Larry Keefauver's Blog

When creating a marketing and sales plan for you and your message, imagination two powerful images—a tsunami and a tornado. Your message is buried under a mountain of more than 1.4 million new books published globally and 328,000 published nationally each year. Your rollout and book launch need to be a tsunami created buzz particularly online and in social media. Like a tsunami pushing away everything in its path, your book doesn’t need to wipe out the New York Times Bestseller list or top the CBA bestseller list. Remember that a tsunami starts deep beneath the ocean floor with an earthquake or volcano. Its immediate effect isn’t felt immediately. Nonetheless, the ocean terrain at its point of origin certainly is shaken. The energy and force moving a mountain of water pushes out a huge, unstoppable wall of water that moves forward powerfully across the ocean and slamming into every shoreline in its path with life-changing, history-making impact.

Your book launch needs to build the momentum of a tsunami by starting where you are, where you have favor, and moving out from those who know you and your message to those they share it. Referral and endorsements are essential and powerful to the beginnings of both marketing and selling your book.

Following the initial impact of your marketing tsunami, a whirlwind is spanned creating a tornadic tunnel into which hundreds and then thousands of people are swept becoming your emerging following and thus your market. This market is created by events, social media, and online blasts that put your name and message in front of thousands, tens of thousands, and ultimately millions of potential followers, readers, listeners, and viewers of your message.

Let’s overview and chart the path of “going into all the world” with the publishing of your message and the selling of your books, products, and services.

1. Let everyone who knows you or about you hear about your message/book’s release. The start of the tsunami is contacting every person who can give you input on your book’s content and title. A title is like a website metatag. It has key words in it that online searches will be able to pick up. These words resonate with readers, listeners, and viewers who have needs and need answers in a specific issue of life. Potential book buyers are facing critical questions and life issues that must have godly, truthful answers now. Others have deep emotional needs and hurts which will respond to your message which can bring hope, understanding, comfort, and healing to their lives.

Put together lists of people who can give you input and become a focus group for your book. Acknowledge them in the book.Prepare and overview in a .pdf of your book and send that out to all kinds of people who will endorse you—the messenger with expertise, credibility, believability, and integrity—and endorse your message/book. Gather endorsement from big names in your circle and “no-names.” From the big names, also get a commitment from them that they will go to back for you promoting your book and you, even selling your books, preaching or speaking about them, buying and sharing or selling them to their work colleagues, family, friends, churches, civic organizations, and every friend or follower they have on social media like Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, YouTube, etc. Let the tsunami of your book’s release sweep out to all those relationships you have and gather back in commitments to talk about, publicize, endorse, and give or sell you book in the first ninety days after its release. Some authors seek to become an Amazon bestselling book. Do this by asking everyone you know to go to the Amazon bookstore the day or week of your book’s release and buy it. Ask them to request all of their family and friends to buy it. Creating a tsunami of orders on Amazon. Most pundits say that selling 300 books in print or more than two thousand books in digital format like Kindle will push a book up into Amazon’s top-ten bestsellers in for a day. However, your marketing and sales strategy is not a one-day sales event. You need a marketing and sales platform online that will sell you, your message, your products and service for the next year and even years. That platform collects names and email on landing pages that promote you and your message through free products, E-books, and newsletters. This marketing plan is a tornado sweeping continually over Internet world. As people search for ways to meet their needs and answer their questions related to your message, they search for and find your website or landing page. As they sign it, you capture their contact information and begin marketing and selling you and your message. Book launches and signings at bookstores, in churches, and through special events do create a buzz especially in your first inner circle of friends, family, church members, and business colleagues. Set up a number of these in ever widening circles. Promote these events on podcasts and streaming video. Let people join you live through a periscope.

These ideas are not exhaustive but simply illustrative of beginning the marketing and sales campaign that is ongoing for you and your message.

Marketing is a sprint and a marathon—a tsunami and a tornado.

Have marketing and sales campaigns and programs that

continually promote you and your message for years to come.

Your goal is to build a following and your own market.

