My next book is titled BEYOND ME: LIVING A YOU-FIRST LIFE IN A ME-FIRST WORLD, and any of you who have been following my various postings lately know that I'm doing whatever I can to "get the buzz going." One of the most effective methods I've discovered is tweaking the book's main message to fit various groups of readers and then submitting articles to the appropriate venues. In the last two weeks I've done this for a women's ministry leader ezine, a writers' ezine, and the parenting section of Crosswalk.com (which posted today and can be read at http://www.crosswalk.com/parenting/11576470/). The Crosswalk article is titled "Equipping Your Grads for 'Beyond Me' Living," so it's both timely and practical. Using this technique not only enables us to market our book to readers we might not otherwise reach, but it also opens up new venues in which to minister and spread the book's message to those who need to hear it.

As a former journalist, I cut my writers' teeth on article writing, and I still remember one of my own writing mentors telling me that, in most cases, articles in magazines (particularly those with large circulations, which today certainly includes Crosswalk) will most likely reach more readers than a book. Having moved from writing articles to authoring books, I sometimes get too busy with book-length manuscripts to do articles and/or short stories, and yet marketing books via this format is certainly effective.

May I encourage you to consider incorporating this marketing tool with your own books? And if you haven't yet come to the point of tackling book-length manuscripts, maybe you can devote some time now to developing those contacts and honing that aspect of writing for future reference. It's never too soon to start laying the groundwork of two birds with one stone....