© 2026 Urcelia Teixeira. All rights reserved. This episode and its accompanying materials may not be reproduced, republished, distributed, transcribed, or adapted in whole or in substantial part without prior written permission, except as permitted by law.
Have you ever wondered whether marketing your books means you are trying to take control of your book sales instead of trusting God with them?
You believed he called you to write, but your books aren't reaching as many readers as you'd hoped. So do you wait for God to open doors or do you roll up your sleeves and start marketing?
And how do you know when you're being a faithful steward of your author business and when you are trying to force the sales you want?
Friend, I think this is where a lot of Christian authors get stuck. And while we are wrestling with these questions, the readers who would genuinely enjoy our books may never even hear about them.
So today we are going to look at what Colossians 2:19 teaches us about growth that comes from God,
why trusting him doesn't mean sitting back and waiting for book sales, and how to identify what you can improve in your book marketing to help more of the right readers discover your books.
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, this is where we grow our faith and build a profitable author business using biblical wisdom, author success strategies, and a little bit of my personal experience sprinkled in.
So if you've already published a few books and want to learn how to build and grow a profitable author business God's way, then click that follow button friend, because you're in the right place.
And today we are asking, where does trusting God end and trying to make things happen in our own strength begin?
How much marketing is enough?
Because if I'm constantly trying to get my books in front of more people,
am I still trusting God with the outcome?
I want to start by saying that I understand why book marketing can make you feel a little uncomfortable when you believe God has called you to write because you've spent months, maybe even years working on your book.
You've prayed about it, you've poured your heart into it, and by the time you finally publish it,
there's a part of you that wants to place it in God's hands and trust him to take it wherever he wants it to go, right?
But then we come to the business side of self publishing. We have to write book descriptions, send emails, talk about our books on social media,
find ways to reach new readers, and sometimes spend actual money on marketing and promotions.
And I think that's where some Christian authors start. Start feeling a little conflicted.
I've had to examine my own motives around book marketing over the years, especially when I've caught myself putting pressure on a particular strategy to produce the results I wanted.
But I've also learned that avoiding the business side of publishing doesn't automatically mean I'm trusting God more.
Sometimes I simply don't feel like doing the marketing.
Sometimes I'm tired of trying things that haven't worked. And sometimes I'd much rather write another book and sit down and figure out why the books I've already published aren't reaching enough readers.
Maybe you can relate to that. And that brings me to our scripture for today.
In Colossians 2:19, Paul writes about the body of Christ and says, the entire body being supplied and held together by the joints and ligaments grows with a growth which is from God.
Now Paul is speaking about the church and its connection to Christ as the head of the body.
In the surrounding verses, he's warning believers about teachings and practices that can distract them from holding fast to Christ.
And here he describes the body being supplied,
held together, and growing with a growth that comes from God.
So this verse isn't a promise that God will increase our book sales if we market our books. That's not what Paul is teaching here. But here's the part of this verse that has stayed with me.
The growth comes from God. And Paul describes a body that is connected, supplied, and functioning together.
And it made me think about how easily we can talk about trusting God for growth while overlooking the practical responsibilities that actually belong to us.
As Christian authors, we are part of that body.
Our relationship with Christ should shape how we work, how we treat people, and how we make decisions in our author businesses.
And I think that includes how we approach our marketing.
Because when you published your book, you didn't simply pray for God to put a finished manuscript on your computer, did you?
You sat down and wrote it. You actually did the work. You learned things along the way. You revised it. You made decisions about editing book covers, formatting, and publishing. And through all of that, you could still acknowledge God's guidance and provision.
So then why does marketing sometimes feel like a different category altogether?
Why do we become uncomfortable with the idea that reaching readers might also require us to learn, plan, and do some work.
I wonder whether part of the problem is that we started associating marketing with the things we don't particularly like.
Maybe you've seen authors using pressure tactics to sell their books.
Maybe you've watched someone promote their work so aggressively that you've wanted to unfollow them.
Or perhaps you've tried a marketing strategy yourself and found that it took up far too much time,
cost more than you expected,
or simply didn't suit the kind of author business you want to build.
And after an experience like that, it's understandable that you might want to step away from marketing altogether.
But friend marketing doesn't have to look like that.
At its simplest, book marketing helps the right readers discover a book,
understand why it might interest them, and find a way to buy it.
That's something we can approach with integrity.
We can represent our books honestly, respect people's time and attention, and invite readers to buy without start making them feel guilty if they don't.
And we can make decisions about how much time and money to invest based on what our author business actually need.
I don't think any of those things have to conflict with our faith.
In fact, if I've written a book that I genuinely believe will offer someone an enjoyable reading experience,
encouragement, or something worthwhile to think about,
I want to make it reasonably easy for that reader to discover it.
And that means I have to pay attention to how I'm presenting and marketing my books.
Because here's something I've had to come to terms with in my own author business.
A book can be beautifully written and still be difficult for readers to find.
And when that happens,
I need to be willing to look at what I can improve,
be it the cover the description, or making sure I know exactly who to promote my books to.
And this is where I want us to get a little bit more practical here today.
Let's say you've published a book and sales have been slow.
We've all had those months right before you decide that you need to spend money on Facebook ads, join another social media platform,
or pay for a promotion, I want you to think about what's actually happening when you with that book.
Are the right readers seeing it in the first place? And if they are seeing it, are they interested enough to find out more?
Because those are two very different problems.
If hardly anyone is seeing your book, you may need to focus on getting it in front of more of the right readers.
But if people are already visiting your book page and very few are buying it I'd want to look at what they're seeing when they get there. Does the cover communicate the genre clearly?
Does the description give them a compelling reason to read the book?
Are you reaching people who actually enjoy the kind of books you write?