2. Network with other authors, speakers, leaders, media, and organizations. Broadcast and online media needs to know about you and your message through online ads, podcasts, interviews, reviews, and events like infomercials, webinars, etc. Research who is out there and what is the best way to get free media exposure, aka Trump, as well as scheduled interviews. Become an expert pundit in your field on talk shows.

I have pastors who have networked with other pastors, churches, and parachurch organizations to promote, sell, and host fellow pastor-authors in events to promote their message. At times, they build entire church campaigns and small group studies for church around their books. Take a step back. Put together a flow chart that starts with the first groups of people you want to give input, endorse, and promote your book. When you reach out to them, ask specifically for what you need from them.

For example, after I had completed writing Lord I Wish My Family Would Get Saved, I contacted program coordinators and host for Christian television and radio programs. I sent press release and sample reviews of the book to magazine and journals. I shared the release of the book with dozens of pastors and Church leaders asking them to 1) tell everyone in their networks and mailing lists about the book, and 2) consider having me teach and/or preach in their churches or conferences about family salvation. I continued to follow up with everyone I spoke with and started scheduling local congregational events and conferences throughout Brazil, Asia, and North America. Had YouTube been available to me, I would have created streaming videos. I regularly emailed all my contacts about what God was doing through the book, events, and media outreaches on family salvation. I sent out video and audio recordings of my teaching and events. Here’s the bottom line:

Network with everyone you know,

using every platform available to you on the Internet, Phones, and Direct Mail,

to offer yourself and your message to them in every format available.

The enemy of your soul hates you, your message, books, products, services, and desire to become a bestselling author. Why? He simply doesn’t want the good news of Christ to be published. Authors always seemed surprised that I know the lies the enemy whispers in their ears about how impossible writing, publishing, and selling a book is. Since I have heard the enemy’s lies for decades, and he never creates anything new, then I know the same old fiery darts he has flung toward myself and other authors, will be shot their way as well. Have you ever heard one or more of these when planning to write a book?

You don’t have enough money. You don’t have enough time. You don’t have enough smarts to write down anything good and worthwhile. You don’t have anybody to help you; you’re all alone. Even if you do write and publish it, it’ll never sell or make a difference.

God gave me a vision to equip the saints for the work of the ministry in the early 1990s. Our family had just left a successful career in ministry in a mainline denomination rapidly losing faith and members. Leaving that denomination left us broke, jobless, and directionless. God spoke to me, “Build a faith ministry.” A what? “Write books, speak, preach, and teach, and equip the saints,” He went on to say.

I felt all alone. Yes, I had a few men in a Bible study group who were supporting us for a time financially and in prayer. Yes, my family was fully intact and for one another. But all those ministry colleagues abandoned me and publicly ridiculed and criticized my decision to walk away from my denominational membership and credentials after being twenty-two years on their team. In fact, the president of the denomination, fearing my resignation might split the church, rushed to the scene and did damage control. We met briefly so he could say to me, “You know that leaving the church means your career if finished. You’ll never preach or pastor again. You might as well sell insurance.”

In spite of the enemy’s attacks and lies, we discovered then the truth of the cliché, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” The promise of the Scriptures was affirmed in the words of the song, “You’ll Never Walk Alone.” Christ promises to be with us always even until the end. God never leaves nor forsakes us. Our source isn’t our job or work; God is our Source.

Over the coming years, I would discover that no writer or author ever pens a book and then publishes it without the amazing grace and help of God and others. Becoming a bestselling author takes a team.

The writing and editing team. The first books I “wrote for hire” for a publisher were the Smith Wigglesworth series. I went to meet with a publisher named Tom Frieling at Creation House. I had at least a dozen of my own book ideas and titles to pitch to him. I was already a accomplished ghostwriter working with Gospel Light and Henrietta Mears’ material, What the Bible Is All About, writing for Josh McDowell (The Father Connection and Truth Matters), as well as with Gary Smalley (Making Love Last Forever curriculum). I thought I was a “bag of chips and all of that.” Tom wasn’t impressed, nor was he interested in my book ideas.

