Get My Latest Short Story The Equation for Free (STORY52 No. 12)

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Another week, another free short story from me on Amazon! Check out number 11 in my STORY52 project — it’s free starting today through Friday.

Synopsis:

A city. A formula. A truth that must not be discovered.

When Professor Harlan Sael alters an equation, reality begins to fracture. Houses vanish. People dissolve. And at the edge of the city waits something that should not exist.

The closer Harlan gets to the solution, the clearer it becomes: the equation doesn’t just describe the world — it defines it.

US Version | https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GKVLSNBV
German Version | https://www.amazon.de/dp/B0GKW12184

As always, a review would be greatly appreciated — it helps me with Amazon’s algorithm.

See you next week,
BRIG

Author Progress Report – January 2026

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I somehow managed to attract scammers from all over the world this month to leave comments on my site—yippie!

On a more serious note, some real-life issues at the beginning of the year took up most of my time. It was a rough start, but I’m recovering now.

Website

As expected, the traffic increase I saw at the end of last year wasn’t genuine. It was mostly scammers who vanished as soon as I deleted their spam comments. A few are still hanging around, though, posting casino links in English, Russian, and—for some reason—even French.

I also couldn’t write until January 18th, which was a real bummer. I really wanted to stick to daily articles, but real life got in the way. Since then, however, I’ve managed to publish something every day.

One good project I’ve started is writing about book marketing once a week. It forces me to invest more time in a topic I’ve neglected for far too long. Writing books is one thing—selling them is a completely different animal. Let’s see if I can tame it.

Newsletter

I think I’ve got some real subscribers now—though it’s fewer than a handful. Still, I’m happy about every single one. So thanks to the few of you who joined. You da real MVPs!

If you want to join as well, you’ll get a free e-book and an update email whenever I give away free books on Amazon. Sign up here: Endless by Michael Brig.

Free Books

Book cover of the wheel

I published the next short story, The Wheel, a week ago. Two people already reviewed it with 4-stars. Thank you!

As always, I gave the story away for the maximum of 5 days on Amazon. The English version got 30 downloads, the German version 20.

That brings the total to 11 out of 52 short stories published.

The next one is already in progress on Amazon, and I have another handful ready for publishing. I’m confident that by the end of the year all 52 of the series will be available.

Writing

I messed this one up. The goal was to write 12 novels in 12 months this year, but due to personal issues I quickly realized that this just isn’t realistic—at least not this year.

My focus now is on completing my short story project STORY52 first. I also want to get back into AI comic creation using different tools and solutions. When I started this website, my long-term goal was to publish four novels per year. I think that’s a manageable and realistic target for 2026.

Project Updates 2025

  • STORY52 – 11 of 52 published. The goal is to release the remaining stories in 2026.
  • Therapy – Editing is 90% complete; translation is next. Planned release: March 2026.
  • Crowley – Writing is finished. Planned release: 2026.
  • Smash the Patriarchy – Writing is 25% complete. Planned release: 2026.
  • [New Title] – Concept is 50% complete. Planned release: 2026.
  • 17 Part II – Final draft is 20% complete. Planned release: December 2026.

If everything goes according to plan, this would result in five novel releases this year. At the same time, I’ll continue writing new stories for a 2027 release.

Comics

I checked out Midjourney again to work on an update about AI comic book creation. ChatGPT, Nano Banana, and even Grok are also tools I plan to test for my AI comic project, The Last Superhero.

If all goes well, I’ll post the next part in February and an update on AI comic book making in general.

X / Twitter

I had plans for X at the start of the year, but time is limited—and my reach there is abysmal anyway. For now, I mostly post links to my blog articles and the occasional movie review.

If I ever find an audience on the platform, I’ll invest more time into it. For now, that’s not the case.

That said, I still use Twitter daily to read and stay informed. You can follow me here: @michael_brig

Instagram

No real changes here—I’m still just posting book covers for now.
Follow me here: Michael Brig IG

YouTube

I’ve started making tutorials again after taking almost a month off. Currently, I’m working on tutorials for Photoshop, Illustrator, CapCut, and Affinity. I’ll also add AI tutorials whenever I feel confident that I’ve learned something well enough to teach it (e.g., AI comic book making).

