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Three families of KDP tool. And the job each one does.

Software for self-published authors tends to fall into one of three groups: dashboards that report what you earned, platforms that run Amazon advertising, and research tools that do their work before the book is on sale. Each group is good at its own job, and none of them is trying to do the other two.

This page lays out what each family is for, what we could verify about the tools inside it, and where SelfPub Go sits in that picture.

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How to read this page

Every statement about another product is a quote from that vendor’s own public pages, or a direct reading of them, on 21 August 2026. Where a vendor does not say, we write “not stated publicly” instead of guessing. Every link we read is listed under the table.

The SelfPub Go row describes our own app, so read it as our claim rather than a checked one. The roadmap lists what is live today and what is not.

Family one

Royalty dashboards

Book Report · ScribeCount

What it is for

Money arrives from KDP and from every other store you publish to, in different currencies, on different schedules. These tools pull all of it into one report so you can see what you earned without opening six dashboards.

What they do well

Book Report imports from KDP and ten wide distributors, plus direct sales through BookFunnel — the broadest retailer coverage of any indie-author sales dashboard we found. ScribeCount says it collects new data every 15 minutes, including while your computer is off, and as of August 2026 its own platform list marks 28 publishing and advertising platforms as tracked, with 13 more listed as coming soon — the widest coverage among the tools we checked.

Where the family stops

  • Both read advertising data. Neither documents managing it. Book Report’s Amazon Ads integration is reporting only: its own documentation describes importing, reconciling and displaying ad data, and its Report Features index lists eleven feature pages, none of which covers creating or editing campaigns, bids, budgets, keywords or negative keywords.
  • ScribeCount’s Ad Tracking module reports, it does not manage — in its own words, it “matches your ad spend against the royalties those campaigns actually generated — so you see profit, not just impressions.” Nothing on its feature, pricing or FAQ pages describes creating campaigns, changing bids, pausing campaigns or managing negative keywords.
  • Both run through a browser extension inside your own logged-in session, and both send your data to their servers. Book Report states: “When you run Book Report’s browser extension, it sends a copy of your cookies to our server.” ScribeCount answers the same question by design, saying the volume of cross-platform calculation “exceeds what individual computers can handle reliably.”
  • Both price by how much you earn, not by how much you use: your monthly bill rises as your royalties do.
Family two

Amazon PPC platforms

Ad Badger

What it is for

Serious campaign machinery: bid rules, dayparting, negative-keyword automation, search-term harvesting and bulk edits across large accounts. This is the family that genuinely runs advertising rather than reporting on it.

What they do well

Ad Badger manages Amazon advertising properly. Its own product tour describes it as “Serious Amazon PPC Software For Serious Sellers, Brands, and Agencies.” If you run an Amazon seller account, this is a category built for you.

Where the family stops

  • It is built for sellers, not authors. Its own product tour describes it as “Serious Amazon PPC Software For Serious Sellers, Brands, and Agencies.”
  • It tracks advertising, not author earnings. On 21 August 2026, a search of its own site for “KENP” returned no product or feature page, and a search for “royalty” returned only blog posts.
  • Its daily sync deliberately excludes the most recent two days. Its own knowledge base states: “The previous 48 hours’ worth of data is unreliable, both from the API and Amazon itself… never make any optimization decisions based on this data.” Manual syncs can be performed once per marketplace every 12 hours.
Family three

Pre-publication research

Publisher Rocket

What it is for

The work that happens before the book is on sale: which keywords readers actually search, which categories are winnable, what the competition in a niche looks like.

What they do well

Publisher Rocket is a one-time purchase with lifetime access, free updates and a 30-day money-back guarantee — no subscription that grows with your royalties. Its Amazon Ads feature “will help those doing AMS book advertisements find more effective keywords, more efficiently.”

Where the family stops

  • It is a research tool, not an earnings tracker. On 21 August 2026, its homepage, download, support, tutorials, updates and checkout pages contained no mention of royalties, KENP or Kindle Unlimited.
  • It hands you keywords; running the campaigns stays in Amazon’s own advertising console.
  • Which is why we treat it as a neighbour rather than a rival: Rocket helps you choose keywords and categories before the book is live; SelfPub Go tracks what your ads cost and what your books earn once it is.
Where we sit

Between the second family and the first.

Among the tools we checked in August 2026, the author-facing tools and the Amazon advertising tools sit on opposite sides of the author’s money. Book Report and ScribeCount report royalties and read advertising data, but their own documentation describes no way to manage campaigns, bids or keywords. Ad Badger manages Amazon advertising properly, but is built for sellers and tracks no author royalties or KENP. Publisher Rocket works before publication and mentions no royalties or KENP at all. The one tool we found carrying both halves on paper — Perpetua — is sold to sellers, brands and agencies, and the only KDP figures it documents are estimates attributed to ads.