Tom informed me that if I really wanted to become a successful author, I needed to write books that the market wanted and needed. I should write something that would sell, in other words. Publishers create a market for certain types of books that will sell. It’s called the publishing business. If you don’t publish books that sell and make money, then you go out of business. It’s as simple as that.

“Smith Wigglesworth is really hot,” Tom confided. You need to write books using his material. We need something right away to capture the market trends toward classic Pentecostal types like Wigglesworth, Kuhlman, Maria Woodworth-Etter, and John Lake. We need material about Azusa street as well.”

Tom was talking in a foreign language to me; I knew nothing about these people. I had left a mainline, liberal denomination who thought these holy rollers were kooks. I was Ivy-League educated and clinically trained with a doctorate in ministry. So, writing flakey material based on some faith healers was nowhere on my radar.

“If you are willing to write the books, we need that will sell, then I might consider publishing some of your books,” Tom pitched to me.

“I’m game,” I warily responded.

“Okay, we’ll book you a flight out in January to go to the Assembly of God Archives in Springfield, Missouri,” Tom instructed.

“Oh, does Wigglesworth work there? Will I be able to interview him and read some of his books?”

Tom paused. Then he laughed. “Smith Wigglesworth was a healing evangelist who died in the late ‘40s. He never wrote a book and was an illiterate plumber most of his life. Didn’t learn how to read until later in his life. Never read any book other than the Bible. Yet, he became a world-famous healing evangelist. People are really interest in his teachings on prayer, faith, and healing. He’s hot right now. We’ve got to publish something soon to capture the market.”

Tom went on with his plan, “So, I will fly you out to Springfield. Pay all your expenses. Get you a motel close to the Archives. You can research all the notes that people took from hearing him preach and teach. You can also read the letters he wrote to people. And, you can read the newspaper clippings and magazine articles written about him and his crusades. Then come back to me with a plan for books that will sell about him and his message.”

Long story…short. I did just that. I returned back to Creation with three devotional booklet ideas titled, Smith Wigglesworth on Prayer, Smith Wigglesworth on Faith, and Smith Wigglesworth on Healing. These pocket-sized, thirty-day devotionals were published, marketed, and the three together sold over 126,000 books. Then Creation House asked me to write devotionals based on those other Pentecostal faith healers and those eight books in the Charisma Classics and the Charisma Classics Lessons Series sold over 80,000 books.

I discovered from that experience it takes a team to write, edit, produce, publish, market, and sell books. The wonderful people God brought into my life in the early years at Group Publishing, and later at Creation House, taught me how to become a better writer, and then how to ghostwrite and edit the writing of other authors. It’s a humbling experience to have experienced editors mark up and redline one’s manuscript. It’s also awesome to see how they make not only your writing but also your book produce read, look, and feel really professional and excellent. Such excellence really honors God.

In recent years, my joy has been to pass it forward in writing, editing, and coaching new and upcoming Christian authors as they move into their journey of becoming bestselling authors in their spheres of influence and beyond. The team begins with investors, authors, and editors and moves into a Production Team.

The Production Team. Time and space do not permit me more than an overview here of the production team an author needs. Some authors simply use a publisher program on their computer and then go to a local printer or Fedex-Kinko’s shop to publisher their book. However, a professional self-publisher like Xulon Press, has a whole team that designs covers, typeset the interior text file of a book, create digital files for E-books, Kindle, Nook, etc., register the ISBN number, proof and correct the print files, and upload the files to the “print on demand” (POD) presses or the offset presses for large volume (usually 1000+) print runs.

These professional production teams save an author time and money and also produce a trade-level, classy looking book that can be proudly displayed on a bookstore shelf or in an online bookstore like Amazon.

The Marketing, Distribution, and Sales Team. You need a team of people to get your book in Amazon’s bookstore as well as other online bookstores. Distributors like Ingram, Anchor, and Appalachian can put your books into bookstores and fulfill orders for your books from individuals, bookstores, organization, and businesses. You also need to have a sales and distribution plan for selling your books, products, services, coaching, events, online courses and webinars, etc. There are online marketing and selling platforms that can take your message to market by helping you build a following through social media and the Internet. People can coach you, train you, and integrate into your website or develop you a new online site for publishing you and your message globally.

