Progress Report 2026 Week 07

The advertising landscape is changing, becoming more chaotic. But things are also getting clearer, thanks to two gracious writers who selflessly help others. Is it a landscape I can work with? Does that landscape include anything for audiobooks? Using MacOS to read my manuscript back to me has helped me catch more errors than ever before. What’s it telling me about Wayland’s Hammer Book 2: Resistance Movement? Finally, is there any progress on the next series? Let’s look at the key performance indicators first.

Last Week’s Progress By the Numbers

I finally finished Wayland’s Hammer Book 1: Point of Depature. Now I’m into the second book.

Using MacOS to line/copy edit Wayland’s Hammer Book 1: Point of Departure helped me catch a lot of stuff. I’ve applied both my proofreader’s recommendations and my line/copy edits, and at this point, I can confidently state that this is the best manuscript that I’ve ever written.

Yes. I know that’s not saying much. But this is literally as good as I can make it. My efforts are right up against diminishing returns, which is not a place I want to venture into.

I started that MacOS/read-aloud process on Wayland’s Hammer Book 2: Resistance Movement. Put another way, I’m performing my line/copy edit before sending the manuscript out to the alpha readers. I hope they exclaim in surprise, “This is a lot easier to get through than your previous works!” It’s amazing — and, frankly, embarrassing — how much this approach has helped me catch.

Honestly? That’s really just the way writing works. I’m not F. Scott Fitzgerald. I’m not going to lay down a page of perfect prose in one pass. This is a necessary step, one I thought I’d covered with a manual read-aloud. I’m going to instead give myself points for learning from my mistake and improving my processes.

Which is a process I need to apply to my marketing!

The Ever Evolving Marketing Landscape

I’ve noticed myself that promotions don’t produce the same returns as they used to. Amazon’s algorithm has stopped rewarding rapid release and instead rewards performance over time, which makes more sense to me — with apologies to those who were benefiting from rapid-release. Facebook has taken away the ability to target our ad audience at people who like certain authors. In other words, things are getting harder across the board.

But in one sense, things are staying the same. My goal is still to get my books into the hands of readers who will enjoy them. And keep them out of the hands of people who won’t.

David Gaughran has always been an outstanding source of info for ads in general and Facebook ads in particular. His latest video, Facebook Ads for Authors [2026] Ad Creation Tutorial, is probably the state of the art reference. Following his advance has helped my ads inch towards profitability. Put another way, his advice has helped me attract some of the right readers.

Chris Fox is a source of information about writing and the writing craft. One of his most recent videos, Blurbs that Sell Books, Part 1 and Blurbs that Sell Books, Part 2 — Examples, are helping me refine my blurbs so that they attract and retain the readers who are most likely to like my stuff. Assuming I execute well.

Taken together, these two sources represent the best chance I’ve found of becoming profitable. I need to internalize what they’re saying, then continue what I’ve been doing, which is iterating through various combinations of ads and blurgs to keep books (and audiobooks) selling.

Speaking of audiobooks, I’ve researched various ways to promote audiobooks beyond Facebook ads. I tried Amazon ads, but they would not let me select my audiobook. Some other potential sources of promotion like Chirp require me to reduce the price. Since I’ve used Author Nation as my bulk-distributor, it takes a long, long time for any change I make to propagate out to the retailers, whether it be pricing or description. So that’s not really an option.

It looks like for the foreseeable future, I’m going to have to rely on Facebook ads for my audiobook.

More Movement on The Next Series

If memory serves, I mentioned before that I had wanted to write a new lead magnet before I started writing the next series. I started with the concept code-named Blue Angel Ascension. I had intended to follow Leah Flores, the sister of Trent Raven, as she dealt with the aftermath of some idiot dropping twelve fusion warheads onto San Francisco.

Leah Flores lived in Clayton, California, so I’ve started research into the standard of living there.

