Self-published my first novel this week and I hadn't really thought about this before. What's a good peak ranking for a novel to hit on Amazon? Top 100? Top 500? Top 1,000? Top 10,000? Top 100/genre? Top 250/genre? Top 500/genre?
not to be discouraging but for a first book it is likely it won't do much - also if you're advertising first books are notoriously hard to make a positive return on essentially any sales beyond your immediate family and friends are a plus, breaking even or making a profit is a major plus, but the chances of making top 500 without adverts are very small (and not hugely larger even with adverts...its a learning curve in itself) top whatever/ genre is fairly meaningless as a lot depends on the genre top500/romance or top500/thriller is a lot harder to achieve than top500/clog dancing Also don't get too hung up on peak ranking - thats a very trad metric because a trad book has 3-6 weeks to make its money before it disappears, a self published book says promoted as long as you want it to, so self publishing is much more about the long tale than the big spike
There was never any expectation on my part to make money on this. I'm just very curious about metrics and what not. This is helpful though, and I appreciate it.
The question of what success look like will depend vastly on the individual... some people are happy just to have their book out...others won't feel like they've succeeded until they're number 1 all store and are fabulously wealthy with nubile young women queuing up to have their boobs signed at book signings (note that doesnt happen even if you're a number 1 bestseller) Self publishing and publishing generally is such a broad church that its hard to generalise about metrics... there have been self published books that went to number 1 all store (at one time LJ Ross was 1,2,3,4 and 5 all store), but there are also self pubbed books that will never rank even 10,000 Also rank varies a lot and can change for all sorts of factors not just sales.. no one really knows how the algo works and anyone who says they do is lying
Ahem...my solemn goal in life is to prove this invariably wrong. And yes, there willbe documented evidence.
It depends on your "competition" and how long you maintain a rank. One day at a great rank that immediately crashes won't be as good at maintaining a "good" rank for months. Anyway, the only way I think you can go about it is seeing how other books in your subgenre/niche/trope do. For example, if you write science fiction horror, what do the top self publishing authors rank at when their book comes out and then a month after? That's what your aim is, to do the best your topic can do in self publishing. And I agree with big soft moose, category ranks aren't really anything. They are only important in helping you show up on more lists and getting bestseller orange tags on your book's page. #1 in romance is widely different than #1 in jewish political theory