Week in Review (March 23, 2024)

1. A lot of course writing this week again. Worked on a couple Kingswood microcourses. Here's one on Leading a Bible Study that I did the write-up on. Continued to work on a second-semester composition course, a Lifespan Development course, a Biology course, and more.

2. I largely paused my ads this week. My sense is that most sales occur from Thursday to Sunday, so I edited and turned a version of my ads back on yesterday. The ads do well. They get people to my landing page. People move from my landing page to a sales page. Good conversions there. A number of people even go into my Shopify check-out. It's only $9.99 for five e-books. I sent a couple follow-up emails to those who have already signed up too. 

No sales... well, except for some family members.

3. I pushed into the paperback versions this week. Most people still prefer paperbacks to ebooks. That may be part of my problem. You can ship paperbacks directly to people through Amazon at author cost. The problem is that it can take up to 10 days. 

I've rediscovered Lulu Press. They were the first press I self-published with. I thought Amazon would have put them out of business, but they have an impressive worldwide printing network. I had high hopes they would be the ticket. The quality of book product they facilitate is better than KDP on Amazon, IMO.

BUT their shipping price is outrageous, IMO. AND they take as long or longer than Amazon to ship. My sense is that most people in my shoes keep a stock of their paperbacks and ship them themselves. This of course would require me to buy lots of copies of my books well in advance of selling them without any guarantee they would actually sell. I could do this and may slowly stock up over time. By the way, I could do this with books I have written with conventional publishers as well, selling them through Shopify.

3. One of the more interesting things to happen this week was an inquiry about translating my systematic theology into French. The question was whether I would be interested in giving a certain mission group in Africa permission to work on a translation. Of course, I am. But I also indicated that I could have it in French by Monday, given the wonders of AI translation. I may go ahead and do that even if they do their own.

I continue to be very proud of this book. I feel like it is more accessible than most theologies. I think it is more practical. I think it is more real. And there just aren't many Wesleyan options out there.

4. I have about 100 people in my Schenck Book Club. They signed up, so I send them a couple emails a week so far. The course I took suggested that three emails a week is not onerous because people only read them if they hit them at a good moment. I promised them a couple more books by Pentecost. These are 1) novella #4 in the Gabriel sequence: Gabriel's Diaries: The Earliest Church and 2) Explanatory Notes on Acts 1-12. So I have about 7 weeks to get those finished. But will anyone read them???

5. I don't know if I ever shared my four-prong marketing strategy for this year. 

• Self-publishing -- this is the core business, selling on Amazon and now Shopify
• YouTube videos -- video atoms live here
• Udemy courses -- the videos assemble into courses here; books support the courses
• Patreon -- videos also make their way here for followers

It's still a trickle, but I probably bring in $250 a month from these venues. Obviously, I'd like to see that number in the thousands but oh well.

I hope you find this mildly amusing. Have a great week!