Bible blog of bestselling Christian author, Stephen M. Miller for Wednesday, 23 July 2014 "When a book flops"

Bible blog of bestselling Christian author, Stephen M. Miller for Wednesday, 23 July 2014 "When a book flops"

BACK TO THE PRESSES. Sometimes when book sales disappoint, publishers try a new approach. They repackage the book into a different size or format. Sometimes all the book needs is a new title and cover design – especially if the first title and cover stunk up the joint. Photo by Dave Herholz.
NOT ALL OF MY BOOKS are bestsellers.
Some have not sold very well at all.
In fact, my favorite book so far – the one I enjoyed writing more than any other, and the one I think is the best book I’ve ever written – crashed and burned.
Relatively speaking.
I think most Christian publishers would have been pleased with the sales of this lavishly illustrated book. But compared to my other books that have sold hundreds of thousands of copies, this book was a disappointment.
It was called The Jesus of the Bible.
I didn’t like that title at all. It sounded too stiff and scholarly – when the book was neither.
Ditto for the cover illustration. It looked dark and offputting. Serious and stern.
I would like to think those are the main reasons for the relatively low sales. I sure hope it wasn’t the inside content.
What’s a publisher to do?
Publishers sometimes back up and take another whack at a book.
In this case, the publisher wanted to make the book more accessible to a greater number of people. So he had the book stripped of all of the pictures.
It’s now text only: Understanding Jesus: A Guide to His Life and Times. But it’s good text. And it’s a few bucks cheaper.
Publishers call this process “repackaging.”
As far as I can tell, it works. It picks up sales the first edition missed.
Publishers have repackaged many of my books into different sizes and formats.
Another repackaged book is coming out in November: Complete Bible Handbook.
It was originally called Bible Snapshots. Again, I don’t think that title adequately described what was inside. Complete Bible Handbook is what I would call an all-in-one guide to the Bible and Christianity. It contains illustrated features that deal with both topics.
Of all the books I’ve written, I think Complete Bible Handbook is the one most helpful to new Christians and to people who wouldn’t call themselves Christians but who are curious about the Bible and Christianity.
This book even has a section dealing with 10 of the toughest questions atheists ask about the Bible and Christianity.
It has a section on what the Bible teaches about some of the most important issues we struggle with today. And it has a condensed review of every book in the Bible, covering all of the main highlights in each book.
It took me a year of my life to write this 500-page whopper. So I hope the repackage will attract readers who missed the book on its first go round.
First impressions are important.
If you have a title and a cover illustration that don’t attract people — the cover might as well be a brick wall with barbed wire on top.
I want a title and cover that’s a swinging gate with a welcome mat.
See if you think Complete Bible Handbook does the trick. Take a look inside.
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More to read:
Complete Bible Handbook
Is it murder to kill in war?
Long life
Me: One writer’s to-do list
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