Publisher Champ metrics glossary
Use this glossary to understand the abbreviations, calculated metrics, and specialist publishing terms shown in Publisher Champ.
The definitions follow the calculations used in the dashboard and reporting pages. Every value is affected by your selected dates, currency, filters, connected platforms, and account settings.
The most important distinction
AMS metrics use Amazon ad-attributed revenue and Amazon ad spend. Overall metrics use the wider royalties and spending included by your current filters.
ROI and ROAS are also different: ROI subtracts spend before dividing, while ROAS does not.
Formula quick reference
| Metric | Formula used by Publisher Champ | Display |
|---|---|---|
| Overall ROI | (Total royalties - total spending) / total spending × 100 | Percentage |
| AMS ROI | (Amazon ad revenue - Amazon ad spend) / Amazon ad spend × 100 | Percentage |
| ACoS or AMS ACoS | Amazon ad spend / Amazon ad revenue × 100 | Percentage |
| TACoS | Advertising cost / total royalties × 100 | Percentage |
| Overall ROAS | Total royalties / ad spend | Ratio in Marketplace Stats |
| AMS ROAS | Amazon ad revenue / Amazon ad spend | Ratio in Marketplace Stats |
| CTR | Clicks / impressions × 100 | Percentage |
| CPC | Ad spend / clicks | Currency per click |
| Ad CR | Ad-platform orders / ad-platform clicks × 100 | Percentage |
| Total CR | KDP total orders / clicks × 100 | Percentage |
| Estimated borrows | KENP reads / KENPC, rounded down | Whole books |
| Attribution conversion | Total units sold including estimated borrows / selected click count × 100 | Percentage |
| Cost per sale | Facebook spend / total units sold including estimated borrows | Currency per sale |
| Attribution ROAS | Attribution total royalties / Facebook spend × 100 | Percentage in Attribution Stats |
| Estimated royalty per unit | Gross book royalties / units sold | Currency per unit |
| Profitable ACoS target | Series gross royalties / Book 1 gross royalties × 100 | Percentage |
If a calculation needs a denominator that is zero, the interface may display a dash or zero instead of a result.
Publishing and sales
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| KDP | Kindle Direct Publishing, Amazon's self-publishing platform and the main source of Amazon sales, royalties, reads, pre-orders, and bookshelf data in Publisher Champ. |
| KU | Kindle Unlimited, Amazon's subscription reading program. KU activity is reported as normalized pages read rather than ordinary unit sales. |
| KENP reads | Kindle Edition Normalized Pages read through Kindle Unlimited. The interface often shortens this to Reads or KU Reads. |
| KENPC v3.0 | Kindle Edition Normalized Page Count for a specific ebook. Publisher Champ uses this value to convert KENP reads into estimated full-book borrows. You can set it on the Bookshelf page. |
| KENP rate | The estimated royalty paid per KENP page read for a marketplace and month. It is based on the KDP Select Global Fund and the total KENP pages read in that marketplace. Many authors use the previous month's rate to estimate current royalties until Amazon announces the new rate. |
| Estimated borrows | An estimate of complete KU book reads: KENP reads divided by the book's KENPC, rounded down. This is an aggregate estimate, not a count of individually tracked readers. |
| ASIN or ID | ASIN means Amazon Standard Identification Number. Publisher Champ also supports platform-specific identifiers, so many tables label this field ASIN/ID. |
| BSR | Best Sellers Rank. A lower number means a stronger Amazon sales rank. |
| Lowest BSR | The best numerical BSR found for the book across the available Amazon marketplaces. |
| Marketplace | A country or regional storefront in which sales, royalties, rank, or advertising activity is recorded, such as Amazon US or Amazon UK. |
| Book format | The edition or product type, such as ebook, paperback, hardcover, audiobook, expanded distribution, or a custom format. |
| Expanded distribution | Print units sold through Amazon's wider distribution network rather than only through an Amazon retail storefront. |
| Units sold | The number of book units recorded for the selected filters. The formats included depend on the table. |
| Paid units | Book units for which a purchase or paid distribution was recorded. |
| Total Paid Units | In the Power Table, this includes paid ebooks, paperbacks, hardcovers, expanded distribution, audiobooks, and estimated borrows. It excludes KENP pages and free ebooks. |
| Free units | Copies distributed at a zero purchase price. They are reported separately and excluded from Total Paid Units. |
| Pre-orders | Orders placed before publication. Amazon may use the pre-order date as the publication date, so the publication date may need to be corrected on the Bookshelf page before comparing launches. |
| Refunds | Returned or reversed sales shown in the sales logs. Refunds can reduce reported units and royalties. |
| Amazon followers | The number of readers following an author on Amazon, obtained from KDP metadata. |
| Reviews | Written customer feedback tracked for a book. |
| Ratings and average rating | Star ratings recorded for a book and their displayed average. A rating can exist without a written review. |
Royalties spending and profit
