I don't remember the exact moment being an author got so complicated.
I do remember, though, how excited I was after writing my first few books.
I had all these stories in my head and all I wanted to do was to get them out onto the page.
Honestly, I was having so much fun and I definitely caught the writing bug.
But then somewhere along the way, I checked my sales dashboard only to find that no one was buying my books.
And suddenly everything changed. Almost overnight.
Because once you realize people aren't buying your books, your obvious next question is, how do I get more people to buy them? Right?
And that innocent little question opens a door into an entire world you didn't even know existed existed.
Before long, you are learning about keywords and categories, watching your Amazon rankings, and trying to understand Amazon and Facebook ads. You are literally plunged into building an email list, creating reader magnets, neither of which you have even a clue of how to do.
And you wake up one night thinking about branding and wondering whether you should be doing more on social media.
And if you're completely out of your depth here,
suddenly writing books feels like the easy part, right?
But looking back now, I can see something else that was happening underneath all of this.
I was gathering information much faster than I was gaining wisdom.
And if I could go back and teach my younger author self one thing, it would not be hard to run a better ad or choose better keywords.
I would teach her how to pursue wisdom first.
So that's what we're digging into in today's episode, Friend. But that's not all.
I'm also going to share some practical wisdom I've gained during my eight plus years as an indie author by giving you three tangible problems that are likely causing your low book sales.
So you can leave here today with real solutions to increase those numbers.
Grab a pen and paper for this one, friend. This is the Anointed Scribe podcast.
If you're a self published Christian author who's ready for real growth in your relationship with God and in your author business, this is your home for growing your faith and building a profitable author business.
God's way. I'm Urcelia Teixeira, best selling and indie Christian author and I'd love to walk this journey with you.
Come on in friend. It's good to have you here.
Hey, it's your author friend, Urcelia, and welcome back to the show.
If you're here for the first time, I'm so glad you found me. Around here we talk about both growing your faith and building a profitable author business. God's way because I wholeheartedly believe the two go together.
And today I want to talk about something I felt strongly on my heart this week. Wisdom.
But I want to come at it through the back door, because I don't think most of us begin our author journeys thinking about wisdom.
I certainly didn't. I didn't publish my third book and announce Write It's Time to Build an Author business.
That language wasn't even in my head.
I was writing because I loved writing,
and I was publishing because I wanted readers and and I wanted to fill a specific need.
Then I started paying attention to my sales, or rather the lack of them.
That was when my questions started to change.
I wanted to know how to sell more books, how to get discovered, how to rank, how to find more readers, and somewhere along the way, how to persuade Amazon to show my books to more people.
And once I started looking for those answers, there were plenty of people who willing to give them to me.
Some of that advice helped, some worked for a while, and some cost me a lot of money without getting me much further.
But almost every strategy brought something else. I needed to learn, manage, or measure. And whenever one stopped working, there seemed to be another waiting to take its place.
Through the years, I've relied on a lot of tools, courses and experts and advice to help me build my author career.
Yet so many of those things eventually led me to working harder and harder until striving began masquerading as diligence and later as my purpose changed. Even obedience.
See, even obedience doesn't amount to anything unless our hearts are engaged with the God we are obeying.
In fact, obedience can feel a lot like striving if we're doing it to earn something and instead of doing it in response to the God who loves us despite ourselves.
That is the part I wish I had understood sooner, because there was one resource available to me from the beginning that never ran out,
never became obsolete, and never depended on an algorithm. And that was God's wisdom.
Proverbs 4, 7 says, the beginning of wisdom is this gate wisdom.
I love the directness and the simplicity of this verse. It tells us to pursue wisdom and value it enough to go after it.
And there's something almost circular about wisdom, because recognizing that you need it is itself a wise realization.
Then, as you pursue it, you begin seeing things you couldn't see before.
That has certainly happened in my walk with God, and as I got serious about turning my writing into a career.
Sometimes the closer I grow to him, the more aware I become of how much further I still have to go.
His light begins exposing motives, habits and fears I couldn't see before I start noticing the pressure I've placed on myself and the places where I've said I trust God while still clutching the steering wheel with both hands.
Looking back at my early author years, I can see something now that I couldn't see then.
And here's the funny part.
I genuinely believed I was seeking God back then. I prayed and wanted his guidance. I wanted him involved in my author career. But when I'm honest about it, his wisdom often came second.
I tended to listen to the industry advice, the experts, and the latest strategy first, then asked God to help me make it all work.
Sometimes God gave me the wisdom through the Holy Spirit.
At other times, he brought wise people into my life who could see what I couldn't,
or I would feel that quiet check inside me, telling me not to do something.
And more times than I'd like to admit, I brushed that wisdom aside because somebody with impressive results told me something different.
The heart wanted what the heart wanted.
