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Progress Report 2022 Week 14

I know you’re just dying to learn if I actually kicked off the mailing list campaign! I mean, I’ve been saying it’s on my to-do list for weeks. Yet every progress report, I come up with some lame excuse. Will that trend continue? I’ll talk about it as soon as we talk about the numbers.

Progress Report 2022 Week 14 By the Numbers

It’s better than it looks. No, really!

Only 199 words written? All week? Seems kind of pathetic, doesn’t it? Fortunately, I have an explanation.

First, I had a related side project going on (see below). Second, I had gotten to a point in Primary Target’s plot where I knew I needed to make some changes. I had a sense I needed a more robust world. My general about what happened between our present and the future had gotten me to this point. Now, I needed to weave them together in a more realistic and interesting way.

This happened when I wrote the first two books, at about the same point! So, yea consistency?

I spent several days fleshing out the world’s timeline. For example, Jack Booth is a citizen of the British Commonwealth where RAF doesn’t mean Royal Air Force. It means Regional Air Force. That’s because King William V (poor Charles never did become king) dissolved the monarchy in 2036. That’s important because the wanted the British Empire to leave some lasting monument. He wanted the monarchy’s wealth to help orphaned children across the world, so the “sun would not set on the children touched by British kindness.” Unfortunately, his efforts aided the rise of the Big Three Investment Houses that play a roll in books 2 and 3.

Whoops. At least he meant well!

That’s just a small example. Since the novel’s action is at the high levels of Corporate and political interaction, I need the world’s history to support events at that level. On Sunday, I think I had gotten the timeline where I need it, at least for now. That left me with time to write 199 words. I figured that would be better than zero!

Here’s a brief look at what I’m calling Evolution’s Hand Compendium. In a couple years, someone’s going to found TCP! And it has nothing to do with me registering TerranConsolidatedProducts.com. Nothing at all!

Bottom line: I think I’m back on track to push forward with the third book again!

What about the Danged Mailing List?

I reported in 2022 week 12 that I had fixed the logic in my Active Campaign automations. That’s after I had purchased my Active Campaign subscription all the way back in 2022 week 8! Here we are, six weeks later. Did I finally pull the trigger?

Yeah. I pulled the trigger.

I’m starting with a Facebook ad that’ll run 5 days. As of the time I’m writing this, it’s been running about a day. I’ve had 6,443 impressions with a reach of 4,541. So far. the campaign has generated 30 clicks. I now have 6 e-mail addresses in my list!

Of course, two are mine. And two others are my wife and daughter. But hey, 6 is 6!

Here’s what the ad’s graphic looks like:

You get bonus points if you recognized the background was part of Code Blue’s cover!

The copy reads, “It’s 2170. Corporations rule the Earth. Executive privilege has a very different meaning! Can human freedom survive in such a world? Find out when the new series Evolution’s Hand launches! Until then, you can read Code Blue, a free short story that explores what happens when Executives take medical decisions into their own hands!

I’ll tell you this for free: Creating an ad graphic is freaking hard! And do you know what’s even harder? Freaking ad copy! It’s freaking harder! I know just enough about marketing to know it has its own rules, its own philosophy, and its own expertise. Oh, and I know just enough to know I got none of that. So I had to rely on my wife and my daughter.

Who I want to publicly thank for putting up with my requests for help this weekend.

But at least the list is underway. I have a lot of room for refinement in all aspects of this phase of the operation. It’s going to take time to see any return on this investment. But it’ll help the book sell, so I’m committed to making this happen.

By the way, you can join the mailing list, too! Just click this button:



Goals for the Week in Progress Report 2022 Week 13

I made some progress on my last week’s goal to “Finish Primary Target’s Pinch 1 for Dek Conrad and Matsushita Sachi; as a stretch objective, start Pinch 1 for Jack Booth”. Unfortunately, I didn’t finish it. Even worse, I did not even start the goal that said, “As an even bigger stretch objective, continue working on the second draft of Dying Breath.” So, here’re my goals for the coming week:

  1. Post Executive Action to ACX and see if I can interest any producers in creating an audio book version if I offer profit sharing as payment
  2. Finish Primary Target’s Pinch 1 for Dek Conrad and Matsushita Sachi
  3. Start Pinch 1 for Jack Booth in Primary Target
  4. Continue working on the second draft of Dying Breath
  5. Consider backup titles if I decided Dying Breath and/or Primary Target are overused in their genres

What Do You Think?

Do you write your own ad copy or create your own ad graphics? I’d love to hear about your experiences in the comments!

3 thoughts on “Progress Report 2022 Week 14

  1. This is just a suggestion, but you may want to look into BookFunnel for the delivery of your free short. I work in IT and it was a pain getting it into my Kindle app as it is. Not impossible, but for someone without much IT knowhow, I can see them possibly giving up.

    1. Thanks for the suggestion. I should have thought of that. Well, another lesson to add to the growing list!

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