions, answered in depth
Readers often ask whether a starter list can carry a whole launch. It cannot. Twenty-four stems buy your first measured clicks and your first report vocabulary. A mature account holds dozens of proven exact terms harvested from reports, a smaller bench of phrase explorers, and a rotating broad discovery set. Expect the starter share of spend to fall below half by week six if you mine reports weekly.
Readers often ask whether more keywords always help. They do not. Each live term divides the budget and the reading. Doubling targets without doubling money halves the clicks per term and doubles the weeks before any verdict. Add terms only when existing winners earn steadily and leftover daily budget goes unspent.
Readers often ask how bids relate to rank. Bids buy eligibility and placement opportunity; they do not buy a fixed slot. A $0.85 bid in high competition may still sit low if the product page converts poorly, because placement blends bid with expected shopper response. This is another reason to fix cover and description before chasing bids upward.
Readers often ask whether to copy a rival's visible keywords. Visible also-bought titles and editorial phrases are not keyword lists. Bidding an author name you did not earn can waste clicks from loyal fans who will not switch. Bid your own shelf, trope, and outcome words first, and test rival names only as a small separate trial with its own budget cap.
Readers often ask how long to wait before changing anything. Fourteen days is the minimum for an exact read at normal budgets, and twenty-eight days for memoir or low-traffic nonfiction. Faster edits react to noise. Slower edits waste spend on proven losers. Put the next review date on a calendar when you launch, and honor it.
Readers often ask what to do when nothing gets impressions. Check eligibility first: price, category, and availability gates block ads before bids matter. Then check bids against competition: a $0.21 broad bid on a high-competition shelf may never clear the auction. Raise one exact term to the suggested level, confirm impressions appear, then expand.
Tracking these numbers over time in Author Desk
Keyword work does not end at launch; it compounds when the same figures get reviewed on a steady rhythm. That is why Author Desk at /author-desk exists as a standing workspace rather than a one-time calculator. Log each month's budget, blended bid, clicks, and promoted shopper phrases there so later decisions rest on your own history. When the next book in the series arrives, that running record turns a fresh 24-stem grid into a warm start with proven bids and known winners.
A closing checklist before you spend
Confirm the genre setting matches the shelf where your cover would sit in a bookstore. Confirm the monthly amount is money you can spend fully without touching rent or production funds. Confirm competition reflects the sponsored density you actually see, not the difficulty you fear. Launch exact first at the suggested bid, add phrase after winners appear, and hold broad at the lowest bid until reports justify more. Mine reports weekly, promote converting shopper phrases into exact, pause silent spenders after fair trials, and replace every illustrative assumption with your own measured figure as soon as one exists. The planner gave you a grid; your reports will give you a business.