35 | 5 Reasons Why Your Christian Book Isn't Selling

You wrote the book God called you to write…

 But the sales aren’t coming. And now you're quietly asking the questions you’re afraid to say out loud:

“Did I hear God wrong? Did I fail? Did He forget about me?”

That crushing disappointment after obedience is real—and you’re not alone in feeling it.

 You followed the nudge. You poured your heart into the words. You hit publish in faith.

 And now… crickets. The dashboard becomes a daily reminder of discouragement. Your prayers feel dry. Your hope feels heavy.

Maybe you’re tweaking your blurb for the fifteenth time.

 Maybe you’re second-guessing your cover, your calling—or both.

 Maybe you've started protecting your heart from expecting anything at all... because hoping hurts when nothing changes.

In this raw and faith-filled episode, I’m pulling back the curtain on the 5 biblical truths that have anchored me in my own seasons of invisible obedience and frustrated faith. These aren’t just encouragements—they’re lifelines for weary Christian writers.

Here’s what you’ll walk away with:

✅ Why God called you to plant, not perform

 ✅ What to do when your results don’t match your obedience

 ✅ How to discern between delay and divine refinement

 ✅ What Scripture really says about fruitfulness and calling

 ✅ And why your message still matters—even when it feels invisible

If you're sitting in that uncomfortable space between obedience and outcome, this conversation will remind you of this powerful truth:

Your calling isn’t dependent on your sales numbers.

 It’s backed by God’s faithfulness to complete what He starts.

🎧 Press play and let’s realign your heart with truth—and renew your hope, one promise at a time.

Transcript

You're lying in bed at 2am staring at the ceiling, and the same question keeps circling through your mind.

God, I did what you asked.

So why is it so hard?

Why isn't it working?

Why aren't the sales coming?

Maybe you've whispered those exact words in your car after checking your book sales for the 10th time that day.

Or maybe you felt them heavy in your chest during your morning prayer time, when gratitude feels forced and trust feels fragile.

Friend, if that's you right now, if you're sitting in that uncomfortable space between obedience and outcome, I want you to know three things.

You're not crazy. You're not failing. And this is definitely not unique to you. I've been there, sitting in that exact spot. Spot, wrestling with those exact questions. And honestly, I still visit that place sometimes.

So today we are talking about something that Christian authors seldom say out loud.

And that's this disappointment that creeps in after obedience.

The gap between the yes you gave to God and the silence you are hearing in return.

The hard questions that feel too dangerous to ask but too heavy to carry alone.

Let's go there together, friend. Because I believe that on the other side of this conversation is renewed hope, clearer purpose, and the kind of peace that comes from remembering who's really in charge of this whole thing.

Don't go anywhere. This is episode 35.

I'm Urcelia Teixeira, ex real estate agent turned award winning Christian fiction author.

When I wrote my first novel on a bucket list whim, I had no idea it would spark a spiritual journey that would redefine my calling. But you know what, friend?

Self publishing wasn't easy. I got caught in the hustle, chasing rankings and sales while desperately trying to stay rooted in Christ.

Now, by God's grace, I'm building my author business his way. And now he's called me to help you do the same.

Welcome to the Anointed Scribe Podcast, where faith meets business for Christian writers. Let's write, publish, and grow our author business God's way. Are you ready? Well then, let's get started.

Hey, it's your author friend, Urcelia. And welcome to this week's episode of the Anointed Scribe Podcast.

Thank you so much for being here today. I know your time is precious and the fact that you chose to spend some of it with me honestly just fills my heart and lights me up.

So to all my regular listeners and subscribers, thank you for choosing to hang out with me again this week.

Your support and your messages honestly mean the world to me.

And if this is your first time here. Well, then let me personally welcome you to the Anointed Scribe Tribe.

I pray you'll find today's episode helpful and encouraging, friend. And I thank God for helping you find your way here because I'm a firm believer that everything in life,

big or small,

happens exactly as God predestined it to.

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Right?

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It's where I share extra tips and practical tools that I don't always cover here on the podcast.

I've designed these emails to literally only take five minutes of your time with strategies you can implement in your business. Right away.

Okay, so let's get into today's conversation about when your obedience feels fruitless and your faith feels frustrated. Because I'm pretty sure you've been in the same space I was in not too long ago.

You said yes to God.

You felt that gentle nudge, that burning in your spirit,

that quiet but persistent voice saying, write this.

So you did. You wrote the book. You wrestled with the chapters. You cried over the characters.

You prayed over every page.

You hired the editor, invested in the cover followed all the advice about keywords and categories and launch strategies.

You did everything right.

You were obedient. And then nothing.

No explosion,

no breakthrough. No maybe a handful of sales from your most loyal readers.

Maybe a couple of reviews that felt more obligatory than enthusiastic.

Your launch week came and went with all the fanfare of a whisper.

And now you're sitting here three, four months later, staring at your dashboard that feels like a daily reminder of disappointment.

Deep down you're wondering,

did I get it wrong?

Did I mishear him?

Did I fail? Or worse,

did God forget about me? Is this a punishment?

And friend? It's hard.

