STORY52 – A Year of Weekly Short Stories

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Starting this summer, I’m launching something ambitious, a lot of fun, and (hopefully) something that grows my readership: I call it STORY52

52 weeks. 52 stories. 100% genre chaos.

Every week I’ll release a brand-new short story on Amazon. The genres will bounce wildly – from sci-fi to horror, from thriller to absurd comedy, and everything in between. Some will be serious, some bizarre, some funny, and some dark. But all of them will be short, sharp, and designed to surprise. And they’ll also be FREE!

Each story will be free for 5 days after release. That’s the window Amazon gives me with their promotional tools, and I’ll use it to make sure every week, one story is completely free. After that, it goes back to the lowest price possible (below a $1 in most countries).

If you don’t want to spend a dime, make sure to check my website, follow my Twitter and sign up for the newsletter – I’ll announce which books will be free in a specific week there.

The idea behind STORY52

I already mentioned that I think this can be a great way to find my first readers. I’m completely new to the game. No readership, no followers, no audience – yet. But I think my stories are good and they deserve to be read.

You might obviously be cautious about that when you’ve never read a story of mine. So I won’t charge you anything to find out for yourself how good my stories are. I’ll give them to you for free. And then you can make up your mind without spending a single dollar.

I believe that is a good deal for you and for me. I give you something for free and you give me a chance to convince you that I’m a great storyteller. Win-Win!

I’ve already published two short stories. Number 3 will be released this coming Monday. From then on, a new part of the series will come out every week. If you miss a release, don’t worry – I plan to make past stories available for free again after all 52 parts are out.

Each story will be available in both German and English. Here you can find the first two parts:

  1. Black Market Dreams (US – DE)
  2. The Last Portrait (US – DE)
  3. The Companion (will be released on July, 14th)

Author in Progress Report – Intro

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I originally planned to post this series on Twitter, but Twitter is mostly for politics, memes, and shitposting. My goal was to avoid politics for the most part—but if you’re on Twitter, you inevitably get exposed to it again.

Another thing I’ve realized is that Twitter doesn’t function like a blog. People only care about what you post right now. What you shared a week ago might as well not exist.

Writing weekly updates about my author project only makes sense if it’s in a diary format that people can follow from start to finish. That kind of continuity just doesn’t work on Twitter for me. It can only work on my own site, in a blog format.

So, I’ll be writing it here.

This might actually work best as a monthly report. I used to write those on Medium back in the day when I generally tried to build a following for all my projects—until they banned me on the platform. Incidentally, those posts brought the most traffic to my profile.

The new reports on this site will include all relevant numbers and results of my author project. I’ll be as transparent as possible. The idea is to create a real-time diary showing the potential growth of my platform: book downloads, sales, reach, impressions, traffic, and more.

For now, my weekly short story book project on Amazon will be the main focus, as it’s the one thing I can currently report growth with. As for sales—so far, I might’ve sold three books and gotten a few Kindle Unlimited reads. Not exactly headline material, but hopefully that’ll change. If it does, I’ll include specific numbers for that too. Same goes for growth on platforms like Twitter, YouTube, and others.

Over time, these reports will evolve. Let me know in the comments what specific details you’d like to see.

The First Step Is Getting Impressions for Your Book

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I’ve been researching how to market books as a self-published author for quite some time now. While there’s plenty of advice out there—some of it genuinely useful—most videos, articles, and podcast episodes overlook one fundamental principle: impressions.

You’ll often hear suggestions like:

  • Design a great book cover
  • Write a compelling book blurb
  • Build a social media presence
  • Start an author website

But none of that matters if no one ever sees any of that.

Ask yourself this: What’s better—having the best book cover in the world that no one sees, or the worst cover in the world seen by millions?

Obviously, it’s the second. If you can attract a million eyes, you’ll sell books—even if your cover, blurb, or even the story itself isn’t perfect. But if no one sees your book, you won’t sell a single copy, no matter how great it is.

This is why most book marketing advice falls short. It only becomes effective after you manage to drive traffic and generate impressions.

So, how do you get those impressions?

That might be the most fundamental question in all of online marketing. Right now, I’m trying to figure it out through trial and error. One thing I’ve already learned: you don’t get them overnight, and you certainly don’t get them easily.

So far, the only thing that has worked for me is: Give away as much as I can for free. Short stories, full novels, YouTube videos—whatever it is, giving it away for no cost to the reader helps get the ball rolling. From here on, you can build and maybe one day get those precious impressions for free in return.

Get My Latest Novel “Forever” For Free

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I finished my July release. It’s called Forever. This time it’s not a short story, but a full novel of around 55,000 words. As always the Kindle version will be free the first 5 days after the release.

If you’re interested, you can get the German and the English version here:

DE | shorturl.at/EjmeW
US | https://shorturl.at/EUkZg

I hope you like it. If you do, please leave me a review on Amazon to help me out, thanks.

Here is a short summary of the story:

After a serious accident, Lily Grayson wakes up in the hospital with no memory of who she is. Her devoted husband takes her home—to a secluded house in the snowy mountains of Wyoming. There, he lovingly cares for her, helps her recover, and little by little, her feelings for him return. Everything seems perfect.

But soon, doubts begin to surface. Why are there no photos of their shared past? Why doesn’t their relationship feel like a real marriage? And why do his explanations become more and more contradictory? The longer Lily thinks about it, the stronger her suspicion grows: the man by her side may not be her husband at all.

Forever is a gripping psychological thriller about memory, manipulation—and the thin line between love and madness.

The free promotion will run until Saturday, so make sure to grab it now.

Writing 52 Short Story Books for Amazon

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Publishing short stories and giving them away for free on Amazon has been the most effective strategy I’ve found so far. If you don’t already have an audience, a following, or a network, offering something for free is often your only real option.

Sure, you can rely on luck and hope your writing finds an audience on its own. But for 99% of writers, that simply doesn’t happen. It certainly won’t happen for me.

That’s why I’ve come up with a plan: I’ll write 52 short stories, publish them as Kindle books, and give them away using Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited promo tools.

I just finished my second attempt at this. My test run brought in 28 downloads for the first book and 35 for the second. Not huge numbers, but still — that’s 63 readers I didn’t have before.

The great thing is that I can reuse these books in future campaigns. The first one was only downloaded 28 times, but as my platform grows, I might be able to double that next year, triple it in two years, and maybe even attract thousands of readers over time — from that book alone.

These stories are designed to be giveaways, and once created, they can be used again and again as evergreen promotional tools that neither cost me money nor time.

Amazon allows you to run a free promotion with a book every three months. That means I can promote each book up to four times a year. With 52 books, I could be running free promos year-round — without spending a cent on marketing.

I haven’t seen anyone else trying this strategy, so I can’t guarantee that it will work. But it’s worth a shot. It doesn’t cost me anything. It doesn’t cost the readers anything. And I get to tap into Amazon — one of the biggest search engines on the planet.

Of course, it will cost me time to write the stories. But writing is fun anyway.

So far, this is the best strategy I’ve come up with. I plan to stick with it for a year and see what happens.

That means: My current plan is to write 4 full-length novels a year, plus 52 short stories on top. Wish me luck — and cross your fingers that this strategy helps me build an audience.