#230: The Benefits of Independent Publishing - Self-Publishing (Finisher Series)

Welcome to Kingdom Writers, where we help equip and empower Christian writers of all genres to share your unique gifts with the world. We're your hosts, C.J. and Shelley Hitz.

This podcast is filled with spiritual encouragement as well as prayers to help you overcome the resistance you face as a writer. Your story matters.

Welcome to our Finisher series. So if you've been following along, last summer we did our breakthrough series helping you break through those obstacles keeping you from writing your book. Then in the fall we did our Overcomer series, just helping you overcome and really do what God has created you to do in your writing. Now it's time for the Finisher Series series and we are going to be focusing this series on helping you cross the finish line of publishing your book. This is spiritual encouragement, but we're also going to be talking about some practical things and we record these live inside our private group for Christian Book Academy. Now I'd love to invite you to join us. Just go to ChristianBookAcademy.com I hope this episode encourages you today. Today's theme is called the benefits of independent publishing or what some of you may know as self publishing. And you know, this semester, excuse me, this semester we felt led to add a one minute reflection at the end of each of these live videos for you to hear from God. And we're so glad you did this. Last week alone we had a couple of you in the group mentioned how hearing from God during that time changed your course of action. So we just wanted to share a few of your comments.

Yeah, so.

The first one here that we want to share is Jan. And Jan said she heard from God, quote, relax, there's no rush. And as you've waited this long, be careful and do it well. Lean on me, I will show you how. She said, I felt a wave of peace, a wave of real peace. I tend to go full out, but he said, take your time. I needed to hear that. Even more prayer is needed now that I have taken this step, I must listen to him.

Yeah. And you know, we fully agree, Jan. And you know, we talked about this last week, going at the pace of God's grace and you know, following his lead. And so that may mean that each of us go at a different pace. It will be, we will all go at different paces as he leads us. And then Debbie said, I'm adding writing to my first draft based on what God told me to add during prayer last Wednesday. I had never thought about it. Praise God, it will make it more interactive. So we're so Excited to always hear how God is speaking to you and working through you as. As you go through the week. Please come back and share your breakthroughs in the Facebook group. We love cheering you on.

Yeah. And so, you know, one of the things I wanted to share this week that I felt was on my heart. I've actually, you know, stumbled across this verse.

In recent weeks, and I thought, you know, there might be one of our episodes that. That it's more relevant to share it. And, you know, I think all of us kind of feel sometimes like, man, you know, who am I to write this book? And, you know, why does the world need it?

Does the world need another book on this topic? It could be a number of things that we felt regarding whether or not we feel worthy enough to write a book or whether a book's needed. And this verse is the last verse in the Gospel of John, and many of you are familiar with that verse. But I'll read it here. It's John 21:25, and it says Jesus also did many other things. Things, if they were all written down, I suppose the whole world could not contain the books that would be written. And so I think it's just a reminder to us to say that, you know, what if, if anything, there aren't enough books to sum up the beauty and the majesty and the vastness of our Lord Jesus Christ. And all of you are somehow in this academy because you believe in kingdom writing, writing for the Lord. Now, we're all writing different subject matter, and many of our books may not even include the name Jesus, but we're all endeavoring to glorify God with our writing. And what I want to say is that there's just not enough books out there in reality to contain all of the good things that God wants to say or be reflected through. 7.6 billion people on this planet. Do you realize there's 7.6 billion image bearers? If every one of them wrote a book on the same subject regarding Jesus, guess what? It still wouldn't be enough. It still wouldn't tip the scales to the vastness of who Jesus is. And none of us as human beings fully understand that. Now we get glimpses through the Spirit, and we're connected to God through the Spirit. But as humans, it would just blow our minds in terms of how vast.

The Son of God is and.

