Seventeen years ago, I helped co-found the Association and have been providing leadership and direction ever since. Over the years, I have had the privilege of both educating and encouraging hundreds of Christian authors and publishers. It has been a noble calling and service that I have always known was God’s intent.

As a follower of Jesus, it is my privilege to listen to him and do as he directs. This can be challenging when the path is not clear.

Fortunately, God is faithful. At the NRB Convention in February in Nashville this year, I shared God’s leading and my decision with Susan Neal, a CIPA Member. That night, God woke her up and told her that he was calling her to lead Christian Indie Publishing Association (CIPA). I obeyed and God provided a new director.

Numerous people have asked me what I will be doing next. To be honest, I do not know for sure. As Martin Luther King, Jr., said, “Faith is taking the first step even when you can’t see the whole staircase.”

That is where I am. I am taking the next step, but I don’t have a clear picture, yet, of where this new path will ultimately take me.

In 2008, I started this blog and have faithfully shared articles twice weekly on publishing and marketing books for the past 12 years. If you have benefited from the information that has been freely shared and want to give something back, I invite you to join me on my next step.

God has called me to help build a chapel on the grounds of a Spiritual Retreat Center that has been a blessing to me in my spiritual journey. Funds are needed for this chapel. Donations are tax deductible. If God is leading you to help, please make a donation on The Quiet Place NC’s website at https://www.thequietplacenc.org/the-chapel.

Finally, thank you reader for your support over the years. I have enjoyed sharing with you and I pray that God will bless you in His calling on your life!

Two of these services provide robust choices.

Reedsy

This service helps authors find and connect with the best publishing professionals needed in producing a book. With this service, you can find editors, book cover designers, publicists, and translators. Reedsy also hosts a robust blog with great information. Learn more on Reedsy’s website at https://reedsy.com.

Draft2Digital

This publishing platform started as a digital distributor for ebooks. They have expanded their offerings to now include ebooks, print-on-demand books, and audiobooks (through their partnership with Findaway Voices). Draft2Digital offers wide distribution to numerous online outlets. The benefit of using this platform is that there are no upfront costs. Instead, Draft2Digital takes a portion of your earnings (10%) for their payment. Learn more at https://www.draft2digital.com.

Two newer services of note are for fiction authors.

New Fiction Book Discovery Website

A group of 120 authors—both traditional and indie—has launched Binge Books (https://bingebooks.com), a new online community for fiction readers. The site strives to be a reader hub where readers can explore new writers, unfamiliar genres, as well as favorite author collections.  Binge Books also a social media site, so readers will have the chance to interact with each other as well as the authors they follow.

Binge Books will also host a bookstore with links to purchase print books, ebooks and audiobooks from a choice of retailers. If you want to have your books featured on this site, you can join the author waitlist at https://landing.mailerlite.com/webforms/landing/v7b3o5. The site will then contact you when they are ready to add new novels.

Self-Editing with Artificial Intelligence

Early this year, a new self-editing tool that utilizes artificial intelligence was launched. This tool, called Marlowe, is an artificial intelligence tool that helps authors improve their novels before sending it off for professional editing.

This tool can read your book and deliver a 25+ comprehensive critique within an hour. It is inexpensive—a fraction of the cost of a human editor. Marlowe reads all fictional genres and sub-genres and returns unbiased feedback. The tool can critique character traits, plot arcs, narrative arcs, pacing, punctuation, sentence structure, reading level and more.

Try Marlowe out on your novel at https://authors.ai. The service will provide a basic critique of your novel for free. There is a fee for the more robust analysis.

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Due to its ease of use, fMRI has become a popular tool for imaging normal brain function. Over the past decade, it has allowed psychologists to discover new insights into such things as how memories are formed, how language is learned, how pain effects the brain, and decision-making processes.

fMRI has opened the door to neuromarketing. This is a field of scientific study that aims to understand how people make purchasing decisions and then capitalize on this information to persuade people to buy products. Neuromarketing assesses how our brain reacts to stimuli—not simply what we self-report—allowing researchers to study both the conscious and the subconscious decision-making process.