SelfPub Go is a desktop app that does both halves of the same sentence: what the advertising costs, and what the book earns after Amazon takes its share. Ads run through Amazon’s official Advertising API; KDP royalty reports are read on your own machine.

  • Sponsored Products, Brands and Display in one table, with bid changes waiting for your approval
  • ACOS scored against your royalty, not against the retail price
  • KENP page reads counted as income, at a rate you control
  • Every marketplace totalled in one currency, the original always a click away
  • Royalty reports stay on your computer, not in our database

The detail behind those five lines lives on Ads Manager, Royalty Analytics and Security. SelfPub Go is in early access, so nothing on this site is for sale yet.

Side by side

Six columns, five tools, one date.

The same six questions asked of the five tools in the three families above. Every cell answers in a few words so a row can be read across; the sourced wording behind that answer — the quote, the caveat, the pages we read — is the numbered note underneath. A cell says “not stated publicly” whenever the vendor does not answer the question on a public page — absence from a website is not the same as absence from a product.

BookBeam and Perpetua are not in this table. Each has a sourced page of its own: SelfPub Go vs BookBeam and SelfPub Go vs Perpetua.

Documented, or oursPartly — read the noteNot found on their pagesNot stated publicly

SelfPub Go

Ads + royalties, desktop

Our app
Ads management

Yes1

Royalty data

Yes2

KENP

Yes3

Data freshness

Live while campaigns run4

Platform

Desktop app5

Built for

Authors running Amazon Ads6

Book Report

Royalty dashboard

Ads management

Reporting only7

Royalty data

Yes8

KENP

Yes9

Data freshness

When you open it10

Platform

Browser + extension11

Built for

Indie authors and small publishers12

Read the full comparison

ScribeCount

Royalty dashboard

Ads management

Reporting only13

Royalty data

Yes14

KENP

Yes15

Data freshness

Every 15 minutes, it states16

Platform

Browser + extension17

Built for

Wide-published indie authors18

Read the full comparison

Publisher Rocket

Pre-publication research

Ads management

Keywords, not campaigns19

Royalty data

No20

KENP

No21

Data freshness

Not stated publicly22

Platform

Desktop download23

Built for

Authors before the book is live24

Read the full comparison

Ad Badger

Amazon PPC platform

Ads management

Yes25

Royalty data

No26

KENP

No27

Data freshness

Daily, minus the last 48 hours28

Platform

Web app

Built for

Sellers, brands and agencies29

Checked August 2026 from public sources — every cell read on 21 August 2026 from the vendor’s own pages.

Something out of date? Tell us and we will fix it.

The wording behind each answer

Every numbered answer in the table points to a note here. These are the quotes and the readings each answer was shortened from — the vendor’s own words wherever quotation marks appear, all read on 21 August 2026. Nothing in the table is asserted that is not written out in full below.

SelfPub Go

  1. 1

    Ads management

    Sponsored Products, Brands and Display in one table, with search terms, negative keywords and bid changes in the app. Changes go through Amazon’s official Advertising API and wait for your approval.

  2. 2

    Royalty data

    Royalties, units and profit per book and per marketplace, with ad spend subtracted from your royalty rather than from the retail price.

  3. 3

    KENP

    Page reads sit beside paid sales. Their value is an estimate at the rate you set until Amazon publishes the month’s rate, and past months recalculate when you update it.

  4. 4

    Data freshness

    Ad figures arrive over Amazon’s Advertising API with Amazon Marketing Stream connected. KDP royalty reports are imported by the desktop app on your own machine.

  5. 5

    Platform

    macOS and Windows. No browser extension, and royalty reports stay on your computer.

  6. 6

    Built for

    Self-published authors and small presses advertising their own KDP titles.

Book Report

  1. 7

    Ads management

    Its documentation describes importing, reconciling and displaying ad data: “Data for Sponsored Products ads within the last 90 days will be imported, and kept up-to-date.” The Report Features index lists eleven feature pages, none covering campaigns, bids, budgets or keywords. Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Display are not mentioned.

  2. 8

    Royalty data

    Earnings from KDP and ten wide distributors, plus direct sales through BookFunnel — the broadest retailer coverage of any indie-author sales dashboard we found.

  3. 9

    KENP

    Kindle Unlimited pages read are among the figures its documentation describes.

  4. 10

    Data freshness

    “Every time you open Book Report, it will attempt to import the latest data from Kindle Direct Publishing and any connected accounts.” Five retailers — Kobo Writing Life, Apple Books, ACX, Findaway Voices and IngramSpark — update only after the month completes. Amazon Ads refresh frequency: not stated publicly.

