I have a love/hate relationship with MARKETING. A reoccurring tug-of-war in my head and heart. I want others to read the relief-producing messages in my books, move past their status-quo to know God more and live as the person they were designed to be.

But I regularly begrudge the time, energy, and focus it takes to market/promote/publicize. I’d rather be creating, studying scripture, researching, coaching and well, writing.

Yet I’ve promised my publishers, agent and myself that I’ll market so I do—and will continue. It can be fun. But I don’t like that it takes such a huge % of my time. Sometimes it works, books sell and the word gets out. I do love it when people read and partner with God for transformation. Thus the love/hate relationship.

I’m often overwhelmed by all the marketing possibilities, with the myriads of how-to books/workshops/blogs/conferences/advice. None of us can do it all. So here are 10 specific marketing methods that have worked—at times—for me:

1. Mail gift-copies of the book (with a personal letter) to strategic ministry and business people that you know. (Yes, it costs. Sometimes pub houses will help.)
2. Create a website and start to blog regularly. Share guest blogging with friends and colleagues. It broadens your base.
3. Cooperate with your publishers’ team to do interviews (all kinds.) Learn talking points and find a brief story to illustrate each point. Stand up during the interview if possible; increases energy. (Often Amazon sales increased after an interview with larger station.)
4. Join social networking like Facebook and others. (When a fellow-author told me that I really needed to “do Twitter”, I cringed. But I started with 0 and grew slowly to 1260 followers. Now I’m told I need 10,000. See the push/pull? Still I’ve gained readers, clients and friends.)
5. Consider doing a Blog Book Tour.* You will enlarge your online base.
6. Develop a contact list and email regular newsletters (when speaking/teaching, offer a book drawing and ask each person to indicate if they’d like to receive more tips from you.) Constant Contact and Monkey Chimp are two.
7. Distribute business cards with the name/cover of your latest book.
8. Get a 2-3 minute video (some call it a book trailer.) Use it to market on You-Tube, your website, for prospective speaking events, etc. (Push/pull: Nice to have, yet it hasn’t produced like I’d hoped. Spent bucks, too.)
9. Speak/share on your book topics. I beat myself up for “not doing enough marketing” when it dawned on me that speaking, teaching, presenting, and facilitating workshops equals marketing. I love “economy of effort!” You don’t have to speak for mega-audiences. Think outside the box. For example: Offer a 4-6 week lunchtime tele-class based on your book. Free conference.com makes it easy.
10. Do book signings. Warning: huge push/pull here. Book signings are often a disappointment (and humiliation) to authors. Except when the book signing is in the same room where you just finished speaking. This works!

Through the years I’ve continued to have this love/hate relationship with “marketing.” I repeatedly looked for something else to call it in order to trick my mind into believing it wasn’t robbing me of the precious time I’d rather be writing and ministering.

THEN last week I read the prayer of Jabez again. “Oh, that you would bless me and expand my territory.” (1 Chronicles 4:9-10) The first time I saw Jabez’ story was when I wrote study notes for 5 O.T. books in the Women of Faith Study Bible. God urged me to pray the prayer, even before Bruce Wilkinson’s book hit the bookshelves. Four weeks later a Christian relief and development organization asked me to travel alone to Kyrgyzstan to work on enlarging their work there. What? Yet since I’d been praying for expansion, I didn’t doubt God’s leading and agreed to go.

Reading the Jabez story again, I had an aha. God saw my marketing resistance/angst. And He gave me a new name for it: EXPANSION. I’m going to change my to-do list categories to expanding instead of marketing. It’s already lessening my inner tug-of-war.

I’m curious: Do you ever experience a similar marketing tug-of-war? What helps you?

* http://www.joancwebbblog.com/bookstore/imperfect-blog-tour/

Reg and Eleonore Forder and Joan C. Webb at ACW Arizona Conference
Nov. 1, 2008

American Christian Writers (ACW), founded by Reg and Eleonore Forder, is in the “ministry business” of encouraging and training both beginning and advanced writers. On Oct. 31 and Nov. 1 the traveling ACW Conference had the annual AZ weekend and I felt privileged to teach and consult with many talents writers in varying stages of their writing and publishing careers.

Here’s a few photos of the exciting and busy two days.
I had lunch with three talented and intentional writers, Lynn, Cheryl, and Kim.

Literary agent, Steve Laube, taught the “non-fiction writing” workshops on Friday.