Progress Report 2026 Week 39

I’ve spent the last few weeks trying to improve my marketing game. Between building an inventory of slideshows for AuthorScale to post and trying to refine the keywords for my Amazon ads, I thought I was making progress. But a couple of things torpedoed those efforts this week. Despite that, all’s not darkness and gloom. Also, the Real Life Family Event (RLFE) that launched its attack last month proved it’s the “gift” that keeps on giving. Before getting into any of that, let’s look at the key performance indicators for the week.

Last Week’s Progress By the Numbers

Not a great week for word count.

I said last week that the long-duration RLFE would likely impact my family at least through October. It’s certainly still going strong at the end of September. It cost me three hours of sleep last night alone. That’s not counting the disruptions during the day.

All of us go through these things from time to time. If anything, I’m lucky I haven’t had to go through more of them, and I’m fortunate I have a family to go through it with. But in the middle of the storm, it’s hard to maintain a positive attitude. That, and it’s hard to render aid.

It’s also hard to write. INot just from the perspective of getting a solid block of time, which affected my output this week. It’s hard in terms of how it affects my concentration. Remembering a nuance of emotion or a plot detail from three chapter ago so I can thread it into the latest chapter is a real challenge. It’s also exactly the sort of thing I need to do.

Progress on The Fissure Kings Book 2: Athena Unleashed feels glacial. I should be ten or fifteen thousand words farther along. But instead of lamenting reduced progress, I’m going to try to focus on the fact I’m still writing at all. Because I’ll tell you what: every day is a significant challenge. I haven’t hard such a hard time starting a writing session since I restarted writing after a 30+ year slump. I’m going to count that as a win.

Marketing Progress

One Step Forward: Branding

I’ve built an inventory of nine slideshows. That’s not great because it’s enough for about three days. That’s if I follow AuthorScale’s recommendation of posting three slideshows a day. But it represents an effort to get started. I’ve also taken the time to test different tools, like Gemini for image generation and manipulation.

As an aside: I’m getting decent results from the Image Playground that Apple includes in MacOS Golden Gate. Better, in several situations, than Gemini. I might talk about that more in a future post.

I’m still figuring out how to get the most out of AuthorScale.

I also expanded my research. I searched for peers who were doing a great job with their marketing game. Of course, I can’t see anyone’s sales numbers, but I can see their Amazon rankings on their product listings. I had two specific goals: find an example of solid branding and find creative use of video.

While browsing Facebook, I happened to see Dawn Ross’s Facebook ads. I remembered her ads because after seeing one or two of them, I immediately recognized the others. Even my Marketing-challenged said, “Say — if you recognized her ads at a glance, doesn’t that suggest good branding?” And it does. Her Dragon Span Chronicles series (affiliate link) has great covers that identify them as part of the same series. The ads, too, made the relationship clear.

Yes, I took notes. Not to copy what she did, but to understand what she did so I can apply those lessons to my efforts.

A Second Step Forward: Good Use of Video

While warming up my TikTok account (at least, that’s what AuthorScale calls it), I came across another author’s video work. It, too, featured easily identifiable branding. The author’s name is Miles Phoenix. While I’m trying for visual consistency among characters in my slideshows, he achieved it with video. This example on TikTok effectively communicate the book’s genre, its tone, and even its more subtle aspects like a respect for strong female leads — a topic that very much interests me given my characters like Ira Malhotra and Matsushita Sachi.

He even went so far as to write a book named Tactical Covers (affiliate link) that discusses his approach and the tools he used. I bought it and am working my way through it. It’s a year old, and the tools in that space are moving rapidly. But from what I’ve tested so far, the advice is still spot on.

These two writers helped me get an idea of what’s possible. It helped me look beyond my own assumptions. That’s all good; it’ll help in the long run.

But then, Meta adjusted their ad platform.

Three Steps (or So) Back

About a week ago, my sales tanked. I didn’t think anything of it. I assumed (which is never a good idea) that I had soared past the 30 day window Amazon gives new releases. Though I’d hoped it would last another week or two, I was so busy with the RLFE and trying to maintain forward motion for my writing (and research other aspects of marketing) that I let it sit.