How much the Father desires that his Son be glorified throughout the universe and, you know, not only for what he did in his 33 years here on this planet, but who he was Even before he stepped foot on this planet. I mean, angels by the millions worshiped the son of God 24:7 before he even stepped foot into our humble surroundings. And so the reality is that the content of what we could write regarding Jesus is limitless. We could never have enough. And I just want to say that many are going to be impacted by your books and there's somebody out there who is waiting for your book. You put it in just the right way that God has planned to use you in their lives because you have a unique experience that perhaps relates to a whole group of people around the planet that get you and they understand where you're coming from and they're encouraged. And so I just want to encourage you there that don't ever think that, oh, you know, I just don't know if I should birth this book into the world if it's really needed. Trust me, if God's put it on your heart, how many know that until you do get it out there, it's going to be like Jeremiah said, it's going to be a fire in your bones waiting to get out. And so you, you need to get that out and be obedient to what God's called you.

Yeah, I felt that with my broken crayons still color book. I was like, our pastor right now is preaching on Jonah. And I was like, I felt like Jonah, you know, I started the first draft and then I was like, I'm out of here, this is too hard.

But it was like a fire in my bones. And almost a year later the Lord's like, finish the book and praise God, I finished it. And it has just been such a blessing. And so we, we have been there ourselves as well and we encourage you in this as well to do the things that God has called you to do. And today we're going to be talking about the benefits of independent publishing. And how many of you remember years ago when you had to walk in to a brick and mortar store to actually buy a book? Yeah, those pre Internet days I remember.

Had to drive to Roseburg, Oregon from Myrtle Creek, which was about a 20 mile drive to get to that Christian bookstore. And I remember what a blessing it was to go in there and just see all these books that could encourage me in my faith, especially as a fairly new believer in my late teen years.

Yeah. And so you know, it used to be you had to go into brick and mortar store and now you can buy books online from Amazon and other retailers. CJ and I also take advantage of our library system and we can go on and we can check to see if a digital book is available. If it is, I mean, instant gratification, right? Yeah, right away we can start reading it on our Kindle devices. But thank God for Kindle. Yeah, talk about instant gratification. But you know, things are changing, right cj?

Yeah. You know, we can see that the times are changing throughout the world of publishing. I mean, and rapidly. Many of you are seeing this firsthand, you know, as the way that we buy and read books changes. So does publishing. And so no longer is it necessary to submit your book to a long list of publishers and endure rejection after rejection after rejection.

No longer is it necessary to pay a publisher thousands of dollars to self publish your book. You know, this is commonly called vanity publishing. No longer is it necessary to invest thousands of dollars in self published books that are going to sit boxes in your garage. Yeah, for years.

Times are changing and.

You know, gone are those days.

Yeah. You know, there's so many books that I don't know if, if I would have, if we would have had the money to be able to publish them had we had to have bought thousands of copies of our book. And C.J. and I both, we love bookstores and we love buying books and I buy books on Amazon all the time and get them shipped. You know, you know, both print, but then also ebook and Kindle. But there are just so many opportunities right now for us as writers. How many of you agree? Like, you know, say hello to ebook platforms and print on demand publishing options for print books. So print on demand, most of you are familiar, but print on Demand or POD technology has changed the way print books can be published. So instead of having to print hundreds or even thousands of books and storing them in your garage or warehouse, Print on demand companies can print copies of your book one at a time as they are ordered. And that's what CJ and I have done for, for the last, how, let's see, we started in 2008, so, so it's been now what, 13 years?

