010 | What Is Christian Marketing?

🚀 In This Episode

We tackle one of the BIG questions Christian writers often wrestle with:

Should Christians market their books and themselves?

Spoiler: It's probably not what you’ve been told!

🎯 5 Keys You'll Learn:

1. What Marketing Really Is | Discover the true definition of marketing (hint: it’s just making connections!).
2. Why Publishing Equals Entering the Marketplace | See why putting your book on Amazon or Apple Books means you’re already a “marketer.”
3. How Marketing is Loving Your Neighbor | Learn why sharing your story, expertise, or advice is part of Christ’s call to love others.
4. Permission to Get Paid (or Not!) | It’s okay to charge for your skills—or not. Both are respectable options!
5. Embracing Your Responsibility | You have not just permission, but a responsibility to connect your book to the people who need it most.

🎉 Fun Fact from the Episode

Did you know Jeremy once had $15,000 in credit card debt? Jeremy shares how he learned to manage it—and how those practical lessons in real life inspired him to help others through both writing and marketing (10:04).

👋 Outtro

Remember, you’re not alone on this author journey. Struggling with marketing is normal, and it’s something even Jeremy is still learning and growing in every day!

🙌 Call to Action

Ready to dive deeper? Join the free Gospel Wise Author Fellowship for actionable advice, deep-dive articles, and coaching designed just for you. Head over to gospelwiseauthor.com/join and grab your tools and training today!

Let’s build your lasting, Gospel-wise author legacy—together.

Hey Creative Christian, Jeremy Bauma here and welcome to Christian Author 2.0, the podcast for modern stewards of the written word with insights for your Gospel wise author journey. For two decades I've watched authors struggle with their creative calling. That's why I built the gospelwise Author Ecosystem to provide the practical training and high tech tools you need to thrive, from deep dive insights to specialized apps and personalized coaching. I'm here to help you turn your manuscript into a movement. So stop guessing and start growing your reach with excellence. Let's dive into today's episode and master the path together.

Hey Creative Christian, Jeremy here with another Author 2.0 insight that I hope will be helpful to you in your author journey, whether you're at the front end or in the middle and wrestling particularly with the topic that I would like to briefly address, something that I've been thinking a lot about, particularly as I've been writing some ideas for this space at Cross and Penn to encourage Christian writers to help connect their books, their passion projects, to a world who needs them. And that is this topic and really this question surrounding marketing and whether a Christian should market their books and themselves.

As a storyteller, an expert, a resourcer, someone who is available to help others with the things that the writer is an expert on or is gifted in, passionate about, this question I've heard in various ways from various authors who have either written books or are considering writing books and have degrees or various levels of experience, expertise as some sort of professional and they sense this calling to write, to write a book and to publish it, put it out there. But there's this hesitancy, this resistance to then take the next step to market in this space, Cross and Pen. My interest is to offer you insights and upskilling and inspiration to help you write, publish and market your own books, your passion projects. And so for me, I view marketing as part of that whole package here at Cross and Pen, but also for the author journey. I have wrestled with this question myself. I continue to wrestle with it. I'll be the first person to say I'm growing, I know what to do, I've done the things that you're supposed to do. But there is still this growth curve that I'm on because a lot of the way that people have marketed books is changing, it has changed, it's continued to change.

And so this is, I've been thinking a lot about how to market and particularly connect my own books to the world outside. So when I come to this question, it's something that I've wrestled with. It's something I hear a lot about other people wrestling with. And I wonder and have a gut sense that you are too. Which is why I wanted to talk about a little bit what it means to market. Because if you are putting something out into the market, which is what you're doing when you're publishing, when you're publishing to Amazon, to Apple Books, to Google, to Barnes and Noble, you're entering into a marketplace. And a marketplace is simply a space where people buy things. That's it.