I am devoting much of my time to coaching authors in the whole process of marketing and selling themselves and their messages. I have had teams of people help me in the past take my message to market and my books to branding. Now, I have the joy of doing that with other authors.

The Personal Support Team. For me, that began with my parents and siblings growing up. They believed in me and the calling on my life. Then I met God’s greatest gift beyond Christ…my wife. Without her support and love, my confidence would really be in the tank. Over the years, prayer and accountability partners, professional colleagues, Christian leaders in business and the church, and scores of Christian friends around the planet have undergirded me, encouraged and prayed for me, and given me wise counsel. Confidence is rooted in an attitude of gratitude for God’s love in Christ, His power in the Spirit, my family, friends, and colleagues in the church. And, there are so many Christian leaders and Kingdom business people who have invested time and money in me to bring provision to the vision God has given me.

You can write a book if you start, run, and finish the race. Make a writing, editing, publishing and marketing plan. Focus…Fight…Finish. Stop thinking and praying about writing a book…just do it! Identify and put in writing your top three to five SMART goals with specific, measurable, aligned with your values, realistic, time/dates. Make a project plan for each goal (see mine at the end of this chapter). Without a vision people perish. Write your vision/goals down!  People increase retention of something by 87 percent when they write it down. Smart in my mind stands for: Stated/Specific, Measurable, Achievable/Attainable, Realistic, and Timely. Let’s look at the goals needed in each aspect of your Business Strategy.

Write down and implement a business plan. Every book has a business plan. You are an entrepreneur. Creating a product, your book, is only part of the overall strategy to market and sell you and your book. Never just sell a book. You must take your books to branding and your message to market.

Focus – What is the mission, purpose, and vision of your business, ministry, and entrepreneurial enterprise. Is it your dream to be a coach, speaker, mentor, business leader, teacher, equipper, motivator, or _____________________? Your book is just one product among many books, products, and services to come that revolve around your story, witness, testimony, life lessons and experience, expertise, skills, knowledge, and wisdom. Write down the steps toward actualizing your dream. Find a dream coach like David Youngren, www.davidyoungen.org, who can help you define, describe, and actualize your dream(s). Many new authors have a dream just to write and publish a book. But if it doesn’t reach the market and sell, then the book will have no impact on the lives of others. What results do you expect your book to have in sales in the first six months from its release? First year, two years, five years, etc.? As a business card, what doors do you expect your book to open for you, your future books, products, and services? Who needs to first see your book to give you input in shaping it, writing it, endorsing it, publicizing it, and selling it? Where on the Internet will people be able to find and buy your book? How will they know about it? Understand that outcomes have a marketing context. Focus on your market profile. Who will be reading your book and needing its answers and having their needs met by the essential and practical information in your book, products, and services? Since your ultimate focus in life is Christ, what does He want to say and do through you to impact, change, and transform the lives of others as well as the cultural institutions that need your message?

Fight – Publishing your books, message, products, and services to the world is a fight. The inner struggle in your soul will be harsh. Doubts, insecurities, fears, and anxieties will surface and seek to overwhelm you. You must see yourself as a success and winner. When fights and failures come your way, and they will, are you so committed to the message Christ has given you to publish that you will fight through to a breakthrough and not quit. When one plan within your strategy fails, will you see yourself as a failure, or will you refuse to quit?

The plans of the diligent will prosper.1

God gives you infinite plans and opportunities.

The only way you can fail at accomplishing God’s plans is to quit.

