Tomorrow I will post the second installment of The Forgotten Beatitude – so stay tuned.
Last year, Jeff Goins interviewed me on the subject of writing. I’m publishing the complete, unedited interview on the blog in three installments. Whether you are an author, a blogger, or someone who likes to post long notes on Facebook, I hope you will be inspired by the interview.
Your most recent book Epic Jesus is a self-published eBook and seems to be doing rather well. I understand that you gave away a lot of copies of it. Some people say that there is such a thing as being too generous with your “art.” What do you think? Does “free” help or hurt book sales?
Epic Jesus is a short book (24 pages), but it’s dense. I’d call it a pregnant book that crams 200 pages of content into 24.
On November 1st, we gave away a free copy of the book to our blog subscribers for a 72-hour window. It was a sneak preview. On November 3rd, it was made available on Kindle, Nook, and PDF for $3.99 USD.
For the first three weeks of its release, the book stayed around #16 in “Christian Living” on Amazon Kindle. I was amazed by that, especially after we had given the book away to thousands of people just days before. It was humbling.
The PDF version is showing lots of interest also. The Nook version has had slow activity.
We regularly give away free resources (sometimes books) to our blog subscribers and our newsletter subscribers.
Since I don’t profit personally from my books, sales aren’t too big of a deal to me. Consequently, I’ve never researched whether or not our give-aways helped or hurt sales, and honestly, I wouldn’t know how to track that if I wanted to.
What I’m mostly concerned about is getting the message out to every person who is interested in the subjects.
I’m always encouraged when I receive letters and emails from people saying, “I just heard of your book (usually “Revise Us Again,” “From Eternity to Here,” “Finding Organic Church,” “Reimagining Church,” or “Jesus Manifesto”), and it’s what I’ve been searching for and desiring for years, but never knew it existed.”
For an author, comments like that have a tendency to make one’s day.
I know that when you work on a book you sometimes have to stop blogging. Is there a tension between writing for now versus writing for later? How do you balance this?
I began blogging in the Summer of 2008. From then until May of 2011, I blogged while writing books. But in May, I took up a new book project that’s formidable. So I began my first blog sabbatical from then until January 2012.
Interestingly, the subscription to the blog has almost doubled since I was on the sabbatical. Each day new people find the blog, read some of the posts in the archives, and subscribe. This is encouraging, and I didn’t expect it.
Regarding blogging, I typically have several bloggable ideas per day. So I have a blog queue on my computer in which I type in those ideas. Sometimes I’ll write an entire post based on one of those ideas. I then queue them up for publication at a later time.
At the moment, I have over 100 blog posts queued up for when I resume blogging. And in my judgment at least, they are among the best I’ve written so far.
What did you do to get on Amazon’s top 10 list? And do you have any other tips for book launches?
Shortly after George Barna and I released Pagan Christianity, someone at Tyndale House suggested that we do an Amazon campaign to make more people aware of the book.
So the marketing people at Tyndale sent out special mailings, asking readers to purchase the book on a certain day from Amazon. George and I sent out a mailing to our subscribers, letting them know about the campaign also.
Interestingly, we launched the campaign a full month after the book had already released and thousands of people had already purchased it.
Even so, on the day of the campaign, the book hit #11 out of all books on Amazon. I believe we would have had a good shot at hitting #1 if we started the campaign when the book released. But we were a month late.
When Leonard Sweet and I released Jesus Manifesto in 2010, Thomas Nelson did the same thing. We asked all our subscribers to purchase the book on a certain day. As a result, “Jesus Manifesto” hit #6 out all books on Amazon.
It made #1 in non-fiction books on Amazon and #1 in “Christianity.” (My book Finding Organic Church hit #12 on Amazon out of all books using the same strategy.)
Perhaps the lesson here is that if an author has enough people who believe in what she or he is doing, those people will support their work in dramatic ways.
Some of my readers have told me that they were happy to support the books in this way, especially because we had given away so many free resources over the years.
I guess this brings us back to your earlier question. Perhaps giving away free resources does help book sales down the road somehow. Undoubtedly, other authors have tracked this and can give a more accurate answer than I can.
Part II: How Authors & Bloggers Can Use Social Media
Related:
I wish I had come across your blog a few weeks earlier. This is exactly what I was looking for. I have just published by first children’s book – What does God sound like? – A bedtime story about God’s love- A simple tale that introduces God to a young child in a gentle way.
Thank you for the blog and keep it coming…
I thought this article was brilliant. The next time I self publish a book I will attempt to do this. Thanks for the information. My book “Conversations with God” is moving slowly, even through Amazon.
I warned people about you. If they weren’t ready to get their Christan walk challenged, to NOT read your blog. Now I have to add, that if they don’t want to get their message out to the most people, to not read your blog either
Thanks for the tips.
Good stuff Frank!
Thx. Derwin. Appreciate the visit and kind words, as always.
Frank — if you’re not careful you may give someone the impression you are interested not just in your own success in writing about and sharing the Good News but actually looking to share what you have learned to help others do the same
I just want to offer some encouragement and say that this is a really wonderful thing to do. I am not an author but I enjoy writing music and I always find other’s songwriting methods very interesting and useful.
Thanks for “getting it,” Mike. Your words means a ton.
I’m neither of the above (author or blogger), but would still like to respond here by saying that…I’m finding that I’m not ‘buying books’ as I once did, but instead I read blogs and listen to podcasts, many of which often discuss recently published books! If i can get the jist of what the author is wanting to convey, through the podcast interview with them or the blogs discussion and/or interview, then that usually is enough. I realize, though, that for some (not you, Frank, as you graciously pointed out), selling books is their livelihood, so, in those cases, I try to be more sensitive and will add my support as led….@FrankViola Thanks for this “free but costly” resource!!!!
Indeed. I understand about not having time to read every book one wants. Though I think I speak for all authors when I say that hearing an interview, review, or podcast is not the same as reading the book being talked about. It’s comparable to listening to a single and reading the disc cover verses hearing the album. An album is the full body of work with all the details. Thus if an interview or review really grabs a person, they would do well to get the book and see the entire work. Just sayin’ . . .
Agree, Bro!
I read “Frank Viola: 25 Tips for Better Blogging” and want to thank you for the sound advice. I’ve been praying about switching blog subjects and finding a new theme, platform, and domain. (She said without really knowing what any of those words mean.) Your piece confirmed what I have been hearing and was written in such a way that even a blog-term-illiterate such as myself could understand.