Yeah, going on twice or 12. But yeah, I mean that Print on Demand was a game changer because the fact that you, you could just, you know, have somebody order one and then Amazon's going to print that and have it ship mean. Wow. Yeah, game changer right there. And just a personal story. I think maybe I've mentioned this story before, but you know, I've, I've had an interest in writing, you know, even going back to my high school years in my AP English class. There were There were nine of us in that class. And out of the nine, I had probably the lowest GPA out of the nine. And yet I just had that interest in writing. And, you know, my English teacher, Mrs. Taylor, allowed me to stay in the class. And, you know, I have to say, you know, I held my own among, you know, some of the other. You know, there were the three valedictorians of the class in there, and there were. There were some really talented, smart people in there. But it just goes to show you that, you know, you don't have to be the smartest or the most talented. God can use any of us in a unique way. And I had that interest from my teen years. And I remember after Shelly and I got married, I saw an advertisement for a Christian writing conference. And some of you may have heard of the Montrose Christian Writers Conference in Montrose, Pennsylvania. And it's at the Montrose, basically at camp, and it's a beautiful facility. And I just remember I made the six hour drive from Ohio to get there and stay all weekend. And there you were introduced to, you know, a number of people, including publishers and how it works to submit your work. And.

And what year was this?

This was like, man, I want to say it was like 99 or 2,000.

Yeah, it was before, really Print on Demand and what we do now is widely known.

But I met someone there and I remember her first name was Gloria, but I can't remember her last name. But she. She basically published independently, published a devotion book that had poems, short stories, devotions, several other things as well. And I started chatting with her and found out that she does take submissions from, you know, independent writers. And so I submitted to her some of the stuff that I'd written. And lo and behold, she accepted three or four of the things that I'd written and included it in her devotion book called Penned from the Heart. But I remember specifically that I had to buy like eight or nine boxes worth of books in order to make this whole order worthwhile. And, you know, I gave those out. I think, unfortunately, some of those did, you know, have to be thrown away due to some water and mold damage from being in storage and in a garage that leaked. And anyway, I just want to say that that was one of my first experiences of sort of getting my feet wet in the days of, okay, I have a desire to write, but what do I do now? And then I was introduced to different things at this conference, but I use that example to say, wow, how much things have changed. You no longer just have to submit to Publishers.

You can actually take your own steps as an independent publisher and author and say, man, I'm going to get this book out there. Who needs to wait any longer?

Right?

Yeah.

Yeah. And we teach independent publishing in Christian Book Academy.

Yeah. And so self publishing has basically gotten a bad reputation in some people's eyes because of the poor quality. And let's face it, you know, there have been some pretty poor things put out there over the years in terms of quality. But yet we teach in CBA what you need to know in order to create a book that you're really proud of. So, again, gone are the days that we have to put out something that's less than desirable quality. In the end, someone could pick up your book and also a traditionally published book, and they could look at the two, and they won't even know which one is independently published. Published. And that's a cool thing. And so, again, I guess one of the points that we want to make here is that, you know, some of you may be feeling like, yeah, we're still in the B league, you know, when it comes to independent publishing. You know, there's the NBA, but then there's the cba. Oh, you know, some of you might remember the Continental Basketball Association. That was the sort of the level down from the.

Oh, I didn't know it was that.

Yeah. And yet what I want to tell you is that's not the case at all. Some of the best writers around the world aren't even published by traditional authors. They just decided, you know what? I want to maintain control. And we'll get into that here in a second as well. But I just. We want to dispel the myth that says, oh, you know, it's just less than, and it's B league, and it's not the case anymore. In the year 2020, technology has equalized among all of us, including the traditional publishing houses. They realize it. There's more competition. And I think more than anything, the traditional publishing houses realize they need to sort of up their game because there's so much added competition competing for their books. And so.

Just keep that in mind regarding, you know, independent publishing, or what's been known as self publishing. We like to refer to it as indie, you know, publishing.

And, you know, in the past, the standard has been traditional publishing. But that is changing. And, you know, it makes me think of Jesus. And I was. I was actually thinking about this on my run today as I was just preparing mentally and just praying for this time with you today, that Jesus often did things different than the standard of his day. Right. Like the way that things had always been done, like, he just tended to do things differently and not just to be a rebel, but because he was following the voice of his father. He was not just blindly going with the flow of what everyone else was doing and what everyone else said you needed to do. He was doing what God was leading him to do. And it led him to pick this ragtag team of disciples that didn't even finish the regular education system. Right? And.

