About AuthorTally

Built and run by one person.

The thing that started it

I'm an engineer. I publish books on the side, and last summer I put a small budget behind one of them on Amazon Ads.

The ads console told me one of my keywords had returned 14.65 times what it cost. That's the kind of number that makes you want to raise your bid. But my royalty statement didn't look like a book that was winning, so I sat down with both reports and worked out where the gap was.

Here it is: the ads console reports "sales" as the retail price the customer paid Amazon. It has no idea what your royalty is, because your royalty rate and your printing cost live in KDP, which is a different system. On that book I earned 52 cents a copy. Against 52 cents, a 14.65× return was a loss. Every keyword I was proud of was quietly losing money, and every screen Amazon showed me said the opposite.

So I built the thing that does the arithmetic Amazon won't.

What it does, plainly

The free break-even check reads one advertising report and asks what you actually earn per sale. It shows your real break-even point and flags the keywords that look profitable but aren't. It can't see Kindle Unlimited income, so its numbers are a floor, and it says so.

The full ledger also reads your KDP royalty and page-read reports, so it can show real per-book profit with KU income counted, group your paperback and ebook editions as one book, and remember last month.

Where your files go: nowhere

Your reports are read and analyzed inside your own browser. They are not uploaded, not stored on a server, and not visible to me in any form. There is no Amazon login, no account connection, and no browser extension asking for access to your session.

You don't have to take my word for it. Load the page, disconnect from the internet, and use it anyway. It works, because there's nothing on the other end to talk to.

The only personal data I ever hold is what it takes to sell a license: an email address, a license key, and a payment receipt from Stripe. The privacy policy spells out exactly which is which.

What I promise about numbers

Every figure is labeled with what kind of figure it is. Facts from your reports are marked as observed. Amazon's advertising attribution is marked as attributed, because it's Amazon's model and it settles late. Kindle Unlimited income is marked estimated, because Amazon doesn't publish the per-page rate until after the month closes — its own statements show those earnings as "N/A" until then.

No tool can tell you which specific campaign caused which specific page read. Amazon doesn't link those records, so anything claiming otherwise is guessing. AuthorTally shows you what can be known and is honest about the rest.

What it costs

The break-even check is free, with no account and no signup. The full ledger is $59 once — not a subscription. It includes 12 months of updates and report-format fixes, and if I ever shut it down, license holders get a downloadable copy that runs without my servers. Details on the full ledger page.

Not affiliated with Amazon

AuthorTally is an independent tool. It isn't affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to Amazon.com, Inc. Amazon, Kindle, and KDP are their trademarks.

Say hello

Questions, bugs, a report format that doesn't parse, or a feature you need: hello@authortally.com. It reaches me directly.