You can use the information researchers have found to improve your marketing efforts. Knowing what consumers respond best to can help you design your book covers, your website, and all your marketing materials to better grab people’s attention. Consider these three neuromarketing findings.

1.  Maximize Eye Gaze

Vision is the most prominent of the human five senses. Nearly one-fourth of the brain deals with visual processes. It is long known that ads that contain images of people are more effective than those that don’t. In particular, images that include babies tend to attract longer and more focused attention from consumers.

Eye tracking technology has discovered that an adorable baby face is not enough to engage consumers with the content of a visual ad. With eye tracking, researchers found that images of infant looking face on at the viewer, distracted the viewer from the rest of the content. However, if the baby’s face was looking at the product or ad content (rather than straight on), then the viewer also focused on the advertising content.

The big take away from this study is that if you are using images of people in your marketing content or on your website, have the faces of the people turned toward what you want your readers to look at. Images in your marketing material should enhance what you are trying to communicate, not distract from it.

2.  Color is Important

Color plays a major role in decision making. Research shows that people make a subconscious judgment about a person, environment, or product within 90 seconds of initial viewing. Between 62 and 90 percent of that assessment is based on color alone.

Colors influence how we feel. This makes them a powerful marketing tool. Colors are often a primary factor in purchasing decisions. Studies show that a product’s color influences 60 to 80 percent of a customer’s purchasing decision. The colors you choose for your book cover, your website, and your advertising copy are extremely important.

Using color effectively can be a powerful marketing tool. Colors evoke emotion. Familiarize yourself with the emotional message of various colors before choosing your next book’s cover. Interestingly, color appears to be tied to culture. Colors that entice shoppers in America are entirely different from those that entice shoppers in India.

3.  Fonts Make a Difference

Humans prefer comfort and ease. People are more likely to engage in a given behavior the less effort it requires. This is true for reading. Studies show that people prefer easy-to-read fonts over complex fonts. The easier the font is to read; the more people feel they will understand what they are reading.

There is still a place for more complex fonts. Just use them sparsely to catch consumer’s attention in your marketing. Anything text that requires longer reading and understanding should be done with a simple font.

Final Thought

All marketing speaks to the brain. Knowing what catches the brains attention and what influences the brain’s decision-making activity and then designing your marketing materials to capitalize on these influences is smart marketing. Your design, color, and font choices all play an important role in convincing consumers to buy your books. People make 90% of buying decisions subconsciously, and it can take just 50 milliseconds to create a positive or negative impression on your audience.

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Photo by Andrea Piacquadio and Francesca Zama.

In the United States, there has been division and unrest among the populace. Many cities experienced riots with burning and looting. The Western half of the country was ravished by wildfires.

Yet in the midst, God tell us to “Give thanks in all circumstances for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.”

So, today, Thanksgiving 2020, I invite you to give thanks. God is still good. His love, mercy, and grace still flow from his thrown to all inhabitants of earth.

I think the words of this old hymn “We Lift Our Hearts in Thanks Today” by Percival A. Chubb, is appropriate for this season.

We lift our hearts in thanks today
For all the gifts of life;
And first, for peace that turns away
The enemies of strife;

And next, the beauty of the earth,
Its flowers and lovely things,
The spring’s great miracle of birth,
With sound of songs and wings;

Then, harvests of its teeming soil
In orchard, croft and field;
But more, the service and the toil
Of those who helped them yield;

And most, the gifts of hope and love,
Of wisdom, truth and right,
The gifts that shine like stars above
To chart the world by night.

As we receive, so let us give,
With ready, generous hand,
Rich fruitage from the lives we live
To bless our home and land.

 
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This American idiom is usually said at the beginning of a new year. With a new year—2021—right around the corner, now is the time to contemplate this idea.

What new things or fresh start are you going to usher in with the new year?

In regards to writing, publishing, and marketing books, what do you need to focus on or do more of?