If you're in the market for a car, like I sort of am now, where do you go? You go to a car dealership because that's where people buy cars. And you are entering into the market and you call yourself, or you label yourself someone who is in the market for a car because you are in the market. You go to a grocery store, you're going to a market, is how it used to be called, a marketplace. Or Amazon is this massive marketplace for buying things or selling things. If you're a producer, same thing for an author. You're entering into a market. And so you need to consider what it means from a publishing side, a business side, but also a marketing side to enter into that market. If you're asking for money for your books, then you are entering into a market and you are having to sort of play by those market rules at some level.

You don't have to ask for money. That's fine. If you don't want to ask for money, if you don't want to enter into a market. If you don't want to market your books, then just put them out, send them to people for free, put it up on a website, on Facebook with a link to a PDF or the ebook files, and that's totally fine. Make blog posts out of them, give it away to the world. That's something that is respectable. It's okay. It's also respectable and okay to be paid for your experience, for your expertise, for your advice, for your stories that offer escape entertainment.

And if you're with me on that, then what does it mean then to market your books as a Christian? And should we? Where I've landed and what I've written about recently, which I'll post and which you can actually download through my Christian Author 2.0 roadmap, where I've outlined this chapter addressing this exact issue, how to market a book as a Christian, and whether or not Christians even should. And what I've landed on is the definition of marketing in the first place. Which I hope will give you some insight into marketing, but also freedom to go and do for the sake of the gospel, for the sake of igniting faith. And marketing is nothing more than making a connection. It's about connecting with people as an authority. It's about connecting yourself as an author to readers, but it's also about connecting your book to readers and readers to your book and to yourself. Marketing and selling are sort of tied up together, but they are also separate things. Selling comes on the back end.

I think 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, 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, you are telling them that you are here, that you are showing up to help them in some ways, which at the end of the day is really about loving them, loving your neighbor who is, who has a problem, who is in pain, who needs help in some way. That's what marketing is. It's 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 with a stay-at-home dad who is stressed with all the diaper changing or the nap times, or the helping their kids with homework as a homeschool dad, or I'm speaking for myself as that person, which is why I use myself. Because I went to books to find escape and to find entertainment and to just get some relief from a day that was filled with some of that on top of the work I was also doing. So I looked to books, I looked to stories to find the help I needed to be inspired, to find escape, to get some insight into the world around me.

So books were that for me. Maybe you are up to your eyeballs in debt or know somebody who is up to their eyeballs in debt. Or there are people out there who are up to their eyeballs in debt. And you're a financial planner. You went to school as a business person, studying business management or financial management. And so you, as a financial planner, you have expertise in helping people manage their finances. And so you know that there are people out there who struggle with managing debt, managing their finances. I was that person for a long time.

I was up to debt in my elbows. I spent crazy on credit cards as a young adult and had something like 15 grand 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. And I'm so grateful because they loved me enough to help connect me to their advice. That's what marketing is and that's why as Christians, it's okay. And I would say it is a necessity, it is a obligation and a virtue to market, to enter into the market with your advice, with your help, with your escape and entertainment, because that is a way that you are able to love your neighbor. And you know, as a Christian, Jesus, that's one of Jesus's commands to us. Love God, love your neighbor. That's what it means to fulfill the law.

But that's what the law of God is boiled down to. That's what Jesus boiled down the law to: love God, love your neighbor. And he has extended that law, that requirement for us as his followers to us. And that comes out in a variety of ways, whether paid or unpaid. But at the end of the day, as a business person, as a writer who's entered into the 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. And that's what it means, that's what it looks like to market your own work.

Wanted to give you that 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 day 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 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, to offer some help and to love our neighbor as ourself.

I think in some other videos maybe I'll share some of those ways we can make those connections, but in this one, know that you have the permission and know that you have the responsibility to make those connections by sharing what you know, what you've written with your world.

That's a wrap for today, but the real work happens inside the Gospel Wise Author Fellowship, a totally free membership filled with actionable advice and practical insights. For the deep dive articles, tools and coaching you need to thrive, go to gospelwiseauthor.com join. Everything we discussed today and the resources to help you implement it is live in the hub right now. So join the fellowship, grab tools and training and let's build a lasting gospelwise author legacy with lasting impact. That's gospelwiseauthor.com/join. See you next time on Christian Author 2.0 insights.