Progress Report 2025 Week 33

It was a week to reflect. I’m three weeks into the release for Dreams of Deucalion, and the numbers are better than I had feared, but not as good as I had hoped. I tried to study up on why, and I came across an authoritative source. That source not only confirmed my suspicions, it affirmed my goal to get audiobooks published. I also have some progress to report on Wayland’s Hammer. Before we talk about any of that, let’s look at the key performance indicators.

Last Week’s Progress By the Numbers

I’m still in that interim period between books, and zero words is normal. But it still annoys me to no end! I want to put words on the electronic page!

Here’s the short version of my efforts to discern the plot for Wayland’s Hammer:

• Owen Payne’s plot snapped together more quickly than I expected. His character is the closet to how I think, so maybe that’s why I found it so easy to get inside his head and move forward.
• Gerhard Wimmer’s plot stalled completely. Then I experienced a breakthrough, until it propelled me into a dramatic wall. A day of listening to heavy metal later, and I got through it. I have a draft of Wimmer’s arc done.
• I’m still working with Moritz Lehner’s arc. I think I know where it’s going, and I’ll know more this week.

I’ve started building the sets for Wimmer and Lehner’s scenes. Even though I joke about hating this stage because I’m not writing, I honestly do enjoy world-building. I especially like building spaceship and starship interiors. Wimmer gets to visit the spaceship Ridill, so I get to design portions of the ship we haven’t seen before.

The Launch of Dreams of Deucalion

Facebook/Amazon Ads and Promo Stacking

When it comes to marketing, I’ve learned the most from two people. The first person is David Gaughran. If you’re interesting in writing at all, you should really join his e-mail list. I’m using his advice on Facebook ads, and I’m closer than ever to profitability.

The second individual is Chris Fox. His publishing/marketing advice was based on his own experience publishing books. I don’t practice writing to market, but his book on the topic gave me insights into genre classification that I didn’t get anywhere else. That’s not even counting the multiple insights he gave me regarding the Amazon ecosystem in general.

As I planned the launch marketing for Dreams of Deucalion, I leaned hard into what I’ve learned from those two. I further researched how to trigger Amazon’s algorithm. If you haven’t heard about that, here’s the short version: Amazon wants to sell products to happy customers. If they see a book selling very well and generating good ratings, Amazon’s will respond by kicking in their own promotions on top of what that writer’s already doing.

It’s a lot of fun to write books. Marketing books, though, at least for me, is a completely difference experience.

I’ve never been able to trigger that, even though I’ve sometimes gotten into the top 50 in my genre. That why I researched the nuts-and-bolts of how to make that happen. According to my research, for science fictions genres, I’ll need to move about 100 ebooks a day for a week or more to trigger Amazon’s response. So, that was my goal. I prepped by Facebook and Amazon ads. I scheduled my horizontal stacked promotions (I got that idea from David Gaughran). I published Dreams of Deucalion.

I didn’t trigger the algorithm.

Then I watched this video from Chris Fox.

The Evolving Landscape of Indie Publishing

In the early days of independent publishing, Chris Fox was one of the leaders. He learned from his own mistakes and shared what he’d learned with the community. He wrote to market; he wrote about how to write to market. He sold a ton of books and tried to teach the rest of us how.

And in the video he just published, he talks about how all that changed.

I won’t paraphrase the video. Even if it was longer than its eleven minute runtime, it’d still be worth you taking the time to watch. For my purposes, he spoke of how much harder it is to get noticed. AI plays a role. To me, it looks like we indie writers aren’t really competing against AI written works; we’re just getting lost in a sea of AI-produced books that makes it harder for readers to find us.

Not only that, but the payouts for Kindle Unlimited are about as high as they’ll ever be. By the end of the video, I had to ask myself if publishing is worth it. I’m going to write no matter what. I can’t not write. I’ve tried that and it has failed. But publishing? If I can’t make any money at it?

The indie space is so challenging that another writer present near its beginning, Johnny Truant, has started a Kickstarter campaign to propose another approach. It sounded so interested that I signed up to support it.

Where am I going with this? Honestly, I’m not sure. I’m in a weird mental place right now. I need to figure out how to throw myself more authentically into my writing independent of the marketing aspect. I need to writer better novels. But I also need to figure out how to better market what I write.

My research suggests that it’d cost about $4,500 over six weeks to position my books correctly — to hit that 100 ebooks a day mark for a week or more. Is my writing worth that kind of gamble, even if I could fund it?

Audiobooks are still underserved at this moment in time. If I can get some of them published, it might help. Maybe they’ll help me get noticed in a good way! So, I’ll keep plugging away on those. But man, for me it’s not looking like I’ll hit 20 books to 50K. I’ll be lucky to hit 50 books 20K (gross — before subtracting advertising!).

Progress against Last Week’s Goals

Here’s how I did last week:

1. Continue plotting Wayland’s Hammer Book 3: Lines of Operation. Cast new characters and build new sets. Ongoing. I made some good progress, I think!
2. Finish preparing two more chapters for Red Flag Warning’s audiobook. Done! I actually finished four chapters.
3. Finish preparing two more chapters for Special Recon’s audiobook. Done! I was able to get through three more chapters.
4. Monitor the stacked promotion for Dreams of Deucalion. Done! Like I said above, it was better than I’d feared but not as good as I’d hoped.
5. Evaluate other titles to add to the Amazon ad for Dreams of Deucalion. Done! I’ve found two titles that seem to resonate. Still looking for others!

Goals for the Week in Progress Report 2025 Week 33

Here’s what I hope to accomplish this week:

1. Finish plotting Wayland’s Hammer Book 3: Lines of Operation. Finish casting new characters and building new sets.
2. Receive at least one of the three alpha reads for Wayland’s Hammer Book 1: Point of Depature.
3. Finish preparing two more chapters for Red Flag Warning’s audiobook.
4. Finish preparing two more chapters for Special Recon’s audiobook.
5. Evaluate tweaks to my Amazon ads with an emphasis on finally figuring out how to get keyword ads to work for my stories.

What Do You Think?

How do you keep informed about changes in the indie writing space? YouTube? Social media? Other? I’d love to hear about your experiences in the comments!