I also decided to publish my author progress videos on my tutorial channel. Since YouTube has put my account into what feels like a sandbox, new channels get virtually no views. On my tutorial channel, I at least get some exposure for these videos.

My video essay channel about movies will return in February as well.

Conclusion

A bad start to the year—but I’m getting back on the horse.

See you next time,
BRIG

I’m Starting to Learn Book Marketing

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Writing books is one thing; marketing them is a completely different story.

By writing 1,000 words a day, I’ve already mastered the discipline part of writing. AI has helped me tremendously with book editing—making the process faster and improving the quality of my edits. The same goes for translations from German to English. My book cover design skills aren’t amazing, but they’re certainly above average. When it comes to writing style, I’m still learning something new every day—aren’t we all?

What I haven’t really tackled so far, though, is marketing. I had some ideas—creating this blog, using Twitter, making YouTube videos—and my STORY52 project is also part of my marketing efforts. But I never bought a good book on the topic, didn’t do deep online research, and never truly tried to market my books in a structured way.

As an independent author without a budget, you simply have to do it all: writing, editing, translating, designing—and marketing.

So from now on, I’m dedicating one article per week on my website to book marketing. This forces me to learn, and it also increases the value I offer readers on this blog. A win-win.

To get you started as well, check out this great resource I’ve already found: Book Marketing Bestseller

It’s by a guy named John Kremer, who also wrote 1,001 Ways to Market Your Books, a book praised by many authors.

At the moment, I’m working my way through his blog. His book is next on my list. You can find it on Goodreads here.

If I write about one marketing technique per week, I’ll have my own 1,001 ways to market books in about 20 years. Stay with me to see what number 1,001 will be.

The Wheel – Full Download Numbers

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Today, the 5-day promo ended, and as I had suspected, the timing doesn’t make much of a difference: putting your book on free over the weekend or during weekdays seems irrelevant—at least from my current perspective.

The results:

  • 30 downloads for the English version
  • 20 downloads for the German version

These numbers are on the higher end of my usual range for free short story promotions on Amazon, but nothing wildly above or below my typical results.

Interestingly, this is the first time the English version outperformed the German one. It’s hard to say why that happened.

The download pattern is the same as always: the first three days account for most of the downloads, while the last two days see very few. This might be because Amazon has a specific category for new releases that people check regularly, and perhaps the book is ranked differently three days after release in that category.

Overall, my takeaway is that, for me, the timing of free short story promotions doesn’t seem to matter.

Does It Make a Difference Whether You Give Away Your Books for Free on Weekends or Weekdays?

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Normally, I give away my short story books for free from Monday to Friday. For my latest issue, No. 11 The Wheel, however, I made it available for free starting on Friday (the promotion will run until Wednesday). Over the weekend, I may have seen a small increase in downloads, but nothing spectacular.

So far, my best-performing short story was downloaded 45 times in German and 8 times in English over five days (Killtime – US – DE). My worst performer was Protocol: Twilight (US – DE), with 13 downloads in German and 4 in English.

Book cover of the wheel

The Wheel had 22 downloads in the US and 16 in Germany over the weekend alone—you can still grab a free copy here: US – DE

That’s a slight increase compared to my average. Compared to my best issue so far, it’s roughly on the same level.

I wasn’t sure whether people look for books to read more often on weekends, even though online traffic is higher during weekdays for most of my other web projects. After this experiment, I’m still not convinced that they do. Sometimes, it’s simply the cover and the title that spark more interest in a book. Killtime, for example, just sounds more exciting than Protocol: Twilight, right?

Maybe the cover of The Wheel is one of the better ones I’ve created, which could have led to its above-average performance. Even if that’s the case, the download numbers aren’t dramatically higher than usual.

The Wheel download numbers for the free promo

For now, I’d conclude that it doesn’t make much of a difference whether I set my books to free on Fridays or Mondays.

I’ll run more experiments in the future, but for the moment, I’ll go back to running my free promotions starting on Mondays and leaving out the weekends.