How Can You Market Your Christian Book?

Steve Jobs boiled branding down to a single word. It's not a word most Christian authors associate with marketing — but it reframes the whole job, and it takes the pressure off in the process.

Marketing is a way we're able to love our neighbor. It is actually a very practical way that we can love our neighbor. If somebody has a problem, and we have the solution to that problem, whether it's a book or a hammer or a cup of water, we're called to pass that along.

In thinking through how we go about doing that, I wanted to come back with another practical way to go about making those connections and sharing what we've done using this sort of GospelWise marketing effort.

And I was reminded about one of these practical ways in an old interview I saw recently that Steve Jobs gave about his company, Apple Computers. He offered a single word that gets at the heart of how to market as Christian writers — and a reminder of why we do it.

What GospelWise Marketing Actually Is

What marketing really is, is making a connection with readers. That is what I call GospelWise marketing. It's not something slick or slimy or sleazy. It's not about drawing attention to yourself or your books. Rather, the purpose is to leverage who you are — your experiences, perspectives, and insights, through your stories, your studies, and resources — to draw attention to Jesus. Wielding the pen for the sake of the cross and the gospel.

That is why we write. It's also why we market. We connect our books to readers in order to help them solve problems, and to offer escape and entertainment for their busy, chaotic, hectic lives.

It sounds almost like we're over-spiritualizing this aspect of writing and publishing, doesn't it? Just stamping the process of connecting and marketing with the gospel and the Bible. But I think it's actually very true that the way we love our neighbor is sharing what we've written with them.

A Brand Is What People Think About You When You're Not Around

Jobs was talking about the Apple brand. If you've been around the Apple block, you probably have a very clear idea in your head what that brand is.

I first encountered it 30 years ago when I was 10 years old and my dad surprised our family with a brand new Macintosh Classic — one of those all-in-one beige cubes. It didn't have a hard drive. The system and the program ran off a floppy disk. That's how old I am. That's how long I've been in the computer world, but also the Apple world.

So I love Apple. I love their products, their phones, their watches. This was created on an Apple product, a Mac Mini with a Studio Display. I have a very clear idea in my mind of what that brand is.

And here's the thing: whether or not you like it or think about it, you have a brand. A brand is simply what people think about you when you're not around. When people encounter our books, they are thinking things about who we are, about our storytelling, about the resources we offer — whether or not we can help them, whether they're useful or practical and get results, or offer escape and entertainment.

Jobs Boiled It Down to One Word

He boiled it down to something much more basic and simpler, and he used the word trust. He said brand is trust.

Brand is trust. And it works like a bank account — you're building it with every single product you put into the market.

He likened it to a bank account, where you are building trust with every single product you put into the market and share and connect with consumers and buyers. You're either depositing into that account by giving them a good experience — people walk away loving their iPod or their new phone or their watch or their computer. It's all integrated. It just works. They don't have to worry about anything else but just creating. That's the Apple brand. You trust that when you get their product, it's quality, it's made well, it just works, everything fits together. You're not going to have the headache of integrating software and hardware, because it's painless and seamless.

But on the flip side, if it's a bad experience, you are withdrawing trust from that bank account. If you've used a poorly made product, or you have a version of Android that doesn't work with the new Chrome OS, and now the entire system is broken — your entire process for working and creating is destroyed because one version doesn't work with another. Your trust in that ecosystem is now in deficit because of that experience.

Don't Worry About Your Brand. Worry About Their Experience.

Jobs said that we as creators or producers should not worry about our brand or our branding. What we need to really worry about is our customer experience — how people encounter our product, and us, and what they walk away feeling or thinking about that experience.

If we have a good brand, people trust us to give them a good product and a good experience. And if something goes wrong, they know they'll be taken care of, because they have trust in that brand. So his focus was on the basics: making the best product possible, and giving people the best buying and computing experience possible.

That takes care of the customer, doesn't it? When you focus all of your efforts down to that experience and give them something they trust, increasing that trust increases their impression of the brand.

Why This Matters for Christian Writers

In my own experience marketing as a writer — the past five years hardcore as a full-time professional fiction writer, and especially the last decade having written devotionals and studies and resources on top of my more recent fiction focus — this is where I have shifted my own emphasis when it comes to how I make those connections.

Building trust with my readers one book at a time, one reading experience at a time. In order to build people's impression of me, their trust in me, for the sake of the gospel — for the sake of directing their attention into a connection with the heart of God.

Paul speaks about believers living such good lives among the pagans that they then glorify God when he returns. There is this mindset among believers that how we live in the world, regardless of the marketing part of it, impacts people's impression of God and Christ.

We should focus on their experience of us as an author, as a writer, and of our stories.

And that's a very practical way you can control that connecting experience between your books and your readers. Not for the sake of your own self and platform and bank account. Instead, it's about people's impressions of Jesus, and them glorifying God upon his coming because of their encounter of him through you and your books.

Be Okay With the Time It Takes

That comes through time. It comes from deliberate tactics on your part, using marketing strategy to build an ecosystem of connection by sharing your works in a way that builds trust, increases people's impression of you and your brand, and then leads to more encounters with Christ through more encounters with your books.

Which, of course, means those encounters are people buying your books. We've talked about how it's okay for you to sell, and okay for people to buy. Because you've got to make a living. This isn't simply a hobby if you've taken the steps to make it more of a long-term professional career. Part of that is making money and building a business. And that business will build because of people's impressions of you and their trust in your stories and your resources.

The ways you go about building those connections come either through spending money or spending time. My encouragement to you as a Christian writer entering the market is to be okay with the time and the money it takes to build that trust.

That is what I have sought to build as a Christian writer through this GospelWise marketing effort — building connections, sharing what I've written, in order to be helpful, to inspire, and to bring insight into the Christian faith, all so that people will encounter the heart of God.

You have permission to market. And this is how you market: creating connections, building trust, one story, one resource at a time.

If you want the tactics laid out — the specific ways to make those deposits without guessing — that's what I built the GospelWise Marketing Playbook for.

Let's create for Christ together. 🖊️