I am so excited to announce to you that The Book of Esther: A Story of Love and Favor has been downloaded to Amazon and should be available tomorrow. It is a Daily-Bible-Reading Study of The Book of Esther. It contains 18 lessons consisting of: a commentary, the daily Bible Scripture, the prayer of the day, and a few thoughts to ponder which I call things to think about. It is a book about love, God’s favor, and a bit of history. I really enjoyed studying The Book of Esther every time I went through it. I am sure you are anxious to get your copy, so help me keep an eye out for it on Amazon. Let me know when you spot it on Amazon. Let’s see who will buy the first copy!
Tag Archives: Deborah H. Bateman-Author
How to Survive Being Edited as a New Author
Do you find it hard to accept criticism? I sometimes find it hard to take the criticism of others, but I think it has something to do with the way they do it. If it is done in a loving, caring manner it is much easier to swallow. If it is done in a critical, dog eat dog manner it is much harder to get over the hurt so you can move on to accept the suggestions.
Believe me since I have been online I have had to deal with this from time to time. One of the hardest for me to swallow was a person who totally did not want me sharing Bible Verses. It hurt my feelings, but it was more about the fact they rejected God. It made me realize how He must have felt walking around on this earth and being constantly rejected by people. Maybe this is something He wanted me to feel so I would not feel so rejected myself. Or maybe it was so I wouldn’t feel like I was exempt from rejection.
One of the processes we as author’s have to go through that is hard to get used to is being edited. It is something we all need, but how do we survive it. As a new author this was one of the hardest things for me, because I didn’t know what to expect. When I wrote my first book: The Book of Ruth: A Story of Love and Redemption and got it back from the editor I was devastated.
I felt like someone had torn my baby apart. It took me a day or two to get past the surprise to be able to do the updates. My editor gave me good advice. She said for me to leave it alone for a few days and give myself time to get used to the idea, then go back and make the corrections. It was good advice and it helped. What she did was good, I just didn’t have any idea what to expect.
I have had people edit me who were loving, sweet and kind with their words of critique and suggestions. I have had other people who looked at my work and were critical, mean, had nothing good to say and made me feel like I had just been chewed up by a bull dog. It really hurt my feelings bad. It took me a while to get over it. It ruined my day and I still haven’t went back to look at their comments to see what improvements I can make from them. I did keep them and I hope in the near future I can move past the hurt and see what I can gain from their critiques.
So as we try to help each other and learn from each other my suggestion is that we think about the way we present our critiques to people. Can we also complement something they did right? Can we say it in a way that will not cut them to the core, but make them feel we really care about them and their work? We don’t want people to think everything they did was wrong. Or that we think we have all the answers and they are stupid.
Can we not be jealous of what God is doing in the other person’s life? Not feeling like we have to bring them down a notch or two. Can’t we celebrate one another’s victories? How can we better support one another and celebrate what God is doing in each of our lives and still help make us all better for His glory?
I am sharing this in hopes of helping someone else who may have experienced the same thing or to help new author’s to know what to expect and not be caught off guard. I am not against editors or being edited or critiqued. I realize we all need to be edited and have our work looked at by other people to make us better and make our work better. But, let’s work together to make each other better and not bitter at the whole process. If we work together as a team, them we can improve the whole process and turn out work we all can be proud of.
Do you use Google+ to promote your websites, blogs, or Book?
I recently started with Google+ and have been using it to help promote my website, blogs and my book. It is a social network on Google. I think you have to have a Google email to join it. If you need an invite let me know. You can set up your profile, add friends to your circles, +1 and comment on their posts and hangout with your friends.
You can create pages for your websites, blogs, books, businesses, etc. They are very easy to set up. I created pages for Deborah H. Bateman-Author Site, Christian Daily Resources, Daily-Bible-Reading, and Bible Verse Tweet. There is a link on the right hand side of the page that says Create a Google+ Page. You click on that and follow the step by step instructions and in no time you have your page.
Today I finally tried the hangout feature. You have to have a camera and microphone on your computer. All you have to do is click on the button on the right hand side of the page that says hangout. It will take you to a screen to download the software you need then you will see yourself on the screen. You can then invite your friends to hang out with you. You can watch YouTube videos, share screens, carry on a conversation, have a meeting, etc. It is best if you set up a time to meet so your friends will be there when you invite them, unless you want to take your chances and see who is available at the time. I think the limit is ten people at a time. So you can’t invite all your friends at once, but you can have a small party or hangout.