You will have to fight through financial challenges, criticism, distractions, self-doubt, insecurities, stress, lack of time and money, and spiritual attacks. When I am coaching authors, ghostwriting or editing for them, and equipping them in making and implementing marketing and sales strategies, I have to pray for them and exhort them both to pray and enlist the prayers and intercessions of others. I remember E.M. Bounds writing, “Without prayer, nothing happens.” Prayer sharpens your focus and connects you and those praying with you in agreement with God’s will in heaven to be done on earth. Jesus promises, “Take this most seriously: A yes on earth is yes in heaven; a no on earth is no in heaven. What you say to one another is eternal. I mean this. When two of you get together on anything at all on earth and make a prayer of it, my Father in heaven goes into action. And when two or three of you are together because of me, you can be sure that I’ll be there.”2

Let me assure you that the good fight of prayer is essential to the success of marketing and selling your books, products, and services. A team of intercessors on your behalf must pray without ceasing…as must also you. God has given you a message, vision to write down, plans, strategies, and a purpose for your book. Someone needs the very message you are penning in order for their day of salvation, deliverance, or healing to come. Don’t give up. Fight!

Finish – St. Paul wrote that he had fought the good fight, finished the race, and keep the faith (2 Timothy 4:7). Yes, he had to focus, fight, and finish. You have to finish your book. I have worked with scores of authors over the years who worked hard to finish writing their book only to fail to publish it. Or, they printed and published their book, but never marketed, distributed, and sold it. I have had countless calls from authors saying, “Dr. Larry, I have boxes of my books sitting in my garage (basement or storage unit). Can you help me get them sold?” They had failed to fully implement a business plan for writing, editing, producing, printing, publishing, marketing, distributing, and selling their books.

Bestselling Authors Finish Strong

For over forty years, I have been a bestselling author. I am passionate about selling my books on radio, television, airplanes, in churches, workshops, conferences, seminars, and online. At Lovejoy Church in Buffalo, N.Y., a man came up to me after I had spoken and taught there for the fourth time covering subjects on the Holy Spirit, marriage, family, parenting, the Presence-Driven life, and healing.

“The first time you preached here, you really offended me,” he said getting right in my face.

Backing away, I responded, “Forgive me. That wasn’t my intent. How did I offend you?”

“You took ten minutes out of your preaching time to talk about and sell your books,” he continued.

“And how did that offend you?”

“I felt you were arrogant, proud of your stuff, and out to make a buck.”

I paused a moment because his facial expression suddenly changed, and a smile began to form on his face. So, I ventured a question, “Well, did you buy any of my books?”

“Just one,” he confided.

“And how did that work for you?’

Before I knew it, he was hugging me and crying, “It saved my marriage. I’ve bought and read four more books of yours. Our family relationships have wonderfully improved. We so thank God for you.”

Three of the books he had bought and shared with his family were the three titles in my bestselling “Lord I Wish” series. As of the writing of this book, the publisher has reported that Lord I Wish My Husband Would Pray with Me, Lord I Wish My Family Would Get Saved, and Lord I Wish My Teenager Would Talk with Me have sold over 45,000 books in the U.S. In the first decade of this century, GoodTV in Taipei, Taiwan published all three titles in Mandarin. Only God knows to date how many tens of thousands of those books have gone out throughout the Chinese-speaking world. An in Canada, 100 Huntley Street put together a weeklong campaign for family salvation that used the family salvation book, spend an entire week with me there in broadcasting to the nation sharing how to witness to family members and to pray for family salvation sending out thousands of books, receiving tens of thousands of prayer requests, and reporting a year later how thousands of testimonies had poured into the studio of family members receiving Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. With no apology and in full confidence and boldness, I would go anywhere, publish, preach, and teach the messages God has given me, in order to cross the ultimate finish line for selling a book—the salvation, healing, or deliverance of a soul redeemed by the risen Christ.  

Becoming a bestselling author is hard work. You must plan the work of marketing and selling, and then work the plan. Remember you are writing to be read not to become rich. The purpose of becoming a bestselling author is never about making lots of money from book sales; it’s about reaching thousands of readers with a message from Christ that will save, redeem, restore, renew, transform, meet their needs, and bring healing to their hurts. Og Mandino in The Greatest Salesman in the World wrote, “I am here for a purpose and that purpose is to grow into a mountain, not to shrink to a grain of sand. Henceforth I will apply ALL my efforts to become the highest mountain of all and I will strain my potential until it cries for mercy.”3 I hear the message of focus, fight, and finish in his words; do you? More importantly, will you just do it?

