In 2023, while I was still buying Bibles and nonfiction for a Christian bookstore, I wrote an open letter called “Dear Self-Published Christian Author.” I’d had too many conversations with authors whose books I couldn’t put on a shelf, and I wanted to tell them what I was seeing from the other side of the counter. I still stand by almost all of it. Here’s the short version, with a few things I’d say differently now.
A good book doesn’t sell itself
Being well known at your church or in your town doesn’t turn into sales on its own. Neither does being good. Unless you already have an audience, you’ll need a plan for telling people the book exists, and you’ll need to keep working that plan after the launch-day excitement fades.
Editing and design aren’t optional
The most common problem I saw was a book that had never had a developmental edit. The second was a cover or interior that looked homemade. Readers notice both, even when they couldn’t tell you what bothered them, and store buyers notice immediately. Here’s what real editing involves.
Be careful who you pay
Some companies that call themselves Christian publishers make their money from authors rather than from readers, charging thousands of dollars for services you could arrange yourself for much less, or that don’t get you onto a store shelf anyway. Before you sign anything, ask who owns the ISBN, what you’ll pay for author copies, what the royalty is, and whether any bookstore has ever ordered one of their titles.
Where I’ve changed my mind
In the letter I put a lot of weight on getting into bookstores, which takes wholesale distribution, a deep retail discount and the willingness to accept returns. That’s still how stores work. But I’ve come to think that for most first-time authors, chasing shelf space isn’t the best use of their energy. Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing costs nothing to use, prints on demand so you never store boxes in the garage, and puts your book where most readers already shop. It won’t sell the book for you, but it doesn’t ask you to bet the savings account on a print run either.
Keep your expectations honest
Most books, from every kind of publisher, sell modestly. That isn’t failure. A book that serves three hundred readers well has done something good. Test the waters before you order a pallet of copies, and decide ahead of time what you’d count as faithfulness with this book, apart from the numbers.
Self-publishing isn’t the only option
If your goal is a traditional publisher, a literary agent is usually the way in. And if you’ve written Christian nonfiction with the reader in mind and you’d like a small press to do the editing, design and production with you at no cost, that’s why True Bearing Press exists.