Christine Kohler

Thanks to everyone who downloaded WORDS ALIVE! CHRISTIAN WRITERS SKILLS & PROMPTS on Amazon’s Kindle during the free week Aug. 7-11.

One author, Karen, contacted me and found mistakes in the copy. I apologize. I could give half-a-dozen excuses, but they would be just that—excuses. The buck stops with me, as Teddy Roosevelt said. I felt awful, as if I understood what it meant for the first time to be caught with egg on my face in public. The author was kind enough to mail me editing notes she made while going through my writing book. I made the corrections immediately. Anyone who downloaded WORDS ALIVE! at any time, please e-mail me at ckohler@christinekohlerbooks.com and I will send you a corrected Edition 2.

When I uploaded WORDS ALIVE! Edition 2 was to lower the cost from $7.99 down to $5.99. At the higher cost I made on average $5 a sale, and now I will probably only make about $2 a sale. The reason I did this free promotion was because after 10 years sales had slowed down. So, I decided to let Amazon try to generate more interest.

My goal was to get 50 reviews. I know that’s something out of my control and shouldn’t even be on a goal list. However—ta-da!—exactly 50 people downloaded WORDS ALIVE! during the free week.

In lending library, 184 people read WORDS ALIVE! However, the stats read zero income. A note showed that my book was possibly not enrolled in KDP. But if it isn't, then it shouldn't have been available in the lending library program. I only agreed (checked box) to the lending library because when I signed up for the free week & fluctuating prices, the fine print said I would get a percentage of the lending library fees. As a result, I am totally baffled and not sure how to go in and change anything in the agreement. It's for 90 days, and then I'm supposed to re-visit it. (Can you tell this is my one and only self-published book? The experience does not make me want to ever self-published, except writing books.)

My other goal was to improve my ranking on Amazon. Here’s the best stats it got to:
#5,000+ overall ranking
#13 education & reference
#22 religion & spirituality
#22 teacher resources

A side benefit I hadn’t anticipated was that viewers of my blog doubled the highest readership I’d ever had, a June 2018 article I wrote about “Confession Literature”.

So far I’ve gotten one new review. However, several people contacted me and said they plan to write one. I’m confident that from the 50 downloads, I will get more reviews. But possibly not enough to give WORDS ALIVE! more visibility in promotion. I’ve read where Amazon’s two benchmark numbers are 25 and 50 to give more weighted promotion.

Here is the wonderful review WORDS ALIVE! received from Chris in NM:

Prompts are short ideas or triggers that help a writer get started. But this book does so much more. Each prompt is related to a skill, from poetic concepts, to important writing skills such as character and plot development, to research and interviewing for nonfiction. There's a prompt for each week, which also encourages discipline and regular practice, very important writerly skills! This is a great book for beginners who want to get started but aren't sure how, or intermediate writers who want to expand their repertoire, or people who've taken a break from writing who want a way to get back to it.

Thanks to Chris and Karen and for everyone who has helped me with this project! I feel so blessed to be part of a supportive writing community! Please e-mail if you downloaded a copy of WORDS ALIVE! I would feel so much better knowing you have the up-dated Edition 2.
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by Christine Kohler

WORDS ALIVE! CHRISTIAN WRITERS SKILLS & PROMPTS is free August 7 – 11, 2018, on Amazon’s Kindle. Please download, write a review, and spread the word.

This writing book is ideal for homeschool and Christian school supplemental curriculum. And ideal for adult writers specializing in biblical writing. (Biblical writing is any genre of inspirational writing that is based on the Bible.) It also builds discipline since there are 52 lessons, one for each week of the year.

Click on “Look Inside” and you can see how this curriculum is designed with lessons in poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. In fiction, it teaches all the elements of a story. Each lesson gives a skill, prompt, topic and scripture, and example.

At my core, I am a teacher. My first degree is in secondary education with an English emphasis. (My second degree is in journalism with an English minor.) I have taught at three schools in South Florida and San Antonio, Texas. When I left my copy editor’s job at the San Antonio Express-News, a Hearst daily, I taught writing for the Institute of Children’s Literature (ICL) for nearly a decade. In anticipation of resigning from ICL in 2013, I started this blog, READ LIKE A WRITER, August 21, 2012, to have a platform to continue teaching.

As a former teacher, I wrote WORDS ALIVE! CHRISTIAN WRITERS SKILLS & PROMPTS to fill vacuums in Christian curriculum programs, and because a number of ICL students requested to write biblically-based materials. (I am published by Zondervan, Biblevision, Concordia, plus a multitude of different Christian publications in fiction, nonfiction, poetry in books, magazines, journals, devotionals, and Sunday School leaflets.)

Agents and publishers in both Christian and secular markets said they loved how WORDS ALIVE! CHRISTIAN WRITERS SKILLS & PROMPTS fulfilled a number of purposes—writing craft lessons, skill examples, and prompts. However, no surprise, it is geared toward small niche markets. At a Christian Writers Conference in Mt. Hermon, CA, agents urged me to self-publish my writing book. In February 2007, my girlfriend Marianne Dyson, science author extraordinaire, formatted WORDS ALIVE! for me and posted it on Kindle. (Marianne and I have known each other since high school!)

I love helping writers improve their craft and achieve their dreams of getting published. I’ve worked with many writers behind the scenes, guiding a number of writers toward getting contracts that launched their careers. If you follow me on twitter at @christinekohle1 you know that I promote other people’s book news through retweets. This is the first time in the 11 years that my writing book has been published that I have done a promotion.

I hope you will help me spread the word about WORDS ALIVE! CHRISTIAN WRITERS SKILLS & PROMPTS. My goal is to get 50 reviews and move this up in Amazon’s algorithms for writing books. Up until now I have been lax in promoting this book. By offering it free for this limited time period, it also gives me opportunity to give you a gift to thank you for following and supporting me. Thank you!  Read More