#325: Marketing Minute: Let Your Customers Sell Your Book for You

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 Shelli 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.

Hey, Kingdom Writers, it's Shelly Hits here, and in this marketing minute, I just wanted to briefly talk about how it is so powerful to let your customers sell your book for you. So what is the, what does this really mean? So you think about customer reviews? Reviews sell books. I mean, over and over again you will find research and studies that show people are influenced by reviews and so they want to know what are other people saying? How has their experience been? And so having someone post a review for you, even, you know, if it's on their social media or their blog, but you know, even more importantly, like on Amazon or some of the other booksellers, it is powerful. If you don't have any reviews listed for your book, or very few people are going to come there and think like, oh, this book is not really selling. It must not be very good. And they come to a conclusion that's often not correct. Right? I mean, just because there's no reviews doesn't mean the book isn't going to change their life or be powerful or entertaining. But a lot of times people jump to that conclusion. They don't want to go first. They want to know that other people have already, you know, read the book and enjoyed it and they don't want to waste their money too. Right? But also, word of mouth referrals, they're the best. So have you ever read a book and then you were like, oh my goodness, I have to share with you. This book was so good, you have to read it. Or are you interested in this particular genre? If so, check this book out. I recently did this with a historical fiction novel. I've just gotten into reading some historical fiction this year and I, I was telling my mom about it and she ended up getting the book. And so those word of mouth referrals are key. So first of all, how do you get those? Well, there's a lot of different strategies and techniques that we share with you in Christian Book Academy, but honestly, the best way is just to simply ask. And so, you know, to ask people to review your book, you know, to have a little blurb at the end of your book, you know, asking if they've enjoyed it, to post a review, to have an, an email in your autoresponder sequence, asking people to post a review. You know, I have templates that, with the many marketing messages kits that, you know, give you just a simple template to post on social media and just asking people to post a review. And it really does matter, though, the way you word it, you know, and, you know, you want to, to do it in a way that doesn't just feel like, I need you to review my book, you know, but say, hey, I'm looking for a few people that are interested in reviewing my book. If you've read and reviewed or if you've read my book, would you be willing to post a review? Let me know in the comments. And, and I have other templates. I don't have them in front of me or memorized. But just asking people is really powerful. And then obviously just writing a book that's going to be so good that people are going to want to share it. My book broke crayonstale Color is like that. People just naturally share it. And the book title is very catchy and it's very powerful, just the title in and of itself. And so people are, you know, tend to want to share that. But, you know, this is something that I've been really pressing into and trying to do more, even with like, Christian Book Academy. Instead of me trying to sell you on, oh, I, I want you to buy Christian Book Academy or I want you to sign up, let me share with you the results my members are getting. So, you know, let them speak for the academy. Right. And so over the last year, I have been interviewing quite a few of our academy members. And I just got this idea. I saw someone else doing it, and I thought this would be a great way to really help you to know. Um, first of all, that Christian Book Academy is the real deal. You know, you're investing money and you're not wanting to, like, say, you know, just, you know, throw your money away, but you want to know what, what you're getting is going to help you get results. Um, but second of all, that, like, you know, what kind of results could you expect to get? And so we started a private podcast. It's called the Christian Book Academy Success Stories Podcast. And you just, you have to sign up for it at trainingauthors.com success stories. If you swipe up on your show notes, you'll find the link there, but I encourage you to go download it. And, you know, you can tell by the titles, you know, if it's something that you might be interested in listening to or if it might apply to you, but go listen to their stories and their case studies and you know, even if you don't join Christian Book Academy, you'll learn some tips and some things that they strategies that they've used that have helped them into write, publisher, market their book. And I just plan to add more and more to this podcast. But you know, right now I think we have, let's see, we have 18 case studies, so we have those waiting for you at trainingauthors.com forward/success-stories and you know, we are opening the doors publicly to Christian Book Academy next week. So if you want to get on the waiting list, you can just go ahead and do that@christianbookacademy.com and you'll be ready for when we open our doors. But we are just so thrilled to be here to be able to help you just to move forward in what God has called you to do. And I want you to really be considering how can you let your customers see, sell your book for you? So what are some things you can do to, you know, get reviews or to really create a book that creates that word of mouth referral and have a business meeting with God, ask him for strategies and if you want more help on that, again, join us in Christian Book Academy. We have lots of training and strategies and resources for you on that. So I'm so glad that you're here. I hope you go ahead and get access to that private podcast and I will see you next time. 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 where we help you give birth to your books. We invite you to join our community of Kingdom writers.