Then it started to bother me. So I checked my Facebook ad to see if there was a disconnect between impressions and clicks. And wouldn’t you know it — my ad was in an error state. I’d never seen that sort of thing before. The more I looked into it, the more annoying it became.

The error said it couldn’t serve to Threads because my creative format was wrong. Which was odd — I had configured it to only show ads on the Facebook feed. Digging into the ad, I discovered that Meta had reenabled all the feed options, which included ones that sucked dollars but never returned clicks.

Okay, I said, I’ll just exclude them again. Which I did. The ad started running again. But the click rate didn’t go up. I figured reporting just lagged, because the ad had performed pretty well before. I felt confident in the graphic, which was the book’s cover. then, Facebook happened to feed my own ad to me. It looked like this:

Honey, Meta shrank the graphic!

Somehow, Meta had reduced the size of my cover’s graphic by 2/3. They also discarded the callout text I’d placed along the bottom. So not only had they changed the placement options. They selected a graphic that wasn’t in play for this ad.

Business is Business

I’ll be honest. I wanted to unleash my temper. But considering how tired I am from the RLFE, I just couldn’t be bothered. And here’s the deal: there’s not a day or a week that goes by that I don’t read more than one writer in the 20BooksTo50K enumerating the problems they’re having with Meta ads. It just took a little longer to affect me. Yea, I guess?

I’ve lost at least three weeks’ worth of engagement. Yeah, I don’t like it. But there’s nothing fruitful that can be done except for modifying my day-to-day procedures. I’m going to need to check the ad’s performance daily in Facebook’s Ad Manager as well as check the ad itself in the Meta Ad Library. I likely should have been doing that anyway.

The real problem is that this exposes an over reliance on Facebook ads. I’m thinking about that. But it also comes at a bad time. If you live on Earth, you’re feeling the impact of the historically terrible decisions of a US Administration. My electric bill is quite a bit higher. My water bill nearly blinded me this month. And don’t get me started on my grocery bill? All I can say is thank God for Aldi. But that tactic’s not saving as much as it used to.

And driving anywhere? I have never been more thankful to not be driving a vehicle with a diesel engine.

The net effect is that I need to make budget adjustments. I need to cut some expenses, and since I don’t have a lot of vices (that cost money, anyway!) that means I need to throttle back on nonessentials like my Facebook ads. Meta deciding to butcher my ad without my input or consent — of even my knowledge — made the decision easy.

I’m going to focus on AuthorScale, promotion sites, and Amazon ads for now. I’ll probably come back to Facebook ads at some point after I see evidence that Meta has their platform under control.

Progress Against Last Week’s Goals

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

1. Write 10,000 words in The Fissure Kings Book 2: Athena Unleashed: Not Done! I wrote just over 6,000 words.
2. Monitor Summer Foovay’s recording progress for The Sword of Sirius Book 3: Firebreak: Ongoing! She’s making good progress!
3. Engineer one more chapter for the audiobook of The Sword of Sirius Book 2: Collapse Zone: Done and ongoing!
4. Create four more slideshows with AuthorScale and finish preparing my TikTok account for use: Done and ongoing!

Goals for the Week in Progress Report 2026 Week 39

Here’s what I hope to accomplish this week:

1. Write 10,000 words in The Fissure Kings Book 2: Athena Unleashed
2. Monitor Summer Foovay’s recording progress for The Sword of Sirius Book 3: Firebreak
3. Engineer one more chapter for the audiobook of The Sword of Sirius Book 2: Collapse Zone
4. Take delivery of the Kirkus review for Wayland’s Hammer Book 1: Duty of Prisoners
5. Create four more slideshows with AuthorScale and continue preparing my TikTok account for use

What Do You Think?

How do you set your marketing budget? How do you know when you’re throwing good money after bad? I’d love to hear about your experience in the comments!