This is not a typical blog post, but when you walk and live in
the Spirit, you do according to the Master’s wishes and commands because you
are not your own.
A few months back when I published my book “How To Pray
Through Depression & Loneliness” http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00E5MRSWC
I was busy promoting the book all over the place. While the ads were not
expensive, but when you tally them up, you find that in the end a lot of
advertising dollars are spent for nothing because the sale of the book did not
come close to cover my expenses. One of
the reasons I was scared of pulling the ads, even though they were not worth
it, I just read an article with all the stats on how realistically speaking a
self-published author can expect to sell a total of 82 books for each
publication.
Even though it was painful, I decided to stop and listened
to God. Low and behold within 100 days I
sold more than 82 of my book “How To Pray Through Depression & Loneliness” http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00E5MRSWC
It was nice to watch because almost
every day I was in the two digits on Amazon i.e #25, or 15 in the Kindle store.
Yes, it is not a lot of books sold. But it was as if God was making a point through
the learning process. In fact, I was
embarrassed to tell people about it because we are not talking about 1000’s of
books here. But when you are a true believer in Christ and you are going forward
with Him, you will find there is a consistency in your walk. What I mean is
that God touches your life in the simplest and the smallest thing. It is as if
all compartments within, have to merge into one identity. It does make sense
when you consider that He knows you by name and knows every hair on your head.
The truth is, as self-published authors, when we go to our Amazon
Kindle account and check the Month to Date Unit Sales it could be
disconcerting. Keep in mind the category has a lot to do with the best seller’s
rank much more than the amount of books sold. Anyway, as I moved forward to
listen to God’s plan to teach me how to live a consistent Christian life, even
in my book marketing process, I found that He convicted me for listing my book
on a very popular secular site for Self-Published authors. I have to admit I
did not like the fact that I was convicted when I saw a Christian book with the
Cross of Christ on the cover next to another picture where the woman was
wearing almost nothing. In fact, it was a picture promoting escorts services. I
set out on purpose to locate Christian listings on this secular site which I
will not name, and I found a few Christians there. I even said to God, why me? Why
is it you do not convict someone who is a pastor to take off his book, yet you
are busting my chops? He then gave me a
beautiful lesson about why some can and some cannot.
It would have been nice to keep selling approximately 25 of the same book per month. But I am down to 10 to 12 only on a monthly basis and I learn not to panic and trust His plan for me when I hit 5 to 6 days of “no sale” because out of the blue I will have a one day that makes up for it. It is okay for now when you consider first of all I started in this business late 2012, and for now, the only real advertising I have done is through my Social Media accounts, my blogs and also I have been putting links within the
On January 7 I had such a wonderful day with God as He
reminded me several things and one of them was that He made it clear what He
was teaching me how to merge it all together so that I could see with my soul, the
difference between David being allowed to commit an unlawful act like eating
the bread in 1 Samuel 21:5-6 and yet He burned Aaron’s sons to death for
offering strange fire in Leviticus 10:1-7. I have to say it was all well with
my soul and I can only be grateful to Him for caring about a worm like me.
Here is what I am driving at, in the next few days I will be
posting some pages not as a blog post, but only on the community pages
of http://christianauthors.net Through those postings, the idea of the Book
Marketing Coop will take shape a little bit more. I will be looking not for
everyone, but only those like minded authors who walk and live in the Spirit to
join me in putting things together. For instance, I will need people who are
interested and have experience in virtual blog tour, a Social Media expert to oversee
how we market to the Social Media out there. I will also be looking for solid
and good Christians authors to mentor other authors, etc. And Yes, you would be
wise to pray about it before jumping with both feet. Like me, I need you to see
God as your Master in all this, and your sole motivation and goal is His honor
and Glory.
In His Love and Service,
M. J. Andre
