Progress Report 2025 Week 50

The new Facebook ad for Dreams of Deucalion Book 1: Special Recon is up, and it’s running. But is it doing any good? For that matter, did the Discover Sci-Fi promotion start, and if so, did it perform as well as I hoped? There’s some news on The Sword of Sirius Book 1: Red Flag Warning’s audiobook, and it’s, well, confusing. Does that have implications for future audiobooks? Finally, in the midst of a month-long Real Life Family Event (RLFE), was I able to get any writing done at all? Let’s take a glance at the key performance indicators before getting into the details.

Last Week’s Progress By the Numbers

Frankly, I’m shocked I broke 10,000 words this week.

December has been, and will continue to be, one long RLFE. It’ll likely continue into January, and I’m already tired. But, despite that (and its tendency to mean I have to be ready for multiple interruptions every time I sit down to write), I still managed to hammer out 10,724 words this week.

I think the end result is solid. Not because I’m necessarily writing better, though that’s always my goal. It’s because I’m using the accessibility tools baked into MacOS to read my work back to me. Turns out that’s way more effective than me reading it aloud to myself. In fact, I’m catching a depressing number of problems.

Which is exactly the wrong way to look at it. I tend to write too fast, and my muscle memory betrays me. My previous efforts to read aloud caught a lot of issues, but this is catching all of those and more. Instead of being frustrated that I made so many mistakes, I should rejoice that a lot fewer mistakes will get into the alpha and beta drafts now.

That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.

Investing more time outlining is paying dividends. I’m able to write more confidently, which means I can just let the characters go. They know where they need to be, and trusting them has always helped me get the highest quality words on the page.

I’m really looking forward to getting this book done. Between real life and this trilogy, I’d like to take a break from Nazis for a while. Plus, I’d love to have another trilogy available for readers!

The Continuing Saga of Audiobooks

I periodically check by books’ ratings and reviews on Amazon. When I checked The Sword of Sirius Book 1: Red Flag Warning,I noticed something I didn’t expect. There was a listing for the audiobook. Sure enough, it was the version I published through Author’s Republic. Wondering how many (if any) readers had bought that version, I headed over to the Author’s Republic website and brought up the listing. I saw this:

That zero seemed interesting.

Author’s Republic doesn’t know that Audible is offering the book. There’s no evidence there’s anything wrong. This is the first time I’ve published an audiobook, so odds are, I just don’t understand the system yet. Maybe it’s a batch-processing thing? Maybe it’ll show up at the end of the month?

If it’s on Amazon, where else might it be? I checked a few places that Author’s Republic said they’d sent to, and I found out that in addition to being on Amazon (affiliate link), it’s also on Audiobooks.com, Hoopla, Barnes and Noble… I stopped there, because it looked like a trend.

Clearly, distribution worked, but Author’s Republic isn’t reflecting that yet. The help system says that if everything doesn’t look right after two months to contact support. So, I guess that’s what I’ll do!

I un-enrolled The Sword of Sirius from Kindle Unlimited a few weeks ago, and the series should be available to take wide after December 17. I’ll make sure de-registering works (I have no desire to get Amazon angry at me), then distribute the ebook through Draft2Digital. Once that’s all set up, I’ll start an advertising campaign. I want to get reader feedback on the audiobook before deciding to move forward with the other two entries in the trilogy.

What’s surprising to me is the lag between the audiobook being available and when Author’s Republic reflecting that status. No wonder so many books I want to buy on release day don’t have an audiobook yet. It takes a lot more time to get an audiobook into the distribution compared to the ebook. Synchronizing the dates if you’re not a major publishing house if a chore.

I’m toying with the idea of recording Dreams of Deucalion Book 1: Special Recon myself (all the POV characters are male), but I don’t think I have the bandwidth yet. Maybe I’ll record the first few chapters and release them to my newsletter for feedback.

The Discover Sci-Fi Promotion

Back in week 35, I talked about a consultation I had with Chris Fox. We talked about a lot of things, and one of those was the promotion site Discover Sci-Fi. I decided to give it a shot. The promotion went live December 4th. How’d it do?

The only promotion that performed better for me was the BookBub Featured Deal, which is the best (known) in the industry. Discover Sci-Fi performed better for me than Book Barbarian, which had been my previous second best performer. It’s a little pricey compared to Book Barbarian; but it’s a less than the BookBub Featured Deal.

Not only did the campaign perform well. Discover Sci-Fi’s staff communicated well during setup and execution. They even ran the e-mail past me before using it. I didn’t have any feedback because they did such a good job, but I appreciated the gesture.

Going forward, I’m going to make sure Discovery Sci-Fi is part of my release promotion campaign.

Oh, and the new Facebook ad? It’s hard to say until the final numbers are in at the end of December. But it looks like the new animations are driving about 4x that number of clicks per impression. The resulting click to purchase ratio seems consistent with before. If that keeps up, I think I have a new approach to Facebook ads!

Progress Against Last Week’s Goals

Here’s how I did when measured about last week’s goals:

1. Finish the December Facebook ad campaign for Dreams of Deucalion: Done!
2. Monitor the Sci-Fi Discovery promotion for Dreams of Deucalion: Done!
3. Finish writing Moritz Lehner’s hook: Done!
4. Write Owen Payne’s plot turn 1: Done!
5. Write Gerhard Wimmer’s plot turn 1: Done!
6. Continue working on the Sirius colonial guide: Ongoing!

Goals for the Week in Progress Report 2025 Week 50

Here’s what I hope to achieve this week:

1. Write Moritz Lehner’s plot turn 1
2. Write Gerhard Wimmer’s pinch 1
3. Write Lehner’s pinch 1
4. Monitor availability of URLs in Author’s Republic
5. Continue working on the Sirius colonial guide
6. Research technology options for recording an audiobook for Dreams of Deucalion

What Do You Think?

What promotion sites work best for you? Who do you think gives the best marketing advice? I’d love to hear your perspective in the comments!