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.

The 1K a Day Writing Method

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I recently came across a woman on YouTube claiming she writes 10,000 words a day. Maybe it was just clickbait, maybe she was exaggerating—or maybe she really does write that much. Who knows? It’s social media—you never really know if people do in real life what they claim online.

But let’s take that number seriously for a moment. What would actually happen if someone wrote 10,000 words every day?

  • 10,000 words a day equals 3.65 million words per year
  • The average novel is around 60,000 to 80,000 words
  • That means at least 45 books a year

Have you ever heard of anyone publishing at that pace?

L. Ron Hubbard is often cited as one of the most prolific writers in history, with around 300 published stories and books (some sources even claim it’s up to 500). If you wrote 10,000 words a day, you’d surpass him within a single decade.

Frankly, that doesn’t sound believable.

I write 1,000 words a day. That’s about an hour of focused writing. Sometimes I write more, but I always make sure to hit at least that minimum.

This habit allows me to finish about four books per year. It also gives me time to write short stories, blog posts, tweets, and scripts for my YouTube channels.

By investing just one hour a day, I’m more productive than most writers I know. And I don’t burn myself out trying to chase 10,000 words. Writing for an hour is enjoyable, energizing—and most days, I can’t wait to return to my story.

Best of all, this schedule leaves me with plenty of time to work on my author platform, manage my tutorial YouTube channel, handle my day job, stay in shape, read, and even enjoy a movie in the evening.

For perspective: Ian Fleming’s Bond novels were typically between 55,000 and 75,000 words. At 1,000 words a day, you could finish a Bond-length novel in about three months—easily.

So why push yourself to write 10,000 words a day? It’s a recipe for burnout. You’ll probably end up hating writing. You’re not going to edit all that content anyway. And you’re definitely not going to publish 45 books a year. Even if you could, who’s going to read them all? Releasing a book every week would overwhelm even your most loyal fans.

Selling four books a year is already a challenge, as most readers have dozens of authors that they follow.

Of course, do what works for you. But writing 1,000 words a day—if you actually do it consistently—can put you on the same productivity level as someone like Stephen King. Doesn’t that already sound impressive enough?