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Gross royalties | Book earnings before advertising spend and external expenses are deducted. The interface also describes this as revenue. |
| Book royalties | Royalties from sold book units. This is separate from royalties earned through KENP page reads. |
| Read royalties | Royalties attributed to KENP or KU page reads. Some pages label the same value KENP Reads Royalties. |
| External royalties | Income entered manually or imported from a platform outside the standard connected royalty feeds. |
| Platform royalties | Royalties attributed to a particular sales platform, including connected direct-sales channels. |
| Total royalties | The royalties included by the current dates and filters, normally combining book royalties, read royalties, and any included external royalties. |
| Ad spend | Advertising cost included by the current filters. It can include Amazon Ads, Facebook or Meta Ads, and BookBub Ads, with marketplace tax adjustments where configured. |
| External expenses | Manually entered or imported costs that reduce profit but are not advertising spend. |
| Total spending | Included ad spend plus included external expenses. The sources depend on your connections, settings, and filters. |
| Net royalties | Gross royalties minus included advertising spend and external expenses. Publisher Champ uses this as its profit figure. |
| Profit and loss | A view of net royalties over time or by category. Positive values mean royalties exceeded included spending; negative values mean a loss. |
| Royalty share | One royalty amount as a percentage of the row's total gross royalties. The Power Table can show these shares beneath eligible royalty values. |
| Revenue adjustment | A manual royalty or expense entry used to correct or supplement reporting throughout Publisher Champ. |
| Direct sales | Sales imported from storefronts such as Shopify, WooCommerce, BookFunnel, Squarespace, SquareUp, ThriveCart, or Fourthwall. Platform settings can change which sales value is imported. |
| Estimated projection | A forward estimate based on activity available so far in the current period. It changes as new data arrives. |
| Average daily or monthly | The selected value normalized to a day or month for comparison. It is not the raw total for the period. |
Net royalties are a reporting metric
Net royalties means gross royalties minus the spending included by your current Publisher Champ settings and filters. It is not a tax or accounting definition of net income.
Advertising performance
Platform abbreviations
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| AMS | The legacy abbreviation used in the interface for Amazon advertising data. In current product language, it generally means Amazon Ads or Amazon Advertising. |
| AMZ | A compact label for Amazon, used in fields such as AMZ Spend and AMZ Attribution. |
| FB or Meta | Facebook or Meta advertising data. FB Spend means included Meta ad spend. |
| SB | Sponsored Brands, an Amazon Ads campaign type. A setting can allocate SB spend equally to the relevant ASINs or leave it as a separate Sponsored Brands spend record. |
Delivery and conversion metrics
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Impressions | The number of times an ad was displayed. |
| Clicks | The number of recorded ad or link clicks. Smart Link clicks are tracked separately from ad-platform clicks. |
| CTR | Click-through rate: clicks divided by impressions, multiplied by 100. Avg. CTR is the aggregate rate for the selected book or group of ads. |
| CPC | Cost per click: ad spend divided by clicks. Avg. CPC is displayed as currency per click. |
| Ad orders | Orders reported by the advertising platform. They are a subset of total orders, and one ad order can contain more than one unit. |
| Organic orders | Total KDP orders not identified as ad orders in the selected view. Reporting delays can temporarily make the split look inconsistent. |
| Total orders | Orders reported by KDP. Ad orders are already included, so do not add Ad Orders to Total Orders. |
| Ad CR | Ad conversion rate based on ad-platform data: ad orders divided by ad clicks, multiplied by 100. |
| Total CR | Conversion rate based on KDP total orders and the applicable clicks: total orders divided by clicks, multiplied by 100. |
| Ad reads | KENP reads reported as originating from ads. These inorganic reads are already part of total KENP reads. |
| Ad read royalties | Royalties attributed to KENP reads reported from ads. |
Cost return and efficiency metrics
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| ACoS | Advertising Cost of Sales: ad spend divided by ad-attributed revenue, multiplied by 100. Lower values mean less spend per unit of attributed revenue, but profitability still depends on royalties and other costs. |
| AMS ACoS | Amazon-only ACoS: Amazon ad spend divided by Amazon ad revenue, multiplied by 100. |
| TACoS | Total Advertising Cost of Sales in Publisher Champ: advertising cost divided by total royalties for the selected book and period, multiplied by 100. Unlike ACoS, it uses total royalties rather than only ad-attributed revenue. |
| ROI | Return on Investment. Publisher Champ calculates overall ROI as net return divided by spending: (total royalties - total spending) / total spending × 100. |