Because if your book page isn't convincing interested readers to buy spending more money sending people to that same page may not solve your problem.
And I think this is where responsible book marketing actually begins. We need to understand what our books need before we decide which marketing strategy to use.
Because marketing isn't simply about doing more.
It's about doing something that helps the right readers discover our books and gives our author businesses a better opportunity to grow and listen. We are not in control of every outcome,
but we are responsible for making wise decisions with the resources and opportunities we have.
And for those of us who want to build profitable author businesses,
that includes learning how our books reach readers.
Now, if you're listening to this and thinking Urcelia, I know I need to market my books, but I honestly have no idea what I should be focusing on next,
I want to remind you about my free Christian Author Growth Roadmap. I created it to help Christian authors like you see the different areas of their author business more clearly and identify where they need to concentrate their attention as they grow.
So if you've been trying a little bit of everything or you're not sure whether you should be working on your branding or your author platform,
reaching more readers or improving sales sales, download the Roadmap and use it to help you think through your next step.
You can get it free@anointedscribe.com Roadmap I'll put the link in the show notes for you too.
And here's something I want you to pay attention to because it could change the way you approach your very next book promotion.
Let's say you've been sending emails to your subscribers about one of your books,
but those emails aren't generating many sales.
You might be tempted to decide that email marketing simply doesn't work for you.
Or perhaps you think you need a bigger email list before you can expect to sell more books.
But what if your email list isn't actually the problem?
What if you haven't given your subscribers a compelling reason to click through and take a closer look at the book?
Maybe the subject line didn't give them a reason to open the email.
Maybe the email itself didn't communicate what makes this particular book worth reading.
Or maybe the people on your list signed up because they enjoyed a completely different type of book from you Those are things we need to understand before deciding what to change.
And if your subscribers are clicking through to your book page but the sales aren't following,
then perhaps the issue is somewhere else.
It could be the cover the description, the price,
or whether that particular book is a good match for the readers you are trying to reach.
Now, I'm not saying that every disappointing book promotion can be explained by one of these things.
But I do think we owe it to ourselves to pay attention to what our results are telling us.
Because how else are we going to know what needs improving in our business?
And here's where this comes back to Trusting God. I can look at what's happening in my author business,
examine what I can reasonably learn from it, and then take that information into prayer. I can ask God for wisdom and make my next decision with a clearer understanding of the business he has entrusted to me.
And and I can align it with a vision that God has given me for this business.
And sometimes that decision may be to change something. Maybe I need to rewrite my book description.
Maybe I need to rethink where I'm promoting the book in the first place.
Or perhaps I need to give an existing marketing strategy more time before deciding whether it's working.
But if I simply keep repeating something because I'm afraid that changing course would mean I don't trust God,
I may be avoiding a decision that needs my attention.
Faithfulness doesn't mean we refuse to learn from the results of our work.
I think that's something we need to remember as Christian authors. I also don't believe God is asking us to stop thinking, planning, or making wise decisions, such as simply because we've placed our author businesses in his hands.
In fact,
we can trust God with our business while continuing to learn how to run it well.
We can also absolutely pray for more readers while taking practical steps to help those readers find our books using our covers and optimized descriptions, keywords, categories,
etc.
And we can also pursue stronger sales and profitability without making those sales the measure of our relationship with God.
We still have to do the work.
And that brings me back to the question we started with.
If God called you to write, do you still need to market your books?
I believe there is room for us to trust God wholeheartedly while taking the practical responsibilities of self publishing seriously.
For me,
part of that responsibility is continuing to learn how to reach readers and making thoughtful decisions about where I invest my time and money.
But I also have to keep checking my heart because it's possible to begin with a genuine desire to serve readers and gradually start putting all your hope in how many books you sold this month.
And when that happens,
even a perfectly reasonable marketing strategy can become a source of pressure.
And I don't know about you, but that's not the kind of relationship I want to have with my author business.
It is not the author life I'm after.
I want to work diligently,
make informed decisions, and leave room for God to guide me when a plan needs to changing.
And I also want to acknowledge that no matter how much effort I put into my marketing,
I cannot make another person buy one of my books.
I can make my books available to them. I can communicate their value.
I can learn from what is and isn't working.
But then I have to allow the readers to make their own decisions.
So here's what I'd love you to do this week.
Choose one book you've already published and ask yourself whether you are making it reasonably easy for the right readers to find it.
Understand what it offers, and click that buy button.
Maybe you'll discover that your book description needs some attention.
Maybe you'll realize that most of your promotion has been going to the wrong people.
The people who aren't really your target readers.
Or perhaps you already know exactly who your readers are, but you haven't been giving them enough opportunities to hear about your books.
Whatever you notice,
choose one thing you can work on just one.
Then bring that decision before God.
Ask him to help you see whether you've been avoiding something because it feels uncomfortable or whether you've been putting too much pressure on a marketing strategy to produce a particular result you expect expecting Ask for wisdom to recognize what needs your attention and then go and do that work.
You don't have to turn yourself into someone who loves every part of marketing.
I certainly don't love every part of it, believe me.
But I do want to keep learning how to make my books available to the readers who would enjoy them. And I want to do that while staying rooted in Christ, making, making wise decisions, and remembering that my author business is only one part of the life God has entrusted to me.
Friend, the growth Paul describes in Colossians comes from God as the body holds fast to Christ.
And while that passage isn't about publishing or book sales, it reminds me where I want to remain rooted as I carry out the work God God has placed in front of me.
So if you've published a book and you've been waiting for readers to find it, perhaps this is a good week to take another look at how you're helping them discover it.
And if you need help identifying which area of your author business deserves your attention next,
you can download the free Christian Author growth roadmap@anointedscribe.com roadmap. The link is waiting for you in the show Notes 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.
