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How to Generate Amazon Ads Keywords from Your Book

The Keyword Forge tab turns your book’s title, author name, and a few genre or theme words into a starter list of Sponsored Products keywords. It runs entirely in your browser — no ASIN, no Amazon call — so it works for manuscripts and books that aren’t listed yet. The result exports as a CSV in SP bulk-upload shape, ready to receive your bids.

What the inputs mean

  • Book title. Required. Common words like “the” and “a” are dropped automatically, and every remaining word becomes a keyword on its own.
  • Author name(s). Required. Separate multiple authors with commas. Your name is included as a keyword and appended to the longer combinations (“… for Jane Doe”) — author searches are a real traffic source for indie books.
  • Genre / theme words. Optional, up to five. Each one is combined with your title words and used to seed the longer combinations (“fantasy alchemist”, “fantasy midnight for Jane Doe”).

How the combinations are built

The generator works in three deterministic passes:

  1. Singles — the full title, each title word, each author name, and each theme word.
  2. Pairs — neighboring title words as phrases, plus every theme word paired with every title word.
  3. Themed triples — three-word title phrases and theme + title-word pairs, each with a “for {author}” suffix.

Duplicates are removed and any keyword longer than 50 characters is dropped. The order is stable, so generating the same inputs always gives the same list.

Using the CSV

The export has three columns — Keyword, MatchType, and Bid_Cents. Every row starts as a BROAD match with an empty bid, because the generator can’t see live market data. Before you upload:

  1. Open the CSV in a spreadsheet and cut it down to the keywords you genuinely want to buy.
  2. Fill in Bid_Cents (for example 75 for a 75¢ bid). Start conservative and let Amazon’s suggested-bid ranges guide you once the campaign is live.
  3. Upload the file in Amazon Ads under Sponsored Products → bulk operations, or key the shortlist into a new manual campaign.

For data-driven bids on a book that is already listed, pair this with the Keyword Search tab: it returns Amazon’s recommended keywords for an ASIN with suggested bids and impression share.