Monday Musings: New Releases, News, and More 8/30/21
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Welcome to a new weekly blog feature where I share new releases, Christian book news, and other musings about reading (and maybe writing) and I open up the comments to both authors and readers to discuss a topic.
New Releases
In this section I’ll feature new Christian book releases. They might not have come out this week but they’re still very new. Some of them may even be pre-orders, so watch the publication dates. I’m moving towards posting them the Monday before they release. These are full price books.
Where Has The News Gone?
As my newsletter followers already know, I spent the weekend resting. Now that Monday’s here I’m ready to get back into things, only Monday Musings hasn’t even been started yet. (I usually at least get it started before the weekend.) So, I promised you all book news and where do most people go for news? Facebook, of course.
So I open up the Facebook newsfeed (which is impossible to find these days) and what do I see? Every author we follow regularly posts pictures and reports on their dog or cat. Not exactly book news. What else did I find? Authors like to tell their fans about other authors’ new releases. Check.
What else? The only other thing I see is name dropping awards. “USA Today Bestseller” or “Christy Award Winner” or “Award Winning Author” or “Wall Street Journal bestseller!”
(No one yells, “Amazon bestseller” anymore. We used to. Back when that was a difficult thing to do. The next to go will surely be USA Today bestseller because it seems everyone now is one.)
So my question is, where is the book news? Where can I find stories of authors touching lives with their books? Writers uncovering interesting facts while researching their latest novel? Are we as authors that boring? Tricia Goyer was the only one with anything remotely personal that didn’t have a furry friend involved. She has ten kids, homeschools, does a lot of other Christian service work, and still manages to write books. (How does she do it???)
I’ve seen authors lose fans because they got too political, even too religious on social media. But there are only so many cat pictures a person can take in their newsfeed. (But if dogs can sell you on this article I’ll add my precious Pickles again.)
I recently got so bored with it I opened our Facebook group up to spammers. Basically I changed the rules of only letting people post on the weekend to once a day. I expected nothing but “buy my book” posts but that’s where I found this article I’d like to share from Wild Fire Press. It’s a sweet story about being a Christian ambassador. I hope they continue to spam our page with them. If they do, maybe I’ll share more.
Discussion Topic of the Week
I love our little discussions. Feel free to go back to previous Monday Musings questions as well.
So my question today is, what do you think Christian authors should do differently on social media? And how much weight do you give award winner labels when you choose to buy a book?
