What This Tool Does
The Author Ads Dashboard is a browser-based calculator built for indie authors running Facebook ads. It has two tools in one file — no login, no subscription, no internet required once it's open.
📈 Tab 1: Series Profit Calculator
Enter your series data to find out what every Book 1 sale is actually worth — and whether your ads are profitable.
🎯 Tab 2: Ad Score Calculator
Enter your ad metrics to get a score out of 15 and a Kill / Watch / Scale verdict on any running ad.
How to Open the Dashboard
Create a dedicated folder first Before saving anything, create a special folder on your computer to keep all your Writing Wives tools in one place. For example: Documents → Writing Wives Tools or Desktop → My Ad Tools. Save the dashboard, guides, and plugin files all here so nothing gets lost.
Save the file to your folder Move or save ads-profit-dashboard.html into your dedicated Writing Wives Tools folder.
Open it in your browser Double-click the file. It will open in Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge — any modern browser works. No internet connection needed after the first load.
Bookmark it for easy access Once it's open, hit Cmd+D (Mac) or Ctrl+D (Windows) to bookmark it so you can come back any time.
Note: The dashboard does not save your data between sessions. Each time you open it you'll start fresh, so jot down your numbers or take a screenshot of the results before closing.
Tab 1 — Series Profit Calculator
This tab answers: "What is every Book 1 sale actually worth across my whole series — and can I profitably run ads to it?"
Global Settings
| Field | What to enter | Default |
|---|---|---|
| KU Page Rate | The current Kindle Unlimited per-page payout rate. Check your KDP dashboard for the current month's rate. | $0.0042 |
| Default Royalty % | 70% for books priced $2.99–$9.99, 35% for everything else. | 70% |
| Books in Series | How many books are in your series. Select from the dropdown. | 5 |
Per-Book Data one row per book
| Field | What to enter |
|---|---|
| Price ($) | Your list price on Amazon. |
| KENPC | Kindle Edition Normalized Page Count. Find this in your KDP dashboard under the title's detail page. |
| Royalty % | Usually 70% for most titles. |
| Delivery ($) | The per-download delivery fee charged by Amazon. Typically $0.09–$0.15 depending on file size. Find in KDP dashboard. |
| Sales/Mo | How many paid copies you sold last month. |
| KU Reads/Mo | Total KU pages read for that book last month (from KDP dashboard). |
💡 Tip — Permafree Book 1
If Book 1 is permafree, set its Price to $0 and Royalty % to 0. The calculator will still count KU reads and read-through value from Books 2+.
Reading the Results
📊
Read-Through Columns (BoB & Cumulative)Green = 70%+ (strong). Amber = 45–69% (decent). Red = under 45% (needs attention). These tell you how many readers continue from one book to the next.
💰
Total Series Value The dollar value of every Book 1 sale, counting all the revenue you earn as readers continue through the series. This is your true LTV per customer.
📉
ACoS Profitability Table Shows whether your ads are profitable at different spend levels. Green = profitable. Red = losing money. Find the highest ACoS where you're still green — that's your ceiling.
📋
Series Health Summary Plain-English breakdown at the bottom explaining what your numbers mean, what to fix, and whether your series is ad-ready.
Tab 2 — Ad Score Calculator
This tab answers: "Is my running Facebook ad performing well enough to keep, optimize, or kill?"
You'll need data from two places: Facebook Ads Manager and Amazon Attribution.
🟢
12–15: Scale Your ad is working. Increase budget by 20–30% or duplicate the ad set to a new audience.
🟡
8–11: Watch & Optimize There's a real signal here. Find the lowest-scoring metric and fix that first before spending more.
🟠
4–7: Tweak Before Spending More Don't scale. Test new creative or adjust targeting before increasing budget.
🔴
0–3: Kill Cut this ad. Start fresh with different creative or a different audience.
Let the ad run at least 5–7 days before scoring it. Facebook's algorithm needs time to optimize delivery before the numbers are meaningful.