As I began to build out the characters and beats, though, the story started to expand. It looked like it was going to become its own thing. I had tentatively said it was going to be my next trilogy. The more I thought about it, though, the more I thought that it should be the next series.

So far, I’ve been going back and forth between two of the main arcs I introduced in Evolution’s Hand: the Earth-centric arc and the Sirius-centric arc. I haven’t written any more about the the third arc, which is deals with the evil volitional entities (EVEs). There are two reasons for that. First, the stories are by their nature multi-genre, and those don’t sell well. More importantly, I haven’t figured out the physics around volitional powers. I have some ideas, and you can see the beginnings of some of those in the last three books of Evolution’s Hand. But I haven’t taken the time to really flesh it out.

What’s that have to do with Blue Angel Ascension? I think it’s going to be the next installment of the Earth-centric arc. In terms of what’s published/written, here’s the breakdown:

• Evolution’s Hand (the first books introduced three arcs)
  • Earth-centric: Dreams of Deucalion
    • Followed Atticus Porter, Jadwiga Janczak, and Trent Raven
  • Sirius-Centric: The Sword of Sirius and Wayland’s Hammer
    • The Sword of Sirius followed Ira Malhotra, Luisa Brunner, and Owen Payne
    • Wayland’s Hammer followed Owen Payne, Gerhard Wimmer, and Moritz Lehner
  • EVE-centric
    • No further works — yet

Right now, I’m trying to decide which characters to follow in Blue Angel Ascension. I had wanted it to be a more fresh take on my world, but I’m not sure I want to walk away from the investment I’ve made. More importantly, I feel like I’m just getting started in terms of the stories I want to tell there. Some candidates for characters (and therefore potential new stories) include:

• Leah Flores, who will likely remain one of the POV characters
• Trent Raven, her brother, who’s now CEO of TransStell Ross 248
• Jadwiga Janczak, who’s currently trapped with the remains of her fleets in the Procyon system (she’s a low probability at this point; I think I need to let her regroup for a while)
• An unnamed, high-ranking military officers in the California Republic in exile (to give Raven insights into what’s going on within the California Republic)
• Camila Flores, a character I had cast for Blue Angel Ascension, who’s the sister to
  Paul Flores, Leah’s husband; she was one of Matsushita Hotaru’s Professional Assistants; the idea was to give us another Everyman within TransStell, though more than one per plot might be excessive

If I had to bet, I’d say it’s going to be Leah Flores, Trent Raven, and a yet-to-be-named villain. That villain will probably be a Regional Manager for Earth Defense Industries (EDI), which became a thing during Dreams of Deucalion. Even typing this summary has given me some new ideas!

I love this phase of the writing process. There’s something that’s freeing about coming up with the locations and basic character profiles. Many of my key plot ideas spring from the interaction of those two elements!

Progress Against Last Week’s Goals

Here’s how I did against last week’s goals:

1. Finish the read-aloud/proofreading application phase for Point of Departure: Done!
2. Begin preparing Wayland’s Hammer Book 2: Resistance Movement for alpha reading: Ongoing!
3. Monitor the Facebook ad for The Sword of Sirius Book 1: Red Flag Warning: Ongoing! I had to change the audience because after only a week, the previous audience had become saturated and ad performance tanked
4. Evaluate options for ebook-specific marketing for Red Flag Warning: Ongoing!
5. Continue kicking around ideas for the next books: Ongoing!

Goals for the Week in Progress Report 2026 Week 7

Here’s what I hope to accomplish this week:

1. Complete 70% of the read-aloud phase for Wayland’s Hammer Book 2: Resistance Movement
2. Begin the ProWritingAid pass for Wayland’s Hammer Book 2: Resistance Movement
3. Evaluate my ad spend to see which series I should promote at this time (likely will continue to be The Sword of Sirius, but I want to watch the numbers)
4. Continue kicking around ideas for the next books

What Do You Think?

Have you noticed a drop-off in the effectiveness of book promotions? How have you compensated? I’d love to hear about your experience in the comments!