Christian Writers Marketing Direct to Readers

by John Long
(Orlando, Florida)

OK Guys.

I'll start us off.

Hi! I'm John Long.

I'm a grandfather who lives in Florida. For fun I teach people to fly airplanes occasionally test fly newly manufactured planes. That means I fly them before anyone knows if they will fly, or fall.

Though I am a mission pastor, my work is in the arena of building a profitable and productive reader base for Christian Authors.

The following is a brief primer of how I see the Author Reader relationship and how to begin to successfully build your brand, your reader base and your book selling success.

Publishing, traditionally, is a lifestyle business.
Publishers often don’t have data on who it is they sell to, what those people want to buy and don’t track their product beyond the traditional retail merchants.

In short, Publishers don’t speak to the people for whom they create product. If you are a writer it is your obligation to survey your readers and know them well enough to give them the books they want to buy.

The old model is failure for an author because you always work from a dark place without clear direction and understanding. For instance, Edgar Allen Poe wrote supernatural - science fiction because that's what people wanted to buy. He always wanted to be a "serious" writer but to do that he would be writing and not earning.

Publishers as a rule do not successfully ask their customers what it is the customer wishes to buy, IN ADVANCE.

A book can be printed one at a time for less than $5.00 and sold at retail for $20.00.

If an author has the contact details of the persons who have purchased a book previously he/she can sell the book for $15, make $10 in gross profit, have no inventory cost and spend, for example $5, getting his/her next new customer or reader to whom the author can then sell his/her next book for $15 and make $10 without any significant new customer acquisition cost.

The Author Must OWN the Relationship With the Reader.

Everything in this discipline is built around that unchangeable fact. The author will make a higher income from the sale of each book to a person with whom the author, at least, has the contact details of the person who has bought (or most likely will buy) the book of the author.

Historically, the business model publishers follow is based on "best guess" and certainly not tracked to the individual reader.