It’s about making an impact, equipping and empower people to change, and ultimately equipping the saints for the work of service that God has for them in their families, churches, businesses, and communities.

Are you willing to implement a complete business strategy to focus, fight, and finish strong in publishing the message(s) God has given others through you?

____________________

1 Prov. 21:5

2 Matt. 18:18-20 MSG

3 http://addicted2success.com/quotes/17-og-mandino-quotes-to-move-inspire-you/

In the 1980s, I was an associate pastor in two different churches with primary responsibilities in Christian education and youth ministry. Some friends of mine in youth ministry from various backgrounds gathered together under the leadership of Abingdon Press to begin writing The Complete Youth Ministry Handbook and then Catching the Rainbow to provide youth teaching materials and curriculum for teenagers in various denominations and nondenominational churches. Synods, networks, dioceses, judicatories, parachurch, and regional gatherings of youth pastors and leaders began having workshop and retreats to equip one another for reaching youth for Christ.

As a contributor to these books and youth workers’ training events, I began building relationships with Church and lay leaders ministering to youth. A team of five of us, began traveling two to three weekends a month holding youth ministry workshops for Protestants, Orthodox, and Catholic youth leaders throughout the nation. It was hard work. Often flying in small, private planes to Christian retreat and camping centers, we left at the end of each week, started the workshops on Friday evenings and closed out with dinner on Saturday nights. Most weekends, all of us had to be back in our home churches and parishes on Sunday mornings to teach, help lead worship, preach, and hold youth meetings on Sunday evenings.

Our hard work paid off, not only in equipping youth leaders to reach teenagers for Christ, but also in building relationships throughout the country in Serendipity and Catching the Rainbow workshops. After a few years of traveling the nation, we had built an interdenominational network of youth ministry leaders who were hungry for all types of youth ministry program and discipleship materials. One of the leaders, J. David Stone, and myself were particularly concerned about all of the counseling, coaching, and mentoring youth pastors and lay workers had to do with teenagers related to all kinds of issues—family problems, making right moral decisions, building healthy friendships, addressing moral issues, drugs, alcohol, and spiritual ignorance. Most teenagers when they had problems to solve or decisions to make would turn to their peers for counsel not to their parents, youth workers, pastors, or teachers.

What Dave Stone and I discovered was that books and curriculum for youth had to meet needs or answer real-life questions in order to be effect in equipping them to solve problems and make right from wrong choices in life. So, we wrote the first book for youth and the adults working with them on peer counseling. In other words, we wrote to market.

Know your market—their needs and questions.

Write to the market.

Meet their needs; answer their questions.

So, we wrote a peer counseling training book for youth and the adults working with them and provided cassette tapes for sharing examples and peering counseling tools. In a two-cassette binder with the book inside it, we wrote, produced, and distributed, Someone There for Me.

Having this book and teaching resource produced and published required a business plan. We had writing goals and objectives, printing and publishing deadlines, and a budget to finance production and marketing of the material. We were self-publishers long before self-publishing became the norm for many authors.

A book is more than a published, printed product—

A book is a business plan.

A book is a business card.

And, a book is a profitable, entrepreneurial enterprise!

If a book doesn’t get publicized, marketed, distributed, and sold to the markets that need it, then the message never makes it to market, the financial and time investment in the book is never paid back, and a profit is not made to lead to more books and resources. Books that reach the market and are sold successfully change lives and make money. Dave Stone and I had to have a business plan to not only write a book, but also to produce, market, distribute, and sell our book.

A 4-Step Book Business Plan

Years later, our simple business plan would become a bestselling E-book, Self-Publishing Your Christian Book. (Email me at drlarrykeefauver@gmail.com and I will send you one for free!) Writing to market involves these four steps:

Getting StartedWriting and EditingProducing and PublishingMarketing, Distributing, and Selling Your Book

All these steps take time, money, and hard work. As an author, you need to have a plan for writing and editing your book. Then you must do it. For years, I have been a disciplined writer getting up early five to six days a week, writing and editing four to six hours daily producing over sixty books, published in 12 languages, with over two million in sales worldwide.

