This week, Jerry is knee-deep in promo-stack numbers, Facebook ad stats, Amazon rankings, and the slow, humbling reality that book marketing rarely arrives like a fireworks show. Book 1 is in a Kindle Countdown deal, the promo sites are rolling, the emails are out, and the results are... fine. Not awful, not magical, and very much the kind of real-world author experience nobody puts on a motivational poster. Jerry breaks down what sold, what got clicked, what did not get opened, and why the long game still matters more than one big spike.

Rich talks about his trip to the far north of Michigan, where he and his family watched hawk migration, saw thousands of blue jays, added a pile of lifers, and froze in weather that sounded more like late November than late May. So if you’ve ever wanted a writing podcast that can pivot from Amazon attribution links to birding in the Upper Peninsula, this episode has you covered.

The writing side gets interesting too. Rich talks about building a Claude-based AI co-writer with system instructions, writing samples, and enough setup to make a normal person walk directly into the woods. He also experiments with Google Labs Flow to animate his book cover art for The Dark We Hide, which leads into a fun conversation about how weirdly good these tools are getting and how fast that shift is happening. It’s equal parts useful, exciting, and a little unsettling, which feels about right for AI in 2026.

Jerry also gets into Book 3 plotting, feedback from Super Editor Cee, a possible paranormal edge to Chapter 1, and the ongoing process of trying to turn a decent mystery draft into something sharper and stronger before the real writing begins again. There’s also talk about Etsy orders, Amazon ads, an old babysitter buying books, and the possibility of going to Killer Nashville because apparently neither of these men knows how to have one hobby at a time.

Contact Us

Jerry Evanoff

Email: ⁠⁠[email protected]⁠⁠

Website: ⁠https://jerryevanoff.com

⁠⁠⁠⁠https://jerryevanoffauthor.substack.com/⁠⁠

Rich Kacy

Email: ⁠⁠[email protected]⁠

⁠BlueSky: @RichKacy⁠⁠

https://richkacy.substack.com/⁠⁠

Tags

writing podcast

self-publishing

indie author

Kindle Countdown Deal

Facebook ads

Amazon attribution

book marketing

Claude AI

Google Labs Flow

Substack

bird watching

mystery writing

author life

Killer Nashville

The New Author Podcast