#390: Marketing Minute: Partnering with Local Businesses to Sell More Books

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.

Hey, Kingdom Writers, it's Shelly Hitz, one of your hosts here on the Kingdom Writers Podcast. And today we want to talk about partnering with local businesses to sell more books. This is one thing I find writers often overlook. You know, we can think about all the things to do online, and I really do sell most of my books online, and so I talk about that a lot. But what about partnering and finding strategic partners in, in your local area? So this is something that I've talked about a lot in Christian Book Academy, and one of our members, Marianne Ward, she really put this to action and she began praying and asking God for strategic partners and for ideas of people to, to be able to connect with and partner with for her books. And during one of our war room prayer meetings, God gave her an idea that wasn't even on her radar to, to combine her passion for art and writing into an unexpected book. And the really cool thing about it was that she reached out to a photographer that, you know, she just asked that photographer to be able to create some full color photos for the book. And so that was her strategic partner. And that photographer became her best marketing asset for that book and began to push the book and share the book and market the book in ways that probably Marianne may not have ever done herself. And even before she put in the order for the printer for the books locally, they already sold 100 copies. And so she doubled her order from the beginning because she had already pre sold 100 copies. And I think that's a really great idea if you're going to order author copies and sell them locally, pre sell them. Know how many people are wanting to buy books and then that way you have a really great idea, you get some initial money to put that order in. I mean, you don't have to take it out of your own pocket, you know, your own bank account. And so that's also another little tip. But I just love this story because who is it that maybe God has in your local community that you could partner with? And it might not be in this way, and it probably won't be. It might not be with a photographer in this way, but maybe there's someone else or another organization, you know, depending on the topic of your book, maybe there's someone else that you can partner with. And I just think the best ideas come from our, from our business meetings with God and from prayer. And so I encourage you to begin asking God, you know, if you have published books right now or if you're, if you have a book that will be published soon, ask the Lord, is there someone locally that I could partner with? And it may not be even anyone that you know yet. I mean, you can reach out to people and ask and maybe you do a partnership with your local library, maybe it's with your, your local pet rescue because your book is about a dog or. I don't know, I mean there's so many options. You know, maybe your book is for seniors and you partner with a seniors ministry at a church in your area or your own church. But there could, there could be endless opportunities and so many ideas that I don't, I couldn't even think of right now. I wouldn't have thought of this for Marianne, but it worked out but beautifully. And I love that she got the idea during our war room prayer meetings. So we host these every month in Christian Book Academy. And some people might think, oh, that just seems like a waste of time or why would you even include that in a writing membership? You know, like, let's just get to writing now. We have our productivity parties every week, which is an hour of, of writing that you can do together, group writing. And we do those twice on Tuesdays. Currently we have our two day virtual writing retreat. So we have group writing sessions. We have our 15min minute writing challenge every month. But this is specifically to, let's say, let's connect with God. Let's, you know, I always come away more encouraged and ideas like this can be birthed in those meetings. I mean it is just incredible. So I just wanted to get you thinking today, like what are some potential partners that you could connect with in your local area? You can do strategic partnerships and collaborations online all day, every day. But there's something powerful about starting where you are planted, starting in your local community. Maybe there's a coffee shop that you can have a book signing in. Maybe there's a music group and that you both can do an event together and they sell their music and you sell your books and I don't know, I mean, maybe they write a song for, for your book launch. I mean, who knows? The sky is the limit. But I really believe that when you start locally, start with people even that you know already and then begin to spread. You know, you, you even gain confidence so I'm sure after Marianne's experience doing this, like she gained more confidence to approach other people for other in other ways and other partnerships as well. So I hope that this has encouraged you and, and, and got the wheels turning, but then that you take these things to God and ask him for direction and for those God ideas. So let me pray for you. God, we thank you for every person listening right now. We thank you for the books that you are birthing through their lives. We thank you for bringing their books to life, that they are not taking these books to the grave, but you are bringing them to life. And we pray that you would give life and life abundantly to these books that they would not just see sit in the, you know, online shelves or they would sit in their homes, Lord, that yout would give them ideas, that yout would connect them with those strategic partners even in their local areas that would, you know, could, could help them to sell the books to impact more lives. And we just give all of the outcome to youo, Lord. Whether we sell one book or we sell a hundred, however it goes, Lord, we just give it all to youo. And we just, we just want to continue to walk forward day in obedience because ultimately success is obedience. And we just surrender ourselves, we surrender these books to you in Jesus powerful name. Amen. Amen. Friends, thank you for joining me today and I will talk to you next time. Buh. 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.