So I followed the strategy, worked harder, got frustrated, and occasionally I came full circle years later, only to realize God had already been pointing me toward this wiser path.
That's why Romans 11:36 means so much to me. It says this for from him and through him, and to him are all things.
That verse gives us a beautiful circle for the work we do as Christian writers.
Everything we do is from him,
through him, and for him.
Because he is the reason we do any of it. He is the reason why we call ourselves Christian authors.
Our stories and businesses, our platforms in marketing,
the income we earn and the opportunities we receive all sit inside this circle.
From him,
through Him. For Him,
God initiates and supplies what we need.
He sustains us and works through us as we participate through obedience,
learning, making decisions, and doing this practical work that's in front of us.
We still write our books, we study the market, we build our email list, and we and we run the ads. But we do those things from what he supplies, through his strength and wisdom and for his glory.
That changes the way we approach our author marketing. At least it should.
Instead of only asking what works, we should begin asking another question alongside it.
What is wise?
Because something can work without being wise for us.
A strategy may produce brilliant results for another author,
yet that same strategy will lead you in the wrong direction.
Or a social media platform might generate sales while demanding more time and energy than you can afford to give it.
Or you have an expert who can offer sound advice without knowing anything about your calling,
your family, your capacity,
your readers, or the work God is asking you to do in your life.
Wisdom takes those things into account.
Godly wisdom takes those things into account.
And this is where I want to make this practical for you and your author business today.
Seeking God's wisdom does not mean you stop learning about marketing or sit at your desk waiting for him to whisper which Amazon keyword you you should choose.
Who has done that before? Say Lord, please just give me the right keywords right?
God has given us minds, access to information, and wise people we can learn from.
Wisdom is what helps us know how to do all of this well.
Information will tell you what you could do,
while wisdom will help you decide what you should do.
And one of the wisest business habits I've learned is incredibly simple.
Before you reach for a strategy, any strategy, doesn't matter which one first, make sure you diagnose the problem you want that strategy to fix.
Let me show you what I mean.
You might look at your KDP sales dashboard and think, I need to sell more books. That's a fair enough statement, right?
But I need to sell more books doesn't tell you what's wrong, because several very different problems can sit underneath those low book sales.
The first could, for example, be discoverability.
The right readers simply aren't finding your books.
If that's your problem, I'd start by spending some time getting really clear about who your ideal reader is and where that person actually goes looking for books like yours.
Then look at your Amazon metadata through their eyes.
Are you using your keywords and categories that help Amazon understand what kind of books this is and who is likely to want it? Does your description use the kind of language that signals the genre and reading experience that reader is looking for?
And you don't necessarily have to spend money to work on this study. The successful books sitting alongside yours on Amazon look at their categories they appear in, notice the language used in the description and pay attention to what readers mention in their reviews.
That alone can teach you an awful lot about how your ideal reader thinks and what they respond to.
If you do have some budget and want more data rather than relying on guesswork,
a tool like for example, Publisher Rocket can help you research Amazon keywords, categories, and competing books.
Another thing you can do is borrow someone else's audience instead of trying to create all your visibility from scratch.
Bookfunnel, for example, has newsletter swaps and group promotions where authors with similar readers can cross promote one another's books. You might also Approach another author in your genre about a newsletter swap, or look for genre specific promotions that already attract the readers you want.
The point is, if discoverability is your problem,
your job is to get the book in front of more of the right people.
And you can keep rewriting your blurb until the cows come home, but that won't make much difference if hardly anyone is following finding the book in the first place, right?
But perhaps people are finding your book. They land on the sales page, they see your cover,
they read your description, and then they leave.
Now, in this case, you might have a conversion problem,
and if that's what seems to be happening, I would resist pouring more money into advertising until you've taken a good look at the book itself as a product.
And this is where you will have to remove your emotions from the picture and look at it objectively.
Pull up maybe five or ten successful books that serve the same reader and would sit naturally beside yours. You're not trying to copy them.
That's not what I'm telling you to do. Please do not copy anything.
You're looking at what those authors communicate. Before the reader ever clicks that buy button,
look at the covers all together and ask yourself whether your cover belongs on that same virtual shelf.
Really look at it. Read the opening lines of their descriptions and notice how quickly they give you a reason to keep reading,
or where you get bored even and trail off.
Then look at your own pricing, your reviews, your series information, and the sample Amazon gives readers. That's very important.
What you're trying to work out is if my ideal reader lands on this page,
have I given them enough reason to to choose this book?
And sometimes the fix can be surprisingly small.
You may have a beautiful cover that signals the wrong genre, or a blurb that explains the story perfectly well but doesn't create enough curiosity to make somebody want to read your book.
Perhaps you've buried your strongest hook halfway down the description. People don't really read that far.
Fixing those little things means the traffic you already have gets a better chance of converting before you spend another cent trying to send more people to the page.