They were unschooled and ordinary men. And so in that time, it would have been expected that Jesus would have picked followers that were, you know.

Were still in the schooling system that were still doing these things, but he picked people who were out doing the trades. And I know CJ had talked about this in depth in a previous training, but Acts 4:13 says, when they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled ordinary men, they were astonished. And they took note that these men had been with who? With Jesus. And are you simply, you know, going along the flow and wanting to, you know, do what's accepted, or are you listening to Jesus? In every part of the process of your publishing your writing, will people say, oh, man, I can tell something is different of ours. She has been with Jesus. He has been with Jesus. And, you know, I just felt like today some chains needed to break off of you. Some of you, some. Some lies needed to break off of you, that in order to be validated as a writer, you have to be traditionally published. That is not the truth. That is a lie from the enemy. And I just, in Jesus name, I command that lie to be broken right now off of you. And self publishing or independent publishing, which is what we teach you, is not just for those who cannot or, you know, were not able to get a traditionally published contract. To be honest, I have never even tried.

This is what God has led us to do. And when God leads you to do it, he is going to bless it. He is going to show you the way. And I just want you to know you are good enough.

This is what God has for you if he's led you to do this. And so we're not saying that you should never pursue a traditionally published contract. We have people in our academy that are hybrid authors, like Jeannie Wise. She's gotten a traditionally published contract and she's independently published. We're not saying you should never pursue that, but.

Only if that is the dream that God has for your books. Remember we talked about dreaming with God last week. If that is the dream that God has given to you for your books, and he has specifically told you that that's the way you're to do, to go, then go for it. But make sure you're not trying to simply live up to the expectations of others or what you think will validate you as a writer in the world. Do what God is calling you to do.

Yeah. And you know, practically speaking.

It'S really important that you research all of the details because you're going to see so much fine print in a traditionally published contract that you may or may not be aware of. But there are many benefits. And we're not just saying this because we're.

You know, the leaders of this Christian book academy.

And that's what we teach.

And that's what we teach is indie publishing. There are just very practical benefits of independent publishing. And so the first one would just simply be.

Royalties. First of all, you don't have to share your royalties with a publisher. Plus you typically only get paid a couple of times a year with traditional publishers versus monthly. As an indie publisher, well, in terms of, you know, published as an independent author, typically you can make more selling a hundred books as an indie author than traditionally published authors can make selling a thousand books. You may not have realized that that's the power of being able to control price point royalties, just who you're going through. You know, when you're traditionally published, there are a lot of mouths to feed in that process that work for that traditional publishing company. It's not just somebody doing your editing. It's a whole host of people that all have a little piece in getting your book to Barnes and Noble or Amazon, wherever it's going. There's a whole lot of pieces shared in that process. And so that's just something to keep in mind.

Yeah, and the advances are shrinking. So even if you do get an advance, typically it's a lot less than it used to be. And you still have to, you know, typically pay that back and then you start making royalties. And so there's just a lot of advantages to the independent publishing route. One of the big ones for us is control. And, um, I know that C.J. and I have both in the past probably at times been control freaks. We are, we are works in progress and learning to submit to God and listen to him and allow him to control the process. Right. So this is not about necessarily us having to be in control and white knuckling it, but allowing God to speak to us and lead us and allow him to be in control and not oppose publisher, to dictate what can or cannot be in our book. So when you independently publish, you keep 100% of the creative control of your book. This means you don't have to make changes that would go against your beliefs and or interests. Plus you keep control of every part of the book. This allows you a lot of flexibility then later to participate in marketing campaigns and promotions that are typically not available to, to traditionally published authors. You know, as independently published authors, I can go in and I can change my price today for a promotion that's coming up in the next couple days. Traditionally published authors are just not able to have that ability to do that. And it also gives you control of your book's pricing, which allows you to price your book competitively in the marketplace. So I've heard of so many stories of people who were either traditionally published or even more so vanity published, where it's a small publisher that you're paying them thousands of dollars to publish your book. That's vanity publishing. That in order for everyone to make the money that they need to make that your book gets priced out of the market. It gets priced so high that it's really hard then to sell on the other side. In Christian Book Academy we have a lesson on pricing. You have the ability then, along with God then to choose the pricing of your book so that it's competitive, so that it fits with your genre, with your market. And it makes it a lot easier for people to take a chance on a new author when the book isn't priced so, so high.

