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  • Savvy Secrets to Sales Success

    Savvy Secrets to Sales Success

    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.

  • Attend A Writers Conference to Expand Your Opportunities

    I’ve been writing for most of my life, albeit, entirely without income or notoriety to show for it, but I’m embarrassed to say that I had never taken the time to attend a writer’s conference until last year. I finally took the plunge at the 2024 Blue Lake Christian Writers Conference because I was familiar with the location, since I had attended many other retreats and conferences there in the past; it was within a relatively short driving distance from where I live, so I could drive to it without having to resort to commercial travel; and an esteemed author/blogger and acquisitions editor, Terry Whalin, whom I greatly admired, was going to be on the faculty. Even then, due to my job constraints at the time, I was able to attend only two of the four days. That will be different in 2025, as I intend to take full advantage of the entirety of the conference’s offerings.

    It isn’t that I didn’t see the value in it throughout my lifetime, but I simply didn’t make it a priority. The hindrances (excuses) were either justifying setting aside the time on my schedule as a full-time pastor (or as a full-time active duty Army Chaplain for over nine years at one point) or having the personal finances to spare or any number of other seemingly “good” reasons for postponing or procrastinating.

    Procrastination–yeah, that’s a big one for me. I could always find a good reason why “now is not the time.” Meanwhile, I shelved my dream of writing a book “one day” until I had more time or more money or more success at being published. After all, I believed I should have had some publishing success before I dared to mingle with other accomplished writers. However, that simply is not a prerequisite for attending a writers conference, because writers conferences are as much about helping aspiring writers get into the business as they are for helping established writers improve their skills and find fresh opportunities.

    I did finally make the time to write not only one but six books to date, but I chose the independent publishing route because of my lack of success in grabbing an editor’s interest theretofore and my lack of any network connections with anyone in the industry. Had I attended a writers conference sooner, I might have gained both of these greatly-desired outcomes long ago. Though I had amassed a nice collection of books personally autographed by the authors over many years, I was not personally acquainted or even professionally acquainted with any of them. However, in just two days at the Blue Lake Christian Writers Conference, I managed to make multiple connections and glean an immense amount of information for improving my writing and publishing opportunities.

    If insufficient personal finances is one of your hindrances, as it was for me for many years, consider getting an extra part-time job to save up the funds to pay for it. If other commitments prevent you from taking on another job, consider gathering up a bunch of used items you no longer need from around your house and put them up for sale on eBay or Craigslist or even by hosting a garage sale one or more weekends. I don’t advise taking out a loan, including adding it to your credit card if you don’t have the means to pay the bill when it comes due, but perhaps you might suggest to your family members and/or friends to give you cash instead of other gifts for special occasions such as your birthday or Christmas to help you fulfill your writing and publishing dream. I’m sure you can come up with a few more ideas of your own to accomplish this goal.

    Determine right now to attend at least one writers conference sometime within the next year or two. It has the potential to supercharge your dream and propel your entrepreneurial writing career far beyond your expectations. If you don’t know of any writers conferences, do an Internet search and narrow the list down to those within driving distance to save a little on travel expense.

    Don’t make the mistake I’ve made by procrastinating and making excuses for delaying your dream any longer. Take action now. You’ll be glad you did.

  • New Goals for a New Blog in the New Year

    New Goals for a New Blog in the New Year

    Happy New Year, everyone! With a new year comes a another chance for a fresh start. Whether or not you like to set New Year’s resolutions, you can set new goals for yourself nonetheless.

    I stopped making New Year’s resolutions years ago because I never seemed to stick with them. I realize now that the problem was not with failing to stick with my resolutions so much as failing to exercise self-discipline in my efforts to fulfill them. I still decline to make “official” New Year’s resolutions anymore, but I continue to set goals for myself throughout the year. I encourage you to do the same.

    I think perhaps the two most important aspects of effectively setting personal goals are as follows:

    1. Make them attainable. If they are too lofty–or unattainable–you will easily discourage yourself and give up too soon. Focus initially on lower-ranking goals that you feel very confident in achieving in a relatively short amount of time. Accomplishing just one goal will give you the personal satisfaction and encouragement you need to spur yourself on to the next goal. There’s nothing quite like having just a little success to instill confidence to try to accomplish the next important goal.
    2. Make them measurable. If you don’t establish a reasonable metric for identifying when you’ve succeeded, how will you know if you’ve reached your goal? If your goal is one that can be reached in one step, the metric is simple: you know you achieved your goal when you complete the task. However, if your goal requires completing multiple steps, then use each step as another metric in the process to fulfilling the ultimate goal. For instance, if your goal is to walk a mile, then you can count everything from putting on your walking shoes to returning home and removing them as individual steps in the process. Choosing a writing or publishing goal can be measured in much the same way.

    To be an author entrepreneur, you need to determine a list of ways you can use your writing skills to attain income. Following are just a few examples for you to consider:

    1. Write an article for a magazine
    2. Write a serial short story or novel for a magazine
    3. Write a blog post about the craft of writing
    4. Write a blog post about choosing the right publishing method
    5. Write a blog post about hiring an editor, cover designer, and/or manuscript formatter for publication
    6. Write a blog post about how to find a literary agent
    7. The list could go on, of course, but I think you get the point.

    Setting either of these tasks as a personal goal is attainable and can be measured by the steps required to achieve it. You simply have to select it and then map it out step by step.

    During the coming year and beyond, my personal goal is to continue adding meaningful articles to this blog that will help writers of all sorts achieve their dreams of becoming the author they wish to be. The entrepreneurial aspect of being a writer simply cannot be ignored, however, whether you intend to be a completely independent author and publisher or you intend on landing a big deal with a major, world-renowned publisher. Therefore, I intend to include articles on this blog that will enable every sort of writer to attain various aspects of his/her dream of becoming an accomplished author. I will write many of the articles myself, but I will also welcome articles from other authors, both well-known and unknown, who can provide their own insights into how to succeed in the world of writing and publishing.

    If you wish to submit an article detailing your own personal knowledge and experiences about writing and publishing, simply use the contact page on this blog site to make your pitch. All I ask is that you make the article you submit exclusive to the Author As Entrepreneur blog site. You may retain your copyright ownership of the content, but you must grant reprint rights to the Author As Entrepreneur site to use in perpetuity for as long as the Author As Entrepreneur site continues to exist. You may include links to your own blog site(s), website(s), and any other sites with which you may have an affiliate partner relationship. There will be no financial compensation from Author As Entrepreneur for accepting your article, but the reciprocal internet traffic, search engine optimization, personal notoriety, and potential for sales of products or services you may offer on your site(s) will hopefully make up for that shortfall.

    I look forward to engaging with you as we embark on this magnificent and mutually beneficial endeavor. Here’s to glorious success for one and all!