Dave and I also had to find money to invest in ourselves and our book projects. This first book project later renamed, Friend to Friend, cost us $5000 each (which investors loaned us) to produce and publish.

Now, here are the keys to sales and becoming a bestselling book with our first book out of the chute:

We identified a market profile (Christian youth and adults leading, guiding, teaching, mentoring and coaching them). We already had thousands of youth and youth workers that we had favor with—they knew us through our youth ministry workshops. Next, we wrote material that practically and truthfully answered their questions and meet their needs. How do we make right choices? How do we identify our real problems and understand our real feelings? Once we know our biblical options for making right decisions, are we willing to make the right choice and then do what’s necessary to live it out?Then, we invested in ourselves. Many authors want somebody else to invest in their book project. Listen, if you are not willing to invest in yourself—if you don’t believe in yourself, how do you expect others to invest in you and believe in your message?We planned out a marketing, distribution, and sales strategy to sell our books. Remember that you don’t just sell book, you sell an author.

The author is an experienced, equipped,

and educated expert in the topic.

I had a doctorate in pastoral counseling and years of experience in youth ministry. Dave had decades of experience in Serendipity workshops and a M.R.E. (Masters Degree in Religious Education). We were marketing and selling ourselves and our message. We believed in what we wrote and the products and services we produced. They were excellent; they worked. Lives for changes by Jesus Christ through our Kingdom business. We planned out youth ministry events; mailed out flyers and sample books; sent publicity kits out to denominational youth leaders; and contacted everyone by mail who had been at our past youth training events. We asked everyone we knew to buy and use the books with youth in youth groups, support and rehab centers, family counseling centers, Sunday School classes, camping and retreat programs, etc.

We went where we had favor. For the first six months after the book’s publication, we traveled around the nations speaking at and leading youth workshops, retreats, events, and seminar. We carried, shipped, and lugged around heavy boxes of books and resources, read all of them including our own, worked the book tables, reviewed and recommended books and resources, and sold all 2,000 books and cassette tape resources, not only making back our investment, paying back our investors, but also making a 100% return so we could write and produce more books and resources for youth ministry.Becoming Bestselling Authors

When we went where we had favor, youth and youth workers not only bought our books for themselves, they would often buy two or more. Here’s our God-given sales pitch:

“Don’t be selfish.

Never just buy a book for yourself.

God has already shown you at least two other people who need this book.

Buy three (at a discount, of course).

Give two away to answer their questions,

meet their needs, and bless them.

Tell everyone you know about this great resource.”

Take your book and published messages, devotionals, curricula, novels, podcasts, streaming videos, newsletters, online courses, webinars, etc. to the world. All of this begins with reaching out to those who know you and your message. Invite them to pray, invest in you and your message, buy your books in multiple copies and by the cases, promote and even sell your book to their friends, church members, and work colleagues. All of this creates a buzz and market demand for your book.

One young, woman, youth minister on our training teams in the youth ministry workshops was a bubbly, dynamic Christian name Joani. She loved our book and cassette resource. A few years after our second printing, she married another Lutheran youth minister named Thom Schultz, who published a magazine for youth workers out of his garage called Group Magazine. Together they started Group Publishing and asked for our book, now called Friend to Friend, to be one of their first published releases. Over the next decade, that resource became a primary equipping book for youth in peer counseling not only in churches and in counseling youth, but also in training peer counselors in public and private high schools throughout America. After a decade, over 90,000 Friend to Friend books were published and sold making in my first bestselling book. Today it is also available in Mandarin and Portuguese as well. When you go where you have favor, God can certainly multiply your investment in writing a hundredfold and more!

The first time my good friend and publisher, Dave Hail, said to me, “Sow what’s in your bag,” I knew this was the point at which writing bestselling books starts. What comes immediately to mind is Jesus—his words, stories, parables, similes, teachings, and discipling others. He sowed what was in his bag.

