#417 Marketing Minute: How to sell your books to your email list

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.

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Is there a way to encourage my email list with information about my book that doesn't feel like I'm constantly asking them to buy a copy? So, first of all, I have another video that I'll link to in the description that really talks about how to market in an authentic way, and it talks about how to share that doesn't feel sleazy or slimy, so I will link to that video as well. But there are many ways that you can share your book with your email list, and one of the best ways is to let other people talk about your book. So hopefully you already have some book reviews on Amazon or other retailers, so you could share what other people have said about your book or what other people have given you as feedback or their experience. Like if people have had a great experience with your book or a breakthrough, or if maybe if it's even a family member or a friend that shared with you something that they've done, then you can share that in an email. For example, my mom used my devotional book, Living Beyond Brokenness, with her small group, and they meet for Bible study on Friday mornings. And they had just an amazing experience using that book as the content was for them to even have more discussion. And the book is so honest and open and vulnerable that it just allowed them to talk about so many different things on an incredibly deep level. They all loved it. And so that's a story I could tell to my email list about that book. And actually that's probably a good idea for an email for me to write. But you can have, you know, share other people's experiences and. Or share what someone has said in a review. So number two, share stories. So share stories about writing the book. So the process of writing the book, why you wrote the book, or depending if you are nonfiction, fiction or children's book or poetry, whatever your genre is, you can talk about the process of coming up with a specific chapter or a specific character or why you included a specific area in the country. You know, I was initially, I started writing a fiction novel years ago and just decided not to continue down that path. But I chose Colorado Springs as the location because I live here, I know it so well. So you could talk about that. I mean, any Little tidbit in your book, or, you know, maybe you had an experience with your book cover designer and you could tell the story about that and share about how you chose your book cover. You know, there's so many different stories you could tell and then relate it to your book. It could be a life lesson. So depending what kind of book you have, if you have a story that happens in your life, like years ago, I smell spilled a smoothie on my laptop, and it was a crazy time. And so I could talk about that particular story and then relate it to a life lesson that then I talk. Maybe I talk more about that life lesson in my book, or maybe there's a devotional in my book, living beyond the Brokenness, where I talk about something related to that so I can tie things in to even stories of my life or even current things that are happening. You know, right now we have our. My dad staying with us for five weeks, and the roles have really reversed. My dad is. Is older, he had a brain injury and now has, you know, some dementia, and so the roles are reversing. And I could talk about being a caregiver, and he's living with my sister full time, but, you know, and. And relate that to something in, in the book. So one of my devotionals in Living beyond the Brokenness is about that we're never alone. And I could talk about that, like, even though sometimes I feel alone in this journey of having aging parents and all of this. And then I could talk about my book. Right. The thing about, okay, so number one, let other people do the talking for you. So share other reviews, experiences, how other people have had breakthroughs or how they've used your book. Number two, sharing stories. And that can go on and on and on. Number three, talk about the benefits of the book. So this is something that most writers are not doing very well. And it's taken me a long time to learn this, and I'm still learning this, and I'm still not probably doing as well as I could. But we want to talk about the benefits of the book. So what will someone gain from reading their book? Maybe they'll be encouraged, inspired, Maybe they'll be entertained. You know, maybe you're. Your child will learn a specific life lesson. But those are broad things. But we have a training inside Christian Book Academy. It's called scrolling to sold. And it really teaches you the basics of what is called copywriting, and that's writing to sell. That's very different than writing a book. So copywriting is writing to persuade Someone to buy. And it doesn't have to be sleazy or slimy because selling is helping. That's something I talk about a lot and I've had coaches tell me and help me with because I just like to teach. And if I could just teach and teach and teach and have all my bills paid for, I wouldn't charge you a thing. Right? But we have to pay bills. And so I realized selling is helping. I'm helping you. When you join Christian Book Academy, if you take this lesson and take this course on scrolling to sold and you learn how to write benefits, that's a skill you can use for the rest of your life. And then your books, as you sell those books, you're helping the people who buy those books and it's a ripple down effect. But sometimes we just get all up in our head about the whole selling thing. So selling is helping. And when we really learn to sell with benefits, what are the benefits? And a lot of times, you know, that's going to be your book description or it's, you know, what's going to pull you into that fiction novel. It's what are you going to learn or how are you going to be inspired or what's something that is going to, how's your life going to change as a result of reading this book? So the, those are the three things. First, let other people do the talking. Share reviews and other people's experiences. Number two, share stories. And number three, talk about the benefits of the book and how is it going to help that person. Now I don't recommend that you just do this every email. So some emails are just going to be pure encouragement or just, you know, just, just something that makes someone smile or makes them laugh or maybe it's a little tidbit behind the scene of your, one of your characters and it's just a value email. Like there's, there's no main things. The call to action in that kind of email could be to reply to that email because the more people reply, the more the email service, you know, people and all the technology in the background, they, they see that people are reading your emails and they're replying to them. So your deliverability tends to go up. So you could say, hey, reply to this email and let me know, dah, dah, dah, dah, whatever it is. Or the call to action could be, hey, you know, I have this, a free thing, blog post or podcast or whatever. But I don't recommend that you try to sell on every email. You know, think about how you what emails do you enjoy reading? What do you enjoy opening and be that kind of person? Right? Relationships, relationships, relationships. That's the core of marketing. And again, I'm going to link to that other video in the description of this one. Go watch that one as well about marketing in an authentic way and I hope that this was helpful to you. Again, my name is Shelly hitz from ChristianBookAcademy.com where we help you write words that outlive you, self publish books that fulfill your calling and reach more readers with your message.

Thank you for listening to this episode of Kingdom Writer. 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.