Marketing as Ministry

by Elle E. Kay @ElleEKay777

It’s common in the Christian fiction market for authors to believe that promoting their own writing is prideful and self-promoting. I get it. I’ve felt it. I’m an introvert, which makes talking to people hard enough. Add my fear of looking like I’m bragging, and I can become paralyzed.

But what if we’re looking at it all wrong?

• Were you called to write?
• If so, do you think God called you to write a book so that you could print a single copy and stick it on your bookshelf?
• Does He want you to share that story with others?
• Does your story point to Him? To the gospel of Christ?

If you can answer yes to any of those questions, don’t you have a responsibility to do what you can to share that book you labored over for Him?

The answer is a resounding yes. When you look at it as promoting Him rather than yourself, it makes the marketing easier. You aren’t out there saying look at me. You’re sharing what God laid on your heart the same way you would if He gave you a Sunday School lesson to teach or a sermon to preach. In Luke 19, three servants are given a pound to watch over while their Lord is away. One of them laid it up in a napkin and was rebuked for his failure to invest it (Luke 19:12-26).

Are you laying His treasure up in a napkin or using it to bring Him honor and glory?

Now that we have the why out of the way, let’s focus on the how. How do you launch your book into a crowded market?

There are a wide range of methods, but I’ll tell you about the one that has worked the best for me. The strategy I use has kept my latest release, Midnight Offensive, in the top 100 charts in all three of its categories which keeps it visible to browsing readers. This method is called a soft-launch. That means releasing without a huge marketing push and letting the book gain organic sales initially, then adding promotional pushes in the following weeks.

Amazon’s algorithm favors sustained upward trends over single-day spikes, so front-loading all your promotion on release day actually hurts long-term visibility. The better strategy is to build excitement for your book over time, so that your sales go up a little each day rather than skyrocketing for a day or two then plummeting.

I stagger my newsletter announcements and promotional pushes over several weeks, building momentum gradually rather than front-loading my efforts on release day. I book newsletter promotions ahead of my launch and schedule those from a week to three weeks after release, ordering them from least effective to most effective to maintain that upward trend.

Not all newsletter promotions are good for all genres, so I focus on the ones that have worked for me in the past (Book Raid, Fussy Librarian, Faithful Reads). I follow these with Facebook, Amazon, and BookBub ads to keep sales coming in, but I don’t recommend trying to learn all three platforms at once. Pick one and focus until you see a return on your investment. Then try the next one. Lastly, I follow with a blog tour and/or Instagram tour. This is after the book starts to drop a bit and needs that additional lift to keep it visible.

Some of you may not be able to invest money in launches, and that’s okay. Use the resources you do have to let your light shine. Your book will reach the readers He intends for it to reach, but your obedience in launching it into the world is the first step to get it there.

Elle E. Kay is an Angel Award-winning Christian romantic suspense author with 27 published books and over 11.5 million Kindle Unlimited page reads. She’s best known for her bestselling Pennsylvania Parks series. Elle lives on a Pennsylvania hobby farm. She serves in youth ministry and connects with readers through her VIP Reader Club. Visit Elle at https://elleekay.com/.