Practically every writer wants to know the best way to earn money from writing or, if money is not a factor, at least, how to get more readers. Since more readers automatically translates into more sales (if your writings are set up for sale, that is), it goes without saying that to amass more sales one must increase his/her readership. Let’s consider a few savvy secrets to achieving this goal of increased readership.
A Professionally Produced Product
This should go without saying, but a poorly-produced product will reduce your readers (outside your loyal family and friends) to nil. What do I mean by “professionally produced”? A professionally produced product will be well-written, well-edited, and well-designed. Well-written means it will engage its reader. Well-edited means it doesn’t contain a distractingly noticeable number of spelling, grammatical, typographical, or word usage errors. Well-designed means it will have both an attractive cover design and an appealing interior layout and formatting. Despite the old adage, “You can’t judge a book by its cover,” people will most definitely judge your book by its cover–and its interior layout, and its readability, etc. If you fail in one or more of these aspects of your book’s production, you will almost certainly doom it to failure in sales.
A Popular Premise
This one may not be a pure essential for success amidst the others I’ve presented here, but it bears an honorable mention just the same. If you write about a subject that has the attention of a large swath of the population, it will stand a better chance of garnering more public attention than one that far fewer people are collectively contemplating. I’m not suggesting that we should attempt to write about the latest pop story just to make money, but perhaps we can leverage this phenomenon with a unique angle to tie it in with our current writing focus and give it a boost nonetheless.
Perfect Priming
Okay, I have to admit that it’s getting more challenging for me to keep the alliteration going here, so this point may require a bit more explanation than the others. By “perfect priming” I really mean perfect timing. I say this in the sense that just as you must prime a pump to get the water flowing, you must rely on good timing for the release of your book. Like the “popular premise” point listed above, this may not be an essential for success, but it certainly doesn’t hurt to tie in with another attention-grabbing event or group-think psychology.
Perhaps just as importantly for timing, however, is when you release your book. That is, releasing it during the second half of the calendar year will consequently lessen the amount of time left in the year to promote it. Furthermore, once a New Year begins, all titles from previous calendar years are then considered “old” by some readers and thought to be less current. Therefore, it is best to release a new title as early in the calendar year as possible to prolong its perceived relevance to the reading public.
Perpetual Promotion
We all likely understand that before anyone will contemplate reading or buying our content, they must first be made aware of its existence. The now seemingly infamous statement from the movie, Field of Dreams–“Build it, and they will come”–is simply preposterous in the field of dream promotion. Precious few people are going to stumble across our content by pure accident. It could literally take multiple lifetimes for the reading public to discover our writings if we wait for them to find it without some help. That’s where promotion comes into play, but promotion is not a one-and-done sort of proposition. That’s why the word “perpetual” is essential to our understanding and practice here. Not only must we promote our writings (and, yes, ourselves, too), but we must continually promote thereafter. Once we stop promoting, we can expect the steady stream of readers to slow to a very prolonged intermittent drip. If you hold to the misguided notion of spending money on promotion only if it will promise an equal return on investment (ROI) that matches each promotional dollar with an equal amount in sales income, then you’re in for a rude awakening. Unless you happen upon a pure fluke where you make one promotion and then it goes viral and word of mouth turns it into a truly exponential expansion of epidemic proportions, you’ll likely spend more on promotions than you ever recuperate from sales. That’s just a very unfortunate fact of business.
The Power of Providence
I’ve saved the best and what I deem to be the most important point for last. By “providence” I mean “divine providence.” In past centuries, the word “providence” was often used as a reference to God, and it was capitalized when this was the case. So, we tie the power of Providence to our book sales success through God’s divine favor both on us as individuals and on our written content. Without God’s blessing upon us and our writings, whatever success we have in the proliferation and sales of our written works is suspect because, first of all, having God’s favor on us is wholly dependent upon whether we have a covenant relationship with God through His Son, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. This point qualifies as a secret primarily because so few people, including too many Christian writers, unfortunately, consider its impact on whether or not we enjoy much success in our writing and publishing endeavors. While we should be very careful in how and when we characterize our success as being a result of God’s providential favor, we should not ignore its role either. Therefore, to overlook, or overtly omit, God’s favor as an essential element in the success of our writing career and our written works is truly an affront to God’s interest in our lives. Concluding that our writing and publishing success is a result of God’s divine favor is therefore a matter of personal introspection. No third party can rightfully ascertain this aspect for another writer because it is necessarily a private interaction between God and the writer. I bring it up here as a matter for personal spiritual reflection for every writer who claims the name of Jesus Christ as personal Lord and Savior.
If you truly seek God’s blessing upon yourself and your writing endeavors, make certain that you are conducting yourself and your writing, publishing and promotional efforts in accordance with His divine will for your life. How do you know if you are acting according to God’s will? It’s as simple as reading and obeying His Word to us, The Holy Bible, as often as we can. Everything God wants us to know about Himself, ourselves, and the world we live in is contained in the pages of this holy book. Make sure you have a genuine covenant relationship with Jesus Christ and then live your life accordingly. Other lesser concerns, such as writing, publishing and promoting will naturally resolve themselves when we get our personal spiritual priorities straight. I urge you to consider this and the other “savvy secrets” I’ve detailed here in this article. Until next time, I pray God’s richest blessings upon you and your writing, publishing and promotional goals.