Yeah. Another benefit is time. You know, on average it takes 24 months to go from an edited manuscript to a book being published and arriving in bookstores with traditional publishing. And in that same two year period, an independent author can potentially write, publish and promote three titles. And so again, the time factor can be huge in terms of how quickly you want to get out and get that out there. I, I know someone that supposedly had a February date that the publisher, the traditional publisher was going to.

Release their book. And I just recently went on their Amazon page and saw that it's now the middle of April. And so at one time I remember this, this person sending out some tweets and stuff on Instagram saying, you know, my book's coming in February 2020. But that just shows you that a traditional publisher can say, eh, you know, we've decided we're going to push it back two months. They can basically do that at any time. And they can even do it without Even letting you know now, I don't think they would. They'd say, by the way, in your.

Promotion, yeah, they're gonna communicate with you for sure.

But they, they maintain.

Almost full control, you know, in terms of that book and when and where and how it's going to get out. Whereas as indie authors, we can control that part of it. And time is of the essence. So there are many of us that say, man, I need to get this message out asap. It's just a fire in my bones and I want to get, get through all the hoops as quickly as I can.

Yeah. And, you know, it does decrease the time to begin making money on your hard work. You know, it is. God wants us to earn money from our, our labor. A worker deserves her wages. Right. And so, you know, there's, there's so many different advantages, and we don't want you to rush the process of independently publishing, you know, especially when you're doing your first book. It probably will take longer because you're learning the process. But there are so many advantages, and we've just, you know, just scratched the tip of the iceberg. And there may be certain occasions when a traditional publishing contract might be really profitable for you or might be really beneficial for me personally. It would have to be the exact perfect scenario because typically traditional publishers will still require that you do, you know, a lot of the marketing. You know, a lot of people think, oh, but then they'll do the marketing for me. You know, there may be some things that they can set up for you or to do for you, but they still tend to look for authors and write or look for writers that have big plan platforms so that you can do the marketing for them so they can make their money back. Right. I have a friend that, you know, recently said she got, you know, a lot of. A lot of rejections, and it's just because she doesn't have a platform right now. She's an amazing writer, and they all told her she's an amazing writer, but they expect you to be able to do the marketing. And so, you know, there's so many. There's so many benefits to the independent publishing. And in Christian book academy, we teach you to hire the right people for your book project within your budget, for the editing, the book cover design, and formatting. So this allows you to do what you do best, writing your book, right?

Yeah.

And we'll talk about this more next week. We're gonna go more into really, the power of having a team. But you do not have to do everything yourself.

Yeah. And so we're going to go into a one minute reflection as we've been doing this semester. And in that one minute reflection, again, the simple question you want to ask is, what is God saying to you today? Did any of what we say spur some different thoughts? Did you hear God saying something specifically? Maybe it even led you down a rabbit trail in terms of your thoughts and you felt like the Lord was saying this over here.

So in that one minute, just between you and the Lord, just.

Ask him, what are you saying to me today, Father? So we'll play a little music here as well.

Foreign.

If you feel comfortable, please share in the comments what you felt like God was saying to you. And I just really believe that some of you are going to be freed today. Freed from not feeling good enough, freed from the lies that the. Of what the world says you have to do as a writer. You know, like I said earlier, Jesus did things differently, but he did things according to what his Father was leading him to do. And so each one of us has a different path. We're not saying we all have to go this one exact same path, but ask the Lord and, you know, receive from him what he is saying to you.