I found some good videos on YouTube that explain how to use the hangout feature. If you would like to check them out go to my YouTube channel and look for hangouts. My YouTube Channel is DebBat0519. Join me on Google. I am listed as Deborah Bateman. Leave a comment and let me know if you are on Google+, if you have pages or have an experience with the hangout feature you want to share.
This article was written by: Deborah H. Bateman-Author of The Book of Ruth-A Story of Love and Redemption and founder of Christian Daily Resources-a Christian Online Ministry dedicated to “Sharing God’s Word. Deborah is also going to be sharing articles to help other people online to write, publish, and market their books along with social media tips.
The Book of Ruth-A Story of Love and Redemption #1 Best Sellers in Christian Education
Best Sellers in Christian Education
Top 100 Paid
1.
The Book of Ruth-A Story of Love and Redemption (Daily-Bible-Reading)
Deborah H. Bateman, Amanda Daubenmeyer, Lisa Lickel, Mary Hollingsworth, Anne Telestiok
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$4.99
Thanking God for His blessings.
The Book of Ruth-A Story of Love and Redemption is #1 Best Sellers in Christian Education
How to Promote Your Book for Free Days on Kindle
Some people may ask, why would you give your book away?
I guess it depends on how good your book is doing otherwise. For me being a fairly new author it was a way to promote myself for future books as well as The Book of Ruth-A Story of Love and Redemption. Doing the free promotion also helps get your book higher in the rankings. I went through some of the same thoughts you might, thinking about it as losing money. If I actually sold the 12,000 books I gave away in the two days of my giveaway that would be a lot of money. I would love to get that check. But, if your book is sitting there with very few sales then, what have you got to lose?
For one thing you get a lot of exposure. There are now more people who know my name and have my book on their computer. From a Christian standpoint there are more people who I have shared the gospel with, which is my ultimate goal. I hope one day my ministry will be self-supportive and I would love to have a nice income from my books. But for now I have to abide where I am in the process. I keep reminding myself I shared the gospel with all those people and God will bless me for doing it in whatever way He sees fit.
If you have a message you want to get out and you are not already selling a lot of books, what do you have to lose? Or, if you are like me and you are a new author who needs to let people know about the message of your book, then I think it is a good promotional tool to get your name out and let people have a sample of your writing. If they like it, they may tell other people about your book or they may buy future books. They may subscribe to your website or become a follower of yours. Think of it as advertising.
It is a personal decision everybody has to make for themselves. Don’t feel pressured to do it if you aren’t comfortable with it. I thought about it for a while before I took the plunge. But, in the previous six weeks I had not sold as many books as I would like so I figured I didn’t have anything to lose by doing it.
Some of the things I did to promote my FREE Kindle days are:
I sent out emails to my entire email list letting them know about the promotion. I also asked them to send out messages and emails to their friends, family, and email list. Then, I promoted as if no one else was helping me. Anything they did was a bonus. I wasn’t going to ask them to do something I wasn’t willing to do myself.
I scheduled posts for Twitter and Facebook throughout the day. I also posted on LinkedIn and Google+. I also posted messages on my blogs about the free giveaway.
Tags I used on my posts included #Free #FreeKindle #KindleFree #FreeEbook #KindleFreebie. I used anything I could think of and anything I saw others using to get recognition for the free eBook.
I sent out messages to these sites and asked them to post my book on the free days, also:
eReaderiq.com
EReaderNewsToday.com
ereader-freebies.blogspot.com
Once I scheduled all my messages and put up my other posts I watched the rankings go up and checked periodically to see how many books were downloaded. I was very well pleased with the results.
I went to #1 in two categories and up to #12 free in kindle store during the two days of m free book promotion.
Another thing is to keep promoting your book after the free days. Once you go up in the rankings you want to try to keep them up as long as possible. So, do what you can to keep promoting and hopefully it will help keep the rankings up.
Remember out of site, out of mind. If people don’t see your book being promoted they are going to forget about it. Also, nobody cares about your book like you do so you can’t depend on other people to promote it for you. I hope this article has given you some insight into why some of us choose to do the free giveaways and help you decide if you would like to do it too. I wish you much success with your book.
If you would like coaching on Self-Publishing or Marketing your book contact Deborah H. Bateman via the contact form on this site. She will be glad to discuss her coaching package with you.
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