It's really hard because you weren't chasing fame. You weren't trying to become the next best selling author.

You weren't trying to go viral or build some massive platform.

You were simply trying to be obedient to what you felt God asking you to do.

So when the results don't come, it stings in a way that's hard to describe to people who haven't walked this path. Right?

Because now it's not just about your effort or your marketing strategy or your timing.

It feels like it reflects on your faith, your calling, your ability to hear from God.

It becomes a spiritual warfare in your heart and mind. And it hurts in. In places you didn't even know could hurt. Right?

And then here's what happens next.

And maybe you'll recognize this pattern because I've lived it more times than I care to admit.

Doubt creeps in slowly at first,

then all at once.

Maybe I didn't hear God right.

Maybe I'm not cut out for this.

Maybe this isn't actually my calling after all.

Maybe I'm just one of those people who thinks they can write, but really can't.

And suddenly what started as joyful obedience turns into anxious striving.

You start tweaking everything. The blurb gets rewritten for the 15th time.

You change the price. Maybe it's too high, maybe it's too low.

You second guess the title, the cover the category, the launch, timing, yourself.

You start researching what other authors are doing. You join Facebook groups and watch YouTube videos and buy courses on book marketing, desperately looking for the magic formula you must have missed.

You fall into the comparison spiral.

Author so and so launched her book the same week you did and she's already hit bestseller lists.

That author's debut novel has hundreds of reviews,

while yours has seven.

Or that other author you follow on Instagram is posting about their six figure book income while you are celebrating selling 10 copies this month.

You become more marketer than messenger,

more hustler than humble servant.

The joy of writing gets buried under spreadsheets and strategies and social media algorithms.

And here's the hardest part of all.

You begin to protect your heart from hoping too much.

Because hoping is vulnerable and you've been disappointed before.

So you tell yourself things like, well, I didn't expect much anyway, or I'm just writing for the joy of it.

When deep down you know that's not entirely true.

You start living by the unspoken rule, if I don't expect too much,

I won't be let down again,

Right?

Friend, if that's where you sitting right now, if that's the space you are occupying in your heart,

I need you to hear this.

You are not broken.

Your dreams are not too big.

Your calling is not a mistake.

But we need to have an honest conversation about what obedience is actually looks like and what God is actually promising when he calls us to write.

So what do we do when the fruit doesn't come the way we expect it?

What do we do when obedience feels invisible and faith feels frustrated?

Let's realign with what we know is true,

not just what is felt. I want to share five truths,

five reasons that have anchored me when my own obedience felt invisible and my faith felt shaky.

These aren't just nice ideas.

These aren't thumb sucks. They are lifelines based on scripture and lifelines that I've had to grab onto more times than I care to admit. And I'm hoping they'll help you today.

Okay, so are you ready?

Truth number one.

God didn't call you to perform.

He called you to plant.

Your obedience was never supposed to be about outcome.

It was about faithfulness.

I know that sounds almost cliche, but stay with me here because there's a difference between knowing this intellectually and really understanding it in your bones.

God doesn't need your book to hit best seller lists to accomplish his will.

He doesn't need your Facebook post to go viral or your blog to get a million views.

Sometimes the fruit is quiet.

It's slow,

it's underground, invisible to Amazon rankings but visible to eternity.

And that doesn't make your calling any less valid or your obedience any less valuable. Think about farmers for a moment. When they plant seeds, they don't expect to see corn stalks the next morning.

They plant in faith, trusting that if they do their part,

preparing the soil, planting at the right time,

tending the crop, the harvest will come in its season.

This is exactly what Paul was talking about in 1 Corinthians 3, 6, 7 when he said, I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow.

So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything but only God who makes things grow.

Your job, friend, is to plant and water faithfully.

God's job is the growth. You can trust him. He's pretty good at his job.

The second truth is that fruit grows in seasons, not on demand.

Very hard for us to wrap our heads around this.

John 15 tells us that if we remain in Jesus, we will bear fruit.

But notice what it doesn't say, it doesn't say when.

It doesn't give us a timeline or a guarantee about what that fruit will look like.

So maybe right now you're in a different Season than you expected.

Maybe this is a pruning season where God is cutting away the things that don't serve your ultimate purpose.

Maybe it's a rooting season where he's developing the foundation you'll need for what's coming next.

Not because you did something wrong, but because God is doing something deeper than you can see.

I've learned this the hard way, friend. My first book sold maybe three or four copies a day in the first year. I. I was devastated. I thought I'd failed God, failed my family, failed myself.

But looking back now,

I can see that that season taught me things about humility,

about trusting God's timing,

about writing in the spirit and writing for the right reasons.

I would have never learned these foundational lessons if success had come easily.

I had to walk before I could run right.

Which brings me to the third truth. If you're in a season of slow growth,

and that's that you are not behind.

You are actually just being refined.

God is far more interested in the writer you are becoming than the reach you are achieving.

The disappointment you're feeling, the questions you are wrestling with,

the way this journey is stretching your faith and challenging your assumptions about how God works.

That's not wasted time. That's not evidence that you are failing.

That's refinement. That's character development.

