#412 Marketing Minute: How to Sell Books with Authenticity

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, it's Shelly Hitz here from Christian Book Academy. How do I make my encouraging devotions marketable without giving up authenticity? Selling feels disingenuous, and I totally get it. Selling can feel icky and like that used car salesman. Amen. Anyone feel the same way? And what I encourage you to do is, first of all, think of selling as helping. I have had coaches in the past that have taught me this selling is helping. And so you do not have to use the same tactics or the same things that feel icky to you. If something just feels off or feels icky to you, guess what? You don't have to do that. You get to choose your marketing techniques. And marketing is really about relationships. It's about connecting with your readers. It's about sharing your story. Even if you write fiction or children's books, you can share the story of writing the book, the story of overcoming the fear and doubt and all the things that you've done. You can connect with people on a more personal level. And so I really encourage you, first of all, to just ask God to help you change your view of marketing, that marketing is selling. Marketing is relationships. And instead of being the bullhorn on the side corner of the sidewalk, you know, that's probably what your the picture is like, buy my book. Buy my book. Instead, it's like asking a friend, hey, would you like to come over for coffee and get to know one another? And then you've invited them, they either say yes or no. If they say yes, you get to go the next step, right? You invite them into your home, you invite them over for coffee. So. So permission marketing is what I really believe in. You're asking people to, you know, for their permission to send them more information. So email marketing, when someone signs up for your email list, they're giving you permission to follow up with you. And they can always unsubscribe at any time. It's nothing that we have to take personally, but we're giving them permission to be in our space. And so I really encourage you to stay see marketing that way and that you can do it from your personality, too. You don't have to be on video. You don't have to have a podcast. You don't have to do things the way everyone else is doing it. 20% of your efforts will result in 80% of your results. So maybe you focus most of your energy on Amazon ads and that's what you do. And you don't even have to worry about feeling salesy or icky or weird on Amazon ads, right? Or, or maybe you focus on search engine optimization. That's where you have a blog or you're creating content for YouTube or Pinterest or even Amazon can be like a search engine at times for, you know, if you have created a short Kindle ebook to promote your other books. But you then create content around phrases people are already searching for. You're solving problems and people are finding you already interested in what you have to offer. So it's not like you have to feel disingenuous. So I want you to know there are many ways to market a book. Another option is to do podcast interviews and just share your story, share your heart. And we have tons of training for you available in ChristianBookAcademy.com that can lead you through marketing and give you the exact steps, give you some templates to start with, like to pitch podcast or to get started with your first, first Amazon ad, or to do SEO research for your blog. You know, we have these, we have these trainings for you. And then we also have things available in our shop, bookmarketing shop.com, if you'd rather buy things one by one. But I just want to pray for you because God wants this message to get out. So, Lord, thank you so much for what you're doing. Thank you that you have given us a way to steward the message of our books well, that we don't have to feel disingenuous, that we don't have to give up our authenticity just to market a book, that we can do it as you lead us, as we have business meetings with you, that you will lead us. And then we can do it in the way that works with our personality, our values, and that lines up with really how we can best help our target audience, our target reader, so that selling is helping, selling is serving. And that's ultimately what we want to do. We want to have an impact. So Lord, help us to move forward in the direction directions that you are leading us in. Jesus name, amen. All right, I hope that this was encouraging and helpful to you and keep going. The enemy wants to stop you and some of these mindset things will stop you from moving forward to write, publish, and market your books. So I'm cheering you on.

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 power, 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.