| Overall ROI | ROI using organic and ad-attributed royalties plus all included spending. 0% means royalties equal spending, 100% means profit equals the amount spent, and a negative value means a loss. |
| AMS ROI | Amazon advertising ROI using Amazon ad revenue only: (Amazon ad revenue - Amazon ad spend) / Amazon ad spend × 100. It is narrower than Overall ROI and excludes organic royalties. |
| ROAS | Return on Ad Spend: revenue divided by ad spend. A value of 2 means two units of revenue for each unit spent. ROAS does not subtract spend, unlike ROI. |
| Overall ROAS | In Marketplace Stats, total royalties divided by total ad spend. It includes organic and inorganic royalties and is displayed as a ratio. |
| AMS ROAS | In Marketplace Stats, Amazon ad revenue divided by Amazon ad spend. It is displayed as a ratio and covers ad-attributed Amazon revenue only. |
ROAS is displayed in two ways
Marketplace Stats displays Overall ROAS and AMS ROAS as ratios. Amazon Attribution Stats multiplies its ROAS result by 100 and displays a percentage. Check the page and unit before comparing ROAS values.
Spending records and settings
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Unassigned FB Ad Spend | Meta ad spend that has not been assigned to a book. A profile setting can exclude unassigned Meta ads from calculations. |
| Non-Allocated AMS Ad Spend | The difference between Amazon's campaign-level spend and the smaller amount that can be assigned to books or ad groups. Publisher Champ retains the difference in a separate record so total spend is not understated. See What is Non-Allocated AMS Ad Spend. |
| Accumulated advertising debt | Current billing-period charges plus statement balance reported for advertising. This is a billing figure, not the same as spend limited to the selected reporting dates. |
| Allocate SB Ads to ASINs | A setting that distributes Sponsored Brands spend equally among the relevant ASINs. When disabled, the spend remains a separate Sponsored Brands record. |
| Show Amazon Ad Spend only for Bookshelf books | A setting that limits Amazon advertising spend in reports to books represented in your Publisher Champ Bookshelf. |
Amazon Attribution
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Amazon Attribution | Amazon measurement data for activity driven by off-Amazon marketing, such as Meta ads. Publisher Champ combines Attribution results with mapped Facebook spend. |
| Attribution tag | A tracking tag attached to an external ad link so Amazon can associate later activity with the campaign or ad group. |
| Attribution ad group | The Amazon Attribution grouping to which one or more external ads are assigned. Several Meta ads can share the same Attribution totals. |
| Attribution publisher | The publisher or traffic-source value recorded in uploaded Amazon Attribution data and available as a filter. |
| DPV clicks | Detail Page View clicks reported by Amazon Attribution. The interface labels these AMZ Attr. DPV Clicks and can use them as the denominator for Attribution conversion. |
| Add to Cart clicks | Attributed events in which the advertised product was added to an Amazon cart. |
| Attr. KENP Reads | KENP pages Amazon Attribution associates with the selected tag, ad group, or campaign. |
| Attr. Total Borrows | Estimated full KU reads from attributed KENP reads divided by KENPC, rounded down. |
| Attr. Total Units Sold | Attributed sold units plus estimated borrows where the interface states that borrows are included. |
| Attr. Conversion | Attributed total units sold, including estimated borrows, divided by the selected click source. The denominator can be Amazon DPV clicks or Meta clicks. |
| Cost Per Sale | Facebook spend divided by attributed total units sold, including estimated borrows. |
| Attr. Book Royalties | Royalties from attributed sold book units. |
| Attr. Read Royalties | Royalties from attributed KENP reads. |
| Attr. Total Royalties | Attributed book royalties plus attributed read royalties. |
| AMZ Attr. Net Royalties | Attributed total royalties after subtracting the Facebook spend used for the row or selection. |
| AMZ Attr. Net Sales | The net-sales value reported through Amazon Attribution. It is a sales amount and should not be assumed to equal the royalty paid to the author. |
| Attribution ROAS | On Attribution Stats, attributed total royalties divided by Facebook spend, multiplied by 100 and displayed as a percentage. This differs from the ratio-style ROAS in Marketplace Stats. |
| Shared attribution metrics | Attribution totals repeated across Facebook ads that share an Attribution ad group. Do not sum the repeated values across those rows; the table labels the unique totals separately. |
| Separate Attribution and FB dates | An optional comparison mode that gives Attribution results more time to mature while using an earlier Facebook spend window. KU reads and read royalties can arrive after the original click. |
Attribution data can lag
Facebook spend and clicks can appear before Amazon Attribution has finished reporting sales, KU reads, and read royalties. Very recent conversion, net, cost per sale, and ROAS values may therefore look worse until the Attribution data catches up.
