Question for Indie romance authors

[Grace]

I just published my first book on amazon about a week and a half ago. I was just wondering what is considered "good" for daily sales and daily kindle pages read? Also what is everyone's advertising budget?
Also, how do you deal with days (or weeks!) when you have no sales and no reads? I started with my book ranked in the 3000s for the genre and today it's in the 5000s. While I never expected to become a millionaire, it's a bit heartbreaking!

[Sarah]

That sales rank will get you down if you watch it too closely. ;) While those analytics are good for monitoring how effective your strategies are, I'd be inclined to say not to focus too much on them. Books can rise and fall hundreds of rank points in a day and that really has no barring on whether or not your book is good or successful. Marketing a book is a marathon, not a sprint (or maybe some combination of both). Keep promoting and writing. ^^ We may not all be best sellers, but people are finding and reading our work and that is what's important.

[Christina]

Sarah is right in that paying attention to your rank is counterproductive. As for averages, well, there is no average. Some folks will go a month with no sale and some will sell many in one day. There are many factors to take into consideration. You might want to visit the marketing and promo folder as this topic has come up quite a bit and we have pinned a thread to the top of the folder for this reason.

[Riley, Viking Extraordinaire]

Yeah, I'm a guy who watches graphs for fun, and it's hilarious to watch your sales rank continue to jump up and down between giveaways and other promotions. Deep breaths, and remember it's a marathon not a sprint. Even your overnight successes were many years in the making.

[Owen]

Grace: The advice above is excellent. What is considered "good" is that you published your first book! Sales ranks bounce around all over the place, as Sarah and Christina say, sales droughts happen to everyone, and do check out those threads. There is a lot of experience there that can be useful to setting expectations in such a way that you aren't distracted by daily fluctuations that are essentially meaningless.

As Riley says, "overnight" successes are years in the making. So take the long view, keep writing, and best of luck!

[Grace]

Thanks to everyone for the kind words. I did check out the posts to the marketing and promo folder. I just have to learn some patience.

[G.A.]

Don't despair. Roman wasn't built in day and neither are book sales. Continue to built your pool of readers with social media, marketing and any other methods available. The sales will eventually come.

Keep writing.