• Writing
• Publishing more books
• Book promotion
• Book marketing
• Networking

Joining a professional publishing association can help you with your goals for 2021. Christian Indie Publishing Association (CIPA) provides its Members with information, tools, and cost-saving benefits to help both indie authors and small publishers have more success with publishing and marketing Christian books. Members have access to:

• Checklists for designing a professional book and book marketing activity timeline.
• Webinars to increase your proficiency.
• Cost savings when publishing a book including discount on purchasing ISBNs and free title uploads and revisions with IngramSpark.
• Mastermind groups in 2021 for learning and networking with likeminded individuals.

Christian Indie Publishing Association (CIPA) has been helping authors and publishers since 2004. As one Members says:

“CIPA has been the most helpful resource for self-publishers I have found. Thank you for the monthly journal and the videos.” —Kathy

Right now, Christian Indie Publishing Association (CIPA) is offering a Membership special for 2021.

Join the Association for just $90 for the 2021 calendar year and you will receive a FREE copy of Sarah Bolme’s award winning book Your Guide to Marketing Christian Books!

If you are not already a Member of CIPA, don’t miss out on this great deal! Join the Association today. JUST CLICK HERE!

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This quote sums up the struggle all authors and publishers face. The first step is getting your books into the hands of people who would love to talk about them. The next step is amplifying those word-of-mouth messages.

The more people talking about your books, the more noise they make. When noise is generated, other readers take notice. Sadly, if you have not yet developed a large following of readers, the noise your reader’s word-of-mouth makes may be more like a whisper.

Your challenge is to take that whisper and amplify it so that it becomes louder so more people can hear it. This is where the strategy of engaging your readers to help you market your book comes into play. As an author, you can engage your readers in your marketing efforts in the following three ways.

1.  Feature testimonials.

Readers that enjoy or benefit from your book will sometimes write a review, share a thought with you, or even give you a testimonial on how your book has helped them. Post these reviews, thoughts, and testimonials on your website, share them across your social media platforms, and use them in your marketing materials. They are gold.

2.  Elicit feedback.

One great way to engage your readers is to ask them for feedback. You can use opinion polls to ask your readers and fans which one of two characters in your book they liked better, which of two pieces of advice helped them the most, etc.

Post these polls on your blog and social media sites to encourage readers to interact with you. You can use a service like FyreBox, Interact, or SurveyMonkey to create free quizzes.

Once you have responses to your quiz, then use the responses to magnify your readers’ word-of-mouth further. Post the quiz results on your blog and social media sites. Spread the news about what readers are saying about your book based on your quiz.

3.  Leverage social proof.

“Social proof” is a term that refers to the phenomenon that people assume that others possess more knowledge about a situation or product than they do. Thus, individuals look at what other people are doing or saying to help them decide how they will act.

You can leverage social proof by using reach marketing. Reach marketing is where your followers spread your message to their followers on social media and thus exponentially expand the reach or your message. You can use a service like Pay with a Tweet to offer content or a discount to readers in exchange for a social media post about the content or discount.

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Photo by Andrea Piacquadio.

This powerful force—called Social Proof—is important for authors to be aware of and use. Evidence that other people have purchased and found value in your book is social proof. People are more likely to purchase a book that others are already buying.

Social proof is an influential selling tool. As an author you can use social proof in the following three ways to help you sell more books.

1.  Endorsements

An endorsement by an expert, a celebrity, or a person of influence is social proof that important people find your book worthwhile. Securing endorsements for your book demonstrates to potential readers that your book is worth their money and time.

Often independent authors don’t take the time and effort to secure endorsements. Yet, endorsements help you sell more books. Most best-selling books sport endorsements because publishers know that endorsements are social proof that a book is worthy of readers’ attention.

2.  Reviews

Positive reviews by readers is another form of social proof. When current users of a product or service praise it, others can feel left out and want to have the same experience these users are having. This is why business reviews on Yelp and Facebook are so popular.

People do consult reviews before they make a purchase decision. In fact, according to a 2017 study by Spiegel Research Center, nearly 95% of shoppers read reviews before making a purchase.

