Reframe marketing to love your neighbor
Today's insight about a word about a word that often creates feelings of guilt among many creatives. Except it shouldn’t. It’s a word every GospelWise Author needs to embrace because it’s a word that our faith actually encourages. So we need a bit a mindset shift about this word that kicks guilt to the curb — because it matters for our writing ministry AND our readers.
Which is marketing.
Christianity encourages Christian authors to embrace marketing?!
Yes! And selling! Stay with me :)
Confession time: I’ve definitely had a love-hate relationship with this word. I’ve marketed books for others, other authors and publishers. I know what to do for my own books and (generally) how to do it. Yet I’ve still struggled with it.
Struggled with creating ads and social media posts tooting my own book horn. Struggled with emailing my readers, thinking I was bothering them. Struggle with coming off as self-promoty and flat selfish.
That is, until I re-framed that word in light of the Bible. When I did, it made all the difference for how I think about marketing — which is an act of love.
Marketing and selling are sort of tied up together, but they are also separate things.
Selling comes on the back end of making a connection, of showing up, of loving somebody enough to tell them, to share with them, that you have something that is of value to them. That you have something that could help them solve their problem. Entertain them, offer some escape for a life that is filled with stress or anxiety or hardship or pain. And you are telling them that you are here, that you are showing up to help them.
At the end of the day, marketing is really about loving our neighbor who has a problem, who need escape, who needs help in some way.
That’s what marketing is. It’s making a connection; it’s an act of love. And that’s why our faith encourages GospelWise Authors to embrace this part of our author responsibilities. Marketing is part of our author ministry, as much as writing is.
We love our reading neighbor by marketing and selling our books.
This is such a freeing thing, an empowering thing, when you realize what it means and how it looks to lean into this role and responsibilty as a book marketer — as a GospelWise Author Connector!
Marketing is about helping people by connecting them to The Thing, whatever that is—a story, a study, a resource—that will solve their problem or help relieve a problem in some sort of way.
A story does that for a stay at home dad who is stressed with all the diaper changing, or the nap times, or helping their kids with homework as a homeschooling dad. I’m speaking from experience! I went to books to find escape, to find entertainment, and to just get some relief from a day that was filled with teaching my son first grade math and reading — on top of my work. I looked to stories to be inspired, to find escape, to get some insight into the world around me. Books were a way that authors loved me.
Maybe you are up to your eyeballs in debt, or know somebody who is up to their eyeballs in debt, or you can imagine there are people out there who are up to their eyeballs in debt. And maybe you’re a financial planner. You went to school as a business person, studying business management, or financial management. So as a financial planner, you have expertise in helping people manage their finances. You know that there are people out there who struggle with managing debt, managing their finances, and you have knowledge that will help them — even a book that will offer relief.
I was that person for a long time. I was up in debt to my eyeballs. I spent crazy on credit cards as a young adult. I had something like $15,000 in credit card debt that I had to work through. And I found help with some people who gave me advice to work through that. I’m so grateful they loved me enough to help connect me to their advice.
That’s what marketing is. It’s making a connection — connecting readers to the books that offer help, in whatever way they need it.
As a Christian, that’s one of Jesus’ commands to us. Love God, love your neighbor. I’m not trying to over spiritualize this aspect of our author vocation, marketing. But the law of God is boiled down to love. That’s what Jesus boiled the law down to.
Loveing God, loving your neighbor.
That law, that requirement, is extended to us as Christ followers — even to you, GospelWise Author! Fulfilling this responsibility comes in a variety of ways, loving our neighbor by marketing, whether paid or unpaid. And we need to do the hard work learning and doing the essentials of book marketing.
At the end of the day, as a business person, as a writer, who’s entered into the book market, you have an obligation to love your neighbor enough to share with them what you know, your advice, to help them connect to your entertainment. That’s what it means, that’s what it looks like, to market your own work.
This is meant as an encouragement, as a sort of permission-granting bit of advice and insight into part of what it means to be a writer in this modern publishing world.
We write, we publish what we write, we keep it out there in the market, but we also connect that book, that passion project, to those who need it by doing the hard work marketing that book. We do it in all of the variety of ways that are available to us to make those connections and to share what we know with the world around us to ignite faith, offer some help, and to love our neighbor as ourselves.
Know that you have permission to market your books. Know that you have the responsibility to make those connections by sharing what you know, the entertainment and escape you’ve written, with your world — all to delight and inspire for God’s glory and your neighbor’s gospel good.
Let’s create for Christ together 🖊️
/ jeremy