Series and launch analysis
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Estimated readers | Included units sold plus whole estimated KU borrows. This is an aggregate estimate and does not identify individual people. |
| RPR or EPR | Royalties Per Reader, also called Earnings Per Reader. It estimates the royalties generated by a reader entering at the selected book and continuing through later included books. |
| Royalties per reader | For a series book, adjusted book and KU royalties divided by adjusted estimated readers. |
| Reader reach | The estimated proportion of entry readers who reach a later book in the modeled series funnel. |
| RPR contribution | Cumulative reader reach multiplied by that book's adjusted royalties per reader. Total RPR is the sum of all included book contributions. |
| Sell-through | The percentage of buyers of the previous included book who also bought the next included book. |
| Cumulative sell-through | The percentage of buyers of the first included book who bought through to a later book. |
| Read-through | The percentage of readers of the previous included book who also read the next included book. |
| Cumulative read-through | The percentage of readers of the first included book who read through to a later book. |
| Sell-Through Revenue | Estimated revenue from one buyer who purchases Book 1 and continues buying later books until dropping out of the series. |
| Read-Through Revenue | Estimated revenue from one reader who reads Book 1 and continues reading later books until dropping out of the series. |
| Estimated Royalty Per Unit | Gross book royalties divided by units sold for the selected period. |
| Profitable ACoS Target | The Series Stats target for Amazon Ads on Book 1: series gross royalties divided by Book 1 gross royalties, multiplied by 100. It estimates the downstream royalty multiplier available to support acquisition spend. |
| Exclude mid-series starters | An optional model adjustment. If a later book has more estimated readers than the preceding modeled book, Publisher Champ removes the excess readers and the proportional downstream royalties. |
| Relative pre-order timeline | Aligns each selected book to Day 1, Week 1, or Month 1 so launch trajectories can be compared regardless of calendar date. |
| Absolute pre-order timeline | Plots pre-order activity on actual calendar dates from the earliest to latest selected pre-order. |
| Separate ASINs | Shows individual editions or identifiers separately instead of combining matching titles in launch analysis. |
Series metrics use aggregate sales and KENP activity. They are directional estimates, not records of an individual customer's journey through a series.
Interface and reporting controls
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| AND platform mode | When Facebook is selected with platform filters, includes Meta ads only when they are assigned to the selected platform or platforms. |
| OR platform mode | When Facebook is selected with platform filters, includes Meta ad spend regardless of the selected book platform. The interface describes this as the default behavior. |
| Spending breakdown | A split of total spending by source, such as Amazon Ads, Meta Ads, BookBub Ads, and external expenses. |
| Pinned date range | A saved reporting period that loads automatically when you open the relevant page. |
| Smart Link clicks | Clicks recorded on Publisher Champ Smart Links. They are separate from clicks reported by Amazon Ads, Meta Ads, or Amazon Attribution. |
| Journal event | A dated note about a publishing or marketing change, such as a cover update. It can be displayed as an annotation on reporting graphs. |
How to interpret delayed and overlapping data
- Ad orders, ad reads, and attributed results are subsets of broader totals. Adding them to total orders, total reads, or total royalties would count the same activity twice.
- Amazon, KDP, Ads, and Attribution feeds can update on different schedules. Recent conversion, organic-versus-ad splits, and read royalties can change as delayed records arrive.
- Estimated borrows, readers, read-through, sell-through revenue, and projections are modeled values. Use them for directional analysis rather than as individually observed customer journeys.