I get emails every day from helpful author/experts who want me to buy their school/book to better optimize my ads.
Today, I responded to one of those with a description of my problem, and, shockingly, received a helpful response.
Basically, they said the Amazon dashboard is correct, and if it isn't showing many sales (it's now showing about 18% of my sales, up from zero when I started this thread) then I am gaining a lot of sales organically, from previous reads, also-boughts, anything but clicking on an ad.
So, good news, assuming I accept that explanation. Which, I'd like to, but like always, I'm skeptical of good news when it comes to Amazon.
But if I do accept that explanation, we get back to the question of why I'm spending so much on ads that are not producing that much in sales.
Not looking for an answer, just thought I share the experience. Pausing the ads on 9/1 for maybe a week was kicked around the dinner table tonight. Might be an interesting experiment.
Or, a disaster.