Well, and I also just want to add quickly to that. It's also cool to know that there isn't just one path any longer. It isn't just through the traditionally published path. That's the beauty of the world that we live in right now. And I'm so thankful for that because all of us.

Can go through that process and be able to get this message out in book form and see what the Lord does with that. No longer is it just a certain amount of people that get their book out. So that's, that's a cool thing about the world that we live in and the technology that we have at our fingertips.

Yes, definitely. As I was praying today and just asking God if there was, you know, some encouragement that he wanted me to share with you, I just kept getting this picture of a hand glider. I don't know if you guys know what that is, but it's like, you know, they're almost like, I think there's also a paraglider, but hand glider is more firm and stiff and you're holding on and the wind is kind of taking you. And, you know, a lot of times, you know, we see them around here in Colorado Springs. Have you seen them before? Like the hand glider people like. It's something that, you know, people will tend to do in scenic places, but Anyways, I just kept seeing this picture of a hand glider. I'm like, okay, Lord, what does this mean? What is the encouragement here?

And I'm sure most of you and even most of your friends and family have never used a hand glider. I know I haven't. Have you, C.J.

I have never taken that leap off of a cliff with, I call them a hang glider.

Yeah.

Yeah. And so it's something different. Not many people have done it. Right. And so if your friends and family saw you up in the sky, up high, thousands of feet up in the sky on a hand glider today, they might try to talk you out of it or try to get you to come down to their level, get back down on the ground. What are you doing up there? You're going to get hurt. This is, you know, what are you doing? But they might want you to come down to their level because they don't understand it. And many times we fear what we don't understand. Right. It's kind of like the picture of the eagle hanging out with the turkeys that I shared last week. You know, the eagle can fly, but, you know, it was that picture of just hanging out with the turkeys and instead of flying in the design that God has created you. Sometimes I believe that we are afraid of being different. And so we simply try to blend in in order to be accepted.

Yeah.

Who's guilty of that?

Even as adults, it's not just junior high peer pressure, it's full fledged adult peer pressure as well. And that's the social media.

Yeah.

Especially with social media, it's like going back to junior.

Yeah. And.

So I've heard it said that people will accept what is the same, but they will eventually respect what is different. And I believe that God is calling some of you to step out and to be different. And yet there's this fear of what other people are going to think of you when you independently publish your book. Or there's this fear of what people will think, oh, she's just doing that because she can't get a traditionally published contract, or, oh, who does she think she is? She's, you know, thinks she's like, hotter than a, you know, what is the saying? That she's just better than all of us or whatever.

But I want to tell you today that God may be calling some of you to step out on that hand glider to do something that no one in your family has ever done before. No one in your sphere of influence or your friends have done before. That's why we have this Community at Christian Book Academy because we can spur each other around or spur each other on when many times we don't have that in our direct sphere of influence. And God may be calling you to step out on that hand glider and do something different than anyone around you, even when other people may say things to try to get you back down to their level, to get you back down on the ground now next to them, right? And I was reading this morning in Luke 1, and I'm kind of getting fired up.

About Mary and how the angel Gabriel came to Mary and told her she was going to be pregnant. And it started me thinking on this whole subject. And, you know, I can almost guarantee that many people did not understand Mary and Joseph's pregnancy. They. They were probably gossiped about. They were probably talked about. You know, people were probably like, you know, what's going on with Mary and Joseph? And Joseph even wanted to quietly divorce her to avoid all of that controversy and what will people think? But each of them had a personal encounter with the Lord, with God speaking to them through an angel.

He.

And so they each had peace about what God's purpose for their life was, right? They had that peace of what God was going to do through this child Jesus, who has now changed all of our lives. Amen. And they didn't allow what other people might think or how other people might gossip about them or talk about them to stop them from doing what God had called them to do. And, you know, even though they might be misunderstood. And so I want to tell you today, as you take the step to independently publish a book, you may very well be misunderstood.

