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

About this episode

Jerry and Rich discuss podcasting, book marketing statistics, and the challenges of writing and engaging with readers.

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…

People in this episode

Host: Jerry Evanoff

Guest: Rich

Topics covered

• podcasting
• book marketing
• writing process
• author statistics
• email lists
• reader engagement

Keywords

• promo stats
• AI agents
• microphone issues
• Facebook ads
• Amazon rankings
• cold email lists
• Substack
• book revisions

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Facebook, Amazon, Substack

Books & works: Book 1, Book 2, Book 3

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