  5. 11

    Platform

    “Book Report works best in Chrome, Firefox, Microsoft Edge, Opera. Other browsers (like Safari) can be used to browse your data, but do not support importing new data.” A desktop version is not offered on its site.

  6. 12

    Built for

    Including authors publishing wide, through its ten connected distributors.

ScribeCount

  1. 13

    Ads management

    Its Ad Tracking module “matches your ad spend against the royalties those campaigns actually generated — so you see profit, not just impressions.” Nothing on its feature, pricing or FAQ pages describes creating campaigns, changing bids, pausing campaigns or managing negative keywords.

  2. 14

    Royalty data

    As of August 2026 its platform list marks 28 publishing and advertising platforms as tracked, with 13 more listed as coming soon — the widest coverage among the tools we checked.

  3. 15

    KENP

    Kindle Unlimited income is calculated from a KENP rate you choose — last month’s, a six-month average, or your own.

  4. 16

    Data freshness

    ScribeCount states it collects new data every 15 minutes, “including when your computer is off.” For Amazon it deliberately reads the downloadable report rather than the live dashboard “because it includes only fully processed sales and is more accurate.” Kindle Unlimited income is an estimate at a rate you pick until the 15th of each month.

  5. 17

    Platform

    An extension installed in Chrome, Firefox or Edge; each publishing platform has to be visited with the extension active.

  6. 18

    Built for

    In its own words: “ScribeCount was designed for wide-published authors.”

Publisher Rocket

  1. 19

    Ads management

    Its Amazon Ads feature “will help those doing AMS book advertisements find more effective keywords, more efficiently.” Running the campaigns stays in Amazon’s own advertising console.

  2. 20

    Royalty data

    On 21 August 2026, its homepage, download, support, tutorials, updates and checkout pages contained no mention of royalties.

  3. 21

    KENP

    The same pages contained no mention of KENP or Kindle Unlimited.

  4. 22

    Data freshness

    On the pages we checked we found no statement about how often its data refreshes.

  5. 23

    Platform

    Windows, macOS and Chromebook. Its support page states: “since it is not a web-based app, it will not work on iPads, tablets, or smartphones.”

  6. 24

    Built for

    Choosing keywords and categories, and researching a niche.

Ad Badger

  1. 25

    Ads management

    Amazon PPC management is the product. We have not published a feature-by-feature reading of it — see Ad Badger’s own pages for what it covers.

  2. 26

    Royalty data

    On 21 August 2026, a search of its own site for “royalty” returned only blog posts.

  3. 27

    KENP

    A search of its own site for “KENP” returned no product or feature page.

  4. 28

    Data freshness

    “The previous 48 hours’ worth of data is unreliable, both from the API and Amazon itself… never make any optimization decisions based on this data.” Manual syncs can be performed once per marketplace every 12 hours.

  5. 29

    Built for

    Its own product tour: “Serious Amazon PPC Software For Serious Sellers, Brands, and Agencies.”

Sources

The pages every quote and every note on this page came from. Prices are deliberately absent from this table: they move faster than a hub page can be re-checked, and one vendor’s own pricing page contradicted itself on the day we read it. Wherever a figure like that appears anywhere on this site, it carries the date we read it and the link we read it from.

None of the products named on this page is affiliated with SelfPub Go. Product names and quotations belong to their owners and are used here for identification and comparison.

One at a time

The longer versions.

A page each: what the other tool is built to do, what it does well, where SelfPub Go does something different, and who should honestly pick which. Same rule as this page — the vendor’s own words, with the link and the date.

SelfPub Go vs

Book Report

The broadest retailer coverage we found, and an Amazon Ads integration its own documentation describes as reporting only.

Read the comparison

SelfPub Go vs

ScribeCount

Data every 15 minutes by its own account, and the widest platform list we checked — with an Ad Tracking module that reports rather than manages.

Read the comparison

SelfPub Go vs

BookBeam

A research and production suite for Amazon self-publishers, whose sales and royalty figures are modeled from Amazon Best Sellers Rank — for any book on Amazon, rather than from your own KDP account.

Read the comparison

SelfPub Go vs

Publisher Rocket

Rocket helps you choose keywords and categories before the book is live; SelfPub Go tracks what your ads cost and what your books earn once it is.

Read the comparison

SelfPub Go vs

Perpetua

“Retail media optimization software” in its own words, sold to sellers, brands and agencies — and the one tool we found carrying both halves on paper, with three documented KDP metrics its own definitions attribute to its ads.

Read the comparison

Not every tool in the table has its own page yet; two tools with a page of their own — BookBeam and Perpetua — are not in the table; and not every tool authors ask about is in either. We add a product only once we have read its public documentation ourselves and can quote it with a date — which is slower, and the reason there are no numbers here we cannot show you the source for.

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