As you take this step, or those of you that already have, you may very well be misunderstood by people. Will you choose to stay on the ground and in order to be accepted by those around you, or will you choose to trust what God has told you about this book and be ready to fly. Remember the hand glider. Be ready to fly no matter what others say. Mary chose to fly, and it makes me almost want to cry. She responded in Luke 1:38, I am the Lord's servant. Who are you serving today? Are you serving the praise of men and what men think of you, or are you the Lord's servant and willing to do what he's called you to do? She said, I am the Lord's servant. May everything you have said about me come true. And then the angel left her. Mary chose to fly, and I encourage you to choose to fly today as well.

Amen to that. Well, we're going to go Ahead and close in prayer. And, you know, as I'm praying, maybe there's been something that pricked your heart and you're just sort of ruminating on something, you know, that keeps coming to the forefront of your mind. And I just want to encourage you, just lift that up to the Father. And as I'm praying, just release your own words of what is on your heart and your mind, and let's choose to fly.

Amen.

So, Father, we thank you so much for allowing each of us to undertake this journey of writing and publishing a book for your glory and doing it in an independent style. We thank you for that opportunity that we live in a day and age here in 2020, where.

The gap has been closed between indie and traditional publishing. And we thank you that we can be a part of a wave of voices that you use to bring glory to yourself throughout the world. And I pray that each of our writings would be inspired by your spirit, that you would give us creativity and flow. We pray you remove every obstacle that would stand in the way or hinder each of the members of our academy from accomplishing the task that you've put on their heart. And we are excited to see, see and hear testimonies not only of these successfully published books, but even some stories that perhaps begin to come out.

Where people are impacted for eternity after reading these books. And so we, we give it all to you, Lord, and we know you ultimately are the author of life and we are priestly, pens in your hands, and we just give it all to you. And we ask this in Jesus wonderful name. Amen.

Amen. We love just seeing all of your responses coming in and what God's doing in your hearts and minds as you are seeking him and seeking his will for your writing, for your books, for what he is going to do and his way, always the best way. Amen. Yeah, and we're each gonna fly in a different way in a different time. And each of us have different writing styles, we have different genres that we're publishing, but God is able to use every single word. Every single one of us has a gift and a role to play in the kingdom of God that the kingdom of Heaven, you have a specific assignment and just keep pressing in, keep asking God, what is it you have for me today? What is my assignment right now in the kingdom of God? And again, if you haven't, make sure to go through the how to hear God's voice training in the member area. That will really help you on really just hearing from God. And this is going to become even more essential as we get into the marketing side side of things. But we love you guys. We are so happy to be with you again this week and we will see you again next time.

Love you guys.

Bye bye.

Have a great good one.

Thank you so much for joining us for this episode of the Finisher series. It really means the world to us that you would invest time and be here with us today. So thank you. We have a free gift for you. We recently just made this available to to the public. Previously was only available to the paid members in Christian Book Academy, but it's a copy of my publishing map. I hand drew and lettered this map out for you and it literally takes you through the steps of publishing your book and our members love this resource. Some have said they print it out and they use it every single time they publish a book. You'll also get access to a video of me explaining the publishing map to you and so I really hope that this also helps you overcome any confusion or overwhelm regarding independent publishing. And you can download this for free@trainingauthors.com publishing map or just swipe up and the link will be in your show notes. Thank you again for joining us. We love you all so much. See you next time.

Thank you for listening to this episode of Kingdom Writers. We believe that you, as a Christian writer, have a specific role to play in the Kingdom of Heaven to impact lives for eternity.

And because of this, we choose to pour out our lives into encouraging writers like you to not only tell your stories, but to take the courageous step of self publishing your stories in books that will outlive you and leave behind a powerful legacy. This podcast is sponsored by Christian Book Academy where we help you give birth to your books. We invite you to join our community of Kingdom Writers.