Then we come to the third possibility.
Perhaps readers are buying your books, but they finish one and then they disappear.
Now you need to look at your read through and retention,
because getting readers through the door may not be your problem at all. You might simply be losing them once you've got them.
Start at the end of one of your books and follow the journey exactly as your reader experiences it. When they finish that final chapter, what happens for them Next,
do they immediately know there's another book to read?
Can they click straight through to it? Can they land on your email list? If they've just spent several hours loving your characters and your fictional world, have you made it really easy for them to stay there?
This is where good back matter can do a lot of heavy lifting. Give your reader a clear link to the next book,
show the series order where that makes sense, and invite them onto your email list with something they would genuinely want. After enjoying your book that might be a prequel, a bonus scene, a short story, or another reader magnet that connects naturally with the books they already love.
And then think beyond that first signup. Once somebody joins your email list, don't let them sit there forgotten until your next book launches six months from now.
Welcome them into your world, introduce them to your other books and help them work out what to read next.
If you don't have any other books, invite them into your character worlds. Introduce them to your characters.
Because if readers already enjoy your work, improving your read through can make far more sense than constantly paying to find brand new readers.
Now, if your readers aren't even signing up, they don't even want your reader magnet, then you need to go back to your book and you actually need to go read your story and see if your story is actually good enough.
Or if you need to maybe take a craft class or two and actually learn how to write better.
Okay,
so those are three very different problems and they need three very different responses. If readers can't find you, work on discoverability.
If they find you but don't buy, work on conversion. And if they buy once but don't continue, work on retention and read through.
Yet authors often throw the same answer at all three of these problems and that is should I run ads?
I did that kind of thinking for years. Whenever something wasn't working, I went looking for another tactic, another course or tool or expert who might finally give me the answer.
The wiser question would have been what problem am I actually trying to solve?
That question alone can save you an enormous amount of time and money. Ask me how I know.
So I want to give you a little exercise this week.
Take 15 minutes and write down the things you are currently doing because you hope they will help you sell books.
That might include posting on Facebook, running Amazon ads,
sending a newsletter, working on your keywords, pinning on Pinterest,
making reels, booking promotions, or growing your email list.
Then beside each activity, write down one question.
What job is this supposed to do?
Be specific.
If your answer is simply sell books,
dig deeper and work out where that activity fits in. Exactly. Exactly. Is it helping new readers discover you?
Is it helping someone who has already found you decide to buy?
Or is it helping an existing reader move on to another book?
If you can't explain the job an activity performs, that may be a sign that you need to reconsider why you are doing it.
Then ask yourself, what sales problem needs my attention most right now?
But here's the thing. Before you rush off to Google the Solution or Ask ChatGPT,
take that question to God first.
Ask for wisdom and give yourself enough quiet time to actually listen and wait for the answer.
Pay attention to the wise people he has placed around you.
Keep learning and leave room for the possibility that the wisest next step for you may look differently from what everyone else appears to be doing.
I wish I had learned that little nugget sooner.
I wish I had understood that knowing more strategies would never remove my need for wisdom.
Every strategy has a shelf life because the platforms and the algorithms we rely on keep changing.
I can't tell you how many times Facebook has changed the ad platform and the ad algorithm, and the way you create your ads. It drives me insane.
Markets shift,
tools come and go,
and our own lives move into different seasons too.
Wisdom helps us navigate all of that without having to chase every new answer that appears.
And the deeper you grow in your relationship with God,
the more you begin recognizing his hand, his correction, and his guidance in places you might once have missed.
If hearing God through all the noise is something you struggle with,
scroll back a little bit and listen to episode 17. I talk there about identifying and tuning out the noise that can make God's guidance harder to hear.
Sometimes we struggle to hear his guidance because we've given too many other voices access to our attention.
So maybe that is another question worth sitting with for you this week. Whose wisdom is shaping the way you are building this author career?
You may have learned from brilliant experts, followed sound strategies, and absorbed someone else's definition of what a successful author career should look like.
The question is whether God's wisdom still has first place among all of those voices.
You can learn from good teachers and use excellent tools. I still do both,
but give wisdom its rightful place.
Your author career will keep presenting new decisions, and the tools you rely on today may look very different a few years from now.
God remains the same, and his wisdom is still available for whatever decision sits in front of you next.
Now before you go, if you know another Christian author who's caught in that cycle of trying one strategy after another and wondering why selling books has become so complicated.
Please. Would you consider sharing this episode with them?
Sometimes one conversation reaches us at exactly the point we need it. If this episode can help another author stop chasing the next thing long enough to seek God's wisdom about the thing already in front of them, I'd love for you to pass it along.
Thank you for spending this time with me today.
May your pen stay faithful, your roots grow deep, and every word you write bear fruit for his glory.
