#253: Do You Believe in Your Book? (Marketing Minute)

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 back to this week's Marketing Minute. My name is Shelley Hitz, and I'm here with my husband, C.J.

Hey, gang.

And in this episode, I'm going to talk about your belief in your book. This kind of sounds like common sense, but it really is the foundation of all selling. So in order to have the courage to market and sell your books, and you have to 100% believe in your book, your belief in your book is what will help you sell it to others. So the first question I have for you is, do you believe that you are writing or have written a high quality book? Are you proud of the work you've created? If not, now is the time to improve your book until you create a book that you are confident to give to anyone, whether it's your neighbor or the President of the United States. The great thing about independent publishing is you can update your book at any time. So if there is even a slight hesitation when you answer this question, make sure to do everything you can to create a book you're proud of. Now, let me give you a couple examples. Recently in my book Marketing Momentum coaching program, I had a couple authors that were just having trouble marketing their books, and we got to the root of the issue, and they weren't truly proud of their book covers. And so both of them ended up going through a process changing their book covers, and they are now in love with their book. You know, removed that barrier of not, you know, it was almost like they felt embarrassed to promote their book. And so, you know, it's a very real issue for some people. Now, that may not be your issue at all. It might be that maybe you didn't have your book edited or maybe there's, you know, deep down in your. In your soul that you rushed this book too much. You know, that there's even more that you could do to make this even better. So take a step back. Really look at your book. If you. Is your book something that you're 100% proud of? Now let's take a deep breath and realize also, I'm not talking about perfectionism here because I know some of you as well will tweak and tweak and tweak and tweak and never Press the publish button. So don't let perfectionism keep you from publishing. But on the other hand, don't be in a rush to publish that you don't put the time and money into your book that's necessary to create a high quality book. Does that make sense? C.J.

Makes perfect sense.

Oh.

Yes.

And the second question to ask yourself is, do you 100% believe that this book will benefit your reader? Will it help them, encourage them, entertain them, et cetera? If so, you should be more than happy to share it with others. For example, if you discovered an upcoming sale on Amazon that was going to be 99% off for one day only, but you had to sign up for it at a special link, would you share that link with all of your friends? And like, this is a legit thing, it's not one of those spam things, right? Absolutely, yes. You'd be sharing with everyone. And I want you to think about your book in the same way. There are specific people right now that need and or want what your book has to offer. Your book will help people. It will entertain someone and make their day better. Don't hesitate to share something you know will help someone. Marketing is really about serving your target audience. So I've read a lot of books on selling and they all start with this simple step of having belief in your product. And in this case, it's in our book. You have to believe in the product you're selling or else you won't have the courage to face the fear of putting yourself out there. Because let's admit it, we always have that resistance, right? So I have a few action steps for you. Number one, write in a journal your answer to question one. And here's the question again. Do you believe that you are writing or have written a high quality book? Are you proud of the work you've created? And then number two, write in your journal your answer to question two. And here's the question again. Do you 100% believe that your book will benefit your readers? Will it help them, encourage them, entertain them, et cetera. And then number three, if you still feel resistance about selling your book journal and pray about it, ask God to reveal the root to you. There's something there. It could be fear, self doubt, or a myriad of other lies from the enemy. We've talked about a lot of these on this podcast in the past. I personally have had to wrestle with this whole issue regarding even selling Christian Book Academy. And I know there can be a lot of resistance that we face as you put yourself out there. So let's get any resistance out in the open and overcome it so God can be glorified through your books and you can sell more books. Amen. So CJ is going to take a moment and pray over all of you now.

Father, we thank you so much for each and every author. We ask, Lord, that your Holy Spirit would guide them, direct them if there's anything that needs to be changed. I pray that you would direct them. But I also pray, Lord, that you would remove any spirit of perfectionism that has perhaps taken a hold of us. I pray that.

We would be excited to be able to publish. Hit that publish button. I pray you remove the fear. But I also pray, Lord, that if we can do anything to allow our books to be at their utmost quality without being perfectionistic, I pray that you allow us to do that. You give us wisdom in that to know the difference and we'll give you the glory, Lord. For each book that is sold and gets into the right hands at the right time, we ask this in Jesus name. Amen.

Amen. Thank you. Thank you so much for being here on this episode of Kingdom Writers. We pray that this podcast is blessing you. We have tons of archives that you can go through if you know there's just still some resistance for you. So check out those archives and share this podcast with someone you think it would encourage. We love you guys. Talk to you later. Bye Bye.

Bye. 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 and where we help you give birth to your books. We invite you to join our community of Kingdom Writers.