One year ago today my second book came out, The Shift: Surviving and Thriving after Moving from Conservative to Progressive Christianity.

Also? One year ago today the U.S. was in a record-number-of-deaths for COVID 19 state (we have since annihilated those early records, cause we ‘Murica, and we do everything bigly).

Needless to say, the latter event shadowed the former.

Obviously, a global pandemic is magnitudes more important than an obscure sophomore release from an author who’s a niche among niches (writing for the post-evangelical crowd of the “Christian” market is not, you might say, super lucrative).

Shortly after my release date, a friend of mine who’s deep in the industry told me that according to insider publishing data, during the first couple months after Covid swarmed America people were basically reverting to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs as it related to book buying.

So if The Shift would’ve been about, “How to Grow Potatoes, Fast!” or, “Purify Your Own Water, Survive the Apocalypse!” then it might’ve actually moved some copies. However, since The Shift mostly deals with the upper half of our Maslow needs (psychological and self-fulfillment), it simply wasn’t the sort of book people wanted/needed.

In short, this time last year? People were not too concerned with purchasing a book about surviving their exodus from conservative, evangelical Christianity.

🤣🤪🤷🏻‍♂️ 

On top of that, as a small-time author with a small publishing house, there obviously wasn’t any sort of mass marketing attempt to get The Shift out there. Basically, unless you’re with one of the Big Five, and/or unless you’re an A-list author, the success of your book is largely due to three factors:

1. Hustle

2. Luck

3. Just kidding, it’s really only Hustle and Luck

The Hustle Factor encompasses things such as:

• Building out a platform on Social Media

• Creating an email list so you can directly communicate with possible customers

• Posting content regularly

• Begging people to talk about, share about, review your book

• Putting together a speaking tour.

The Luck Factor includes things such as:

• Who do you know that help push/share/bump your book

• Might you catch a zeitgeist wave

• Maybe a big outlet will do a story on you/your book

• It just hits the right note at the right time

So much of a book’s “success” comes down to luck. As one friend (who’s sold a ton of books) once told me, “Many times, really good books never sell, and really bad books sell a lot. The quality of a book rarely correlates to its sales number.”

You gotta be lucky, in other words.

But back to the Hustle Factor, specifically that final one on my list, the Book Tour.

Book tours are great in that they offer an author several things. First, it lets them go around and meet people IRL to talk about their work, thus adding to the aforementioned social media platform and email database. And, second, maybe more importantly, it gives authors repeated reasons to keep talking about their book, to keep putting out regular content. 

Imagine if an author just did one post the day their book came out, then posted that same graphic the next week... then the next week... and so on... well, you can see how that would only ever get ignored. You have to have something to keep talking about, or to keep showing people. Hence, the book tour. A near endless supply of photos and stories and testimonies and fresh content to keep reminding folks, “This thing I made is in the world! Is it in your hands, yet?”

For The Shift, I was incredibly excited about the multi-week, multi-city tour I created. (Again, note the “I” created part. This goes back to Hustle. Ain’t nobody doing the work for most of us authors except us authors, unless you’re an A-lister and you have the coveted “Team.”)

I couldn’t wait to travel to places such as Nashville, New York, Austin and Minneapolis.

And then... the world shut down.

(I did our taxes the other day and my heart sank when I was going through invoices from 2020 and saw about 12 transactions through SouthWest Air (Yay! All my airfare booked!). Scroll down... down... about three weeks later, 12 refunds from SouthWest Air. Nevermind. Sad.)

I did my best, of course, to make some lemonade out of the Corona-Lemons. And I’m damn proud of my efforts. Such as the Livestream Extravaganza I put together—which, in addition to being one of my favorite evenings of the year (such a blast!), it introduced me to the world of livestreaming and set me up for year long deep dive in to the world of cameras and lighting and Live producing, which I never would’ve had time or space for otherwise. So that’s a win!

I also had a blast spending a couple months talking to a ton of really amazing folks through The Shift Podcast Tour.

And yet, neither of those compare to both the pure enjoyment of a book tour, nor the way in which a tour can help a book like The Shift find a foothold.

As a result, it’s an understatement to say that sales of The Shift have not been what any of us had hoped for. The timing, quite truly, could not have been worse. 🥴

(Please know that I know that in the grand scheme of things a Let-Down-of-a-Book-Release is microscopic compared to the damage that Covid 19 has wrought upon us.)

So... aaaalllll that to say, if it’s alright with you, I’m gonna take the next month to re-announce the existence of The Shift!

🤘🏻🥰🤩🕺 💃🏻

Through my newsletter here, and on my Wednesday afternoon Live Show, I’m gonna:

• Share some excerpts from the book,

• Talk about some of my favorite subjects from The Shift, and

• Even bring on some special guests to talk about their experience with Shifting away from conservative Christianity. 

Which brings me to... YOU!

If you have experienced (or are experiencing) the Shift--moving away from a more conservative expression of your Christian faith and toward something more progressive--will you tell me about it?

I have four Big Questions for you that I’ll be asking over the next month:

1. What has been the hardest part about your Shift?

2. What has been most surprising?

3. What are you grateful for as a result of your Shift?

4. What do you love about your new expression of faith (and what might you miss from your previous one?)

All month long I’m gonna be asking you these questions, hoping that you’ll share with me/us.

So without any further ado, here is the first question I’m hoping you’ll respond to:

What has been the hardest part about your Shift?

Whether it’s happening to you right now, or whether your shift is behind you, when you reflect on your movement away from you more conservative Christian self/church/community/etc, what is/was the hardest part?

The thing that hurt the most? The loss that felt the greatest?

If you’re willing to share publicly, simply leave it here in the comment section.

Leave a comment

However, if you’d prefer to keep it between us (which, for this topic, totally makes sense), you can reply to this email (or, if you’re reading this article online, you can email me)

For now, I hope you’ll check out The Shift (learn more about it here), pick up a hardcover copy, or, wait a couple months because I’m getting ready to record/release the audio book version! 🤙🏼😎🥳

Join Us Live Today!

As always, I’ll be going live today (Wednesday) at 2pm PST, where I’ll do a reading of this article as well as interact with YOU!

Respond to your thoughts and questions.

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