That's God preparing you for whatever he has next.

Because here's what I've discovered.

The authors who handle success well are usually the ones who've learned to handle disappointment well first.

The ones who stay grounded when the spotlight comes are the ones who learned to find their identity in God's love,

not in book sales.

Romans 5, 3, 4 puts it perfectly when it says,

we also glory in our sufferings because we know that suffering produces perseverance,

perseverance,

character, and character hope.

God isn't wasting your waiting season, friend.

He's using it to build something in you that success alone never could.

I bet if you get quiet with the Lord and focus in on these building blocks, you'll see them.

So I highly encourage you to ask God to reveal the areas he's building your character in.

Okay, so the fourth truth hits me hard every time I think about it. And it's that your message has value,

even if it feels invisible.

Sometimes the most powerful stories are the ones that don't go viral, but go deep into the heart of one person who desperately needed to hear exactly what you wrote.

So the question you need to ask yourself is, would you be willing to write the book just for that one person because Jesus left the 99 for for the 1 that's the same heart he invites you to write from.

I got an email once from a reader who said one of my books found her during the darkest season of her life.

She'd never heard of me before. She stumbled across it somehow, and I'm putting that in air quotes, and said it felt like God had written it specifically for her situation.

She bought one copy, left one review,

but her life was changed.

That's kingdom impact, friend.

That's fruit that matters in eternity,

even if it doesn't show up in sales reports.

Isaiah 55:11 reminds us that God's word will not return to him empty, but will accomplish what he desires and achieve the purpose for which he sent it.

When God gives you a message to share,

it will reach exactly who it's meant to reach,

even if that's just one precious soul who needed those exact words at that exact moment.

Now the fifth and final truth is where our faith gets practical.

Trust that if God gave you the message, he also has the audience.

Your job is to show up and steward the message from faithfully. His job is the results.

That doesn't mean you don't market your book or try to reach readers.

But it means you don't obsess over your marketing efforts that might not look the way you hoped it would.

It means that you don't need to compare your book sales to the author who just posted her Sterling KDP dashboard in that Facebook group you keep scrolling.

It means that you hold your marketing efforts with open hands,

trusting that God can use your simple obedience in ways you can't orchestrate or control.

Listen, and this is important for you to grasp. He is not withholding blessing from you. He is not punishing you for some secret sin or lack of faith.

He is not comparing you to other authors and finding you lacking. No,

God is working even when you can't see it,

even when the evidence feels thin,

even when your faith feels fragile, friend.

Philippians 1:6 says being confident of this that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.

Write this verse on your heart today, friend.

If God called you to write,

that calling isn't dependent on your marketing skills or or your platform size.

It's backed by his faithfulness to complete what he starts.

Your responsibility is obedience.

His responsibility is outcome. I can't say that enough.

And he's never once failed to keep his end of the deal.

I know it's really hard to wrap our heads around this when our hearts yearn for something that's so close to our heart and our mission, right? But I need you to yearn for God's will first.

Make the decision to trust him today.

Let me leave you with this question, friend, and I'm asking it as someone who's wrestled with it myself.

If the only fruit your obedience ever produced was deeper intimacy with God,

would that be enough?

I know that's a hard question.

Because, yes,

we want impact.

We want to reach people.

We want our words to matter. And we want to see it. We want to see it in the KDP dashboard. We want to see it in the bestseller ribbons. We want to see it in the reviews.

Those desires aren't wrong.

They're part of how God wired us as writers.

But maybe, just maybe, God is trying to reach you first,

before he reaches others through you.

What if this quiet season you're in is actually holy ground?

What if this valley of disappointment is where he's teaching you how to walk with him, not just work for Him?

I think about David spending years as a shepherd before he became a king.

Those weren't wasted years. They were preparation years.

God was developing his character,

his trust, his dependence on the Lord in the quiet places before he put him in the public eye.

Maybe that's where you are right now in the shepherding years,

learning to trust God's heart even when you can't see his hand.

Learning to find your worth in his love rather than in external validation or people.

Be encouraged today, friend,

you are not forgotten.

Your words are not wasted. Your obedience is not in vain.

God sees it all.

Every keystroke, every prayer,

every tear,

every moment of doubt followed by a choice to keep going anyway.

He honors it all, and he will bring the fruit in his time, in his way, for his glory and your good.

So keep writing.

Keep trusting.

Keep planting seeds of faithfulness,

even when the harvest feels distant.

Because the God who called you to write is the same God who holds your future.

And he's never once forgotten a promise or failed to complete what he started.

Your breakthrough might be one chapter away,

or it might be one season away.

Either way, it's in his hands. And, friend,

that's exactly where you want it to be.

Friend, before I let you go, I want you to use the send me a message link in the show notes and let me know where you need God to show up for you today so I can pray for you.

It's 100% anonymous. I can't see your name or your email or your phone number.

I can't even reply to you, but I can read your request and I can pray for you.

So I encourage you to use this feature to send me a private message to let me know what you are struggling with right now so we can come together and take this to the Lord in prayer.

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Thank you for listening. And remember for such a time as this you have been called to thrive as God's anointed scribe.