“Listen! Behold, a sower went out to sow….”1 Jesus’ parable about a sower illustrates this first pointer for becoming a bestselling Christian author. Authors sow the words, stories, dreams, visions, experiences and memories, studies, thoughts, feelings, hope, faith, and love that’s in their bags. In addition to a sower (the author), two items are essential for sowing—seed and a bag. Books begin with words, the seeds, which grow into thoughts, phrases, sentences, paragraphs, anecdotes, illustrations, teachings, messages, pericopes, chapters, sections, books, etc.

Words

You don’t need a Harvard vocabulary to write or speak, but you need words particularly suited to listeners and readers with whom you must communicate. My grandparents and parents hooked me on playing Scrabble® at a young age. In those days without video games, board games like Parcheesi, checkers, chess, Monopoly®, Risk®, card games, and the like were king of my free time. To entertain myself, I would organize fantasy tournaments and play Scrabble® for hours, days, and even weeks on end. Of course, I had a dictionary at hand and would look up words, read definitions, practice using them in sentences, and put together endless combinations on the board.

Over the years, as I spoke and wrote, the power of words impacted and empowered me to become an author. My ongoing prayer has been, “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, my strength, and my redeemer.”2

Stories

Stories fascinated me. I loved to read books, especially biographies. The most impactful biography for me was A Man Called Peter, written by his wife, Catherine Marshall. His remarkable journey to become first a preacher and then Chaplain of the Senate inspired me. Most life-changing for me were Bible stories creatively written for young readers by Elsie Egermeier, Egermeier’s Bible Story Book. I loved the pictures and read it from cover to cover dozens of times in my elementary years. That laid the foundation for me to read, study, and love the Scriptures.

By speaking and writing books, telling stories, including anecdotal material, providing illustrations, and painting word pictures, I learned much about communicating to listeners/readers life-changing and impactful ideas, concepts, and truths. I started collecting stories by memory and writing them down from magazines, newspapers, sermons, teachers, politicians, and other writers.

By whatever means you can, collect and remember stories;
they are the salt and pepper of speaking and writing.

Dreams and Visions.

One night after reading Egermeier’s retelling of Isaiah’s vision (Isaiah 6), I fell asleep replaying that fiery scene over and over again on the screen of my mind. In the middle of the night, I was awakened startled by a thunderous boom with almost blinding light filling my room. My body tingled with fiery shock and awe. A voice spoke to me about speaking God’s words to the world. I asked for his hot coals to touch my tongue like he had done for Isaiah. In that moment, the ancient prophet’s vision was etched eternally in my mind; his visionary calling became mine. As he had become a preacher and writer, so I desired to be taking God’s good news to the world. Decades later, Judi and I would have the privilege of traveling to eastern Europe, Brazil, Canada, India, Southeast Asia, and throughout the U.S. taking books, teachings, and recordings (radio and television) to others.

Bestselling books often start with a dream, vision, or even a nightmare. The bestselling Lord I Wish series’ book, Lord I Wish My Family Would Get Saved, started with a dream, or rather a nightmare with me seeing my brother at God’s judgment among the goats. I awoke trembling in fear, drenched with sweat. Taking a shower at 3:00 a.m., I wept and cried out to God, “Why isn’t my brother saved?”

“You are the reason,” the Spirit whispered. For the next week, the Spirit convicted me of the sinful walls I had built between myself, my brother, and even God—walls of spiritual arrogance, a critical spirit, faithlessness, and prayerlessness. That book poured out of me going out to tens of thousands in English, Chinese, and Portuguese. Through their agreement in prayer with me in reading the book, not only were scores of family members saved, my brother was also wonderfully redeemed.

God may have used a dream, vision, or even a word spoken through someone else to convict you to write the vision down:

Write the vision
And make it plain on tablets,
That he may run who reads it.
(Habakkuk 2:2)

Throughout the Scriptures, we are commanded to both “hear and obey.” Stop procrastinating. Just do it. Write your book.

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1 Mark 4:3

2 Psalm 19:14