The power of this social proof increases as the number of positive reviews increase. That same study by Spiegel found that having five reviews increased people’s purchase likelihood by a factor of four.

Secure reviews for your book. Ask your friends, members of your writing group, and your followers on social media to write a review of your book. One study by Goodreads found that 84% of authors who asked for reviews saw an increase in the number of reviews they received on their book.

 3.  Awards

A stamp or seal of approval by an authority in an industry is another form of social proof. Think about the Academy Awards. Any movie that wins an Academy Award receives a seal of approval that raises the movie’s esteem in the eyes of the viewing public. The same is true for book awards.

Winning a book award is a form of social proof. Of course, you can’t win a book award unless you nominate your book for an award. So, take the time and money to enter book award contests. A win will boost the social proof for your book and result in more sales.

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Photo courtesy of carlos pereyra.

If you use social media as part of your book marketing efforts, below are 10 social media statistics that you need to know. In particular, these two statistics stood out for me:

• 54% of social browsers use social media to research products (this includes books).
• 49% of consumers depend on influencer recommendations on social media.

These statistics indicate that if you can get your readers and fans to talk positively about your book on social media, sales will follow.

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A recent study by Barna found:

The relational well-being of Americans was already strained prior to the pandemic. U.S. adults and practicing Christians alike noted anxiety and depression as the most commonly faced challenges to relational satisfaction, with 40 percent of all U.S. adults and 34 percent of practicing Christians saying this is true.

More than half of all U.S. adults (58%) and practicing Christians (54%) say they have at least one relational or emotional / mental health issue that impacts their relationships. Younger generations were also already reporting higher levels of loneliness and a longing for connection.

A pandemic shakes up our sense of safety. It brings a new struggle to life. Struggles often highlight deep wounds and problems that lurk in our lives. Issues like:

• Ungrieved losses.
• Unresolved conflict.
• Unforgiven hurts.
• Unconfronted sin.

Christians and non-believers alike need the Good News that you share in your book. This Good News includes:

• You are not alone.
• Jesus loves you.
• Jesus still heals.
• Jesus gives new and abundant life.
• Joy is available for the taking.
• Heaven—a place with no more sorrows—awaits you.

Studies reveal that during this pandemic, people are reading more. In fact, Unit sales of print books were up 6.4% in the first nine months of 2020.

This means that the interest in books has increased this year. Now is a great time to let people know about your book and how your book can give them a solution to a struggle they face.

Right now, people desperately need hope. God’s timing is not wrong. Your book is just what someone needs today to improve their life.

Don’t shrink from promoting your book as this pandemic continues to rage. Someone needs to hear the words of encouragement, healing, and hope that your book offers.

In January of this year, I presented a keynote address at the Capital Christian Writers Fellowship Conference. The topic of the keynote was “What Makes a Book Christian?”

In my talk, I proposed that the following three things make a book “Christian”:

1. Points People to God
2. Reveals Biblical Truth
3. Offers Hope

This last one—hope—is in short supply today. Globally one million people commit suicide every year—that is one person every 40 seconds. Calls to suicide hotlines have skyrocketed during the pandemic.

By the way, Members of Christian Indie Publishing Association (CIPA) have access to the audio file of the complete 40-minute talk.

If you are struggling with how best to promote your book, I suggest that you read my book Your Guide to Marketing Christian Books. It is full of great ideas with specific resources to help you get the word out about your book.

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Photo by Christina Morillo.

Each post on social media competes with thousands of other posts for people’s attention. There is a lot of noise on the Internet drowning out your small voice. In fact, studies show:

• There are 456,000 tweets sent on Twitter every minute.
• On Facebook, 293,000 statuses are updated each minute.
• Over 95 million photos and videos are shared on Instagram every day.

The amount of data that is produced on the Internet is mind boggling. That is why CIPA choose to provide guidance to our Members to help them create social media posts that grab people’s attention.

If you want access to this article, you can join Christian Indie Publishing Association (CIPA). In the meantime, check out this infographic showcasing how much data is generated on the Internet every minute.

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