May 29, 2026

Promo Stats, AI Agents, and a Microphone That Needed Viagra | Ep 356

1 hour 5 minutes

This week, Jerry and Rich show up for what Jerry calls “real podcasting,” which means no editing, a sagging microphone, and two writers trying to sound calm while both of them are standing in the middle of some very specific chaos. Jerry opens with the results of his recent promo run for Book 1: 98 total orders for the month, including 92 discounted copies of Book 1, 6 copies of Book 2, 1,037 page reads across the two books, and 4 preorders for Book 3. Not a moon landing, not a disaster, and very much the kind of real-world author math that can leave a person both encouraged and slightly annoyed at the same time.

A big chunk of the episode is Jerry walking through what those marketing numbers actually mean. He talks about Facebook ads bringing in 286 clicks at about 33 cents each, a small number of direct sales from the ad, one sale from his email list, and the uncomfortable reality that Amazon rankings fall off a cliff the second the promo momentum slows down. There’s also a good conversation about cold email lists, pruning inactive subscribers, and the weirdness of trying to build real readers on Substack when the notes feed often looks like a convention of writers waving at other writers.

Then the episode shifts into writing mode, and this is where things get spicy. Jerry is not gently revising Book 3. He is staring down what sounds an awful lot like a near-total rewrite. He talks about keeping the murderer, victim, and core backstory, but likely changing the setting and reshaping the whole thing into something more futuristic and AI-heavy, possibly involving a data-center-style environment and a trapped-in-place setup. So if you enjoy hearing an author describe the exact moment a book stops being “a draft that needs help” and becomes “a full summer project,” this episode absolutely has that energy.

Rich brings his own form of chaos, which is much nerdier and honestly pretty great. He has gone deep into building custom AI writing agents, including a co-author core, a deep drafter, a continuity guardian, and a puzzle keeper. He explains how he’s feeding them system instructions, voice samples, genre guidance, and dynamic context so they can help challenge his writing, catch continuity problems, and track mystery clues instead of just smiling and telling him he’s brilliant. It is a very Rich Kacy update: part writing craft, part experiment, part beautiful descent into the weeds.

There’s also some fun side-road stuff in here too: Jerry golfing between plot crises, buying unnecessary-but-clearly-necessary gear at Micro Center, playing old football board games, updating Etsy after a surprise multi-book order, and getting ready to appear on Dave Gardner’s gaming podcast. So this one lands in a nice honest place: part publishing recap, part writing reckoning, part AI lab experiment, and part two guys trying to keep all the plates spinning without dropping one on their own foot.

Jerry Evanoff

Email: ⁠⁠⁠[email protected]⁠⁠⁠

Website: ⁠⁠https://jerryevanoff.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

⁠https://jerryevanoffauthor.substack.com/⁠⁠⁠

Rich Kacy

Email: ⁠⁠⁠[email protected]⁠⁠

⁠BlueSky: @RichKacy⁠⁠⁠⁠

⁠https://richkacy.substack.com/⁠⁠⁠