Many first-time authors think they only need to write a book, upload it to Amazon, and the readers will come flocking. Others think they can write the book, mail it to an agent, and everything after that is gravy.
That is not the case.
The reality is that the journey of writing and publishing a book is long and arduous. In my experience, it takes most authors five to 15 years to find success. Typically, it is around 10 years before they see any success, and sometimes it takes much longer.
Success in the publishing industry comes down to having patience and endurance. I know that is not what you want to hear, but that is how it works.
To help us learn how to persist in the writing journey and how to develop patience and endurance, I spoke with Chase Replogle. He is a bivocational pastor and the founder of Bent Oak Church. He also hosts the weekly Pastor Writer podcast, where he interviews pastors and authors about writing, reading, and the Christian life.
What is your podcast about?
Thomas: I am a big fan of your podcast. I love what you are doing. It’s a good example of how to do a podcast well because you have a really narrow focus. It is not just a podcast about writing. It is a podcast about pastors writing. If you are a pastor who wants to write, this is exactly the podcast for you.
At the same time, you have listeners who are not pastors. I have listened to a few episodes myself, even though I do not pastor anyone. I love that model. It is very reproducible and something every author should think about.
Chase: It was also a great way to start because it was so niche. It was really easy to identify who the listener was. I have been doing the show for about three years now, and it has expanded. I am able to have broader conversations and cover broader topics.
It is funny, though. People will email me and almost feel guilty, saying, “I listen to the podcast even though I am not really a pastor writer.” You listen to all sorts of things, and it was a great way to get started. It has been a lot of fun building an audience around the show.
Thomas: Be faithful in little things, and then you are given greater things. It is not a revolutionary marketing tactic, but it is one we often ignore.
How did you start writing?
Chase: I started off as a pastor. Honestly, my writing flowed out of my pastoral work. I always thought of myself as a speaker first.
When I was in eighth grade, I turned in a journalism assignment. We had a digital media class, which was really ahead of its time, and I was assigned to cover a funeral. The sitting governor in our state had died in a tragic plane crash, and I was picked to write the article.
I turned it in and got the paper back with “Too maudlin” written at the top. I had no idea what that word meant, so the teacher told me to look it up in the dictionary. I always joke that I hope she had a nicer dictionary than mine, because the definition I found felt like “stupidly sentimental.”
That did not crush me, but I came to the conclusion, “I must not be a writer. This is not my thing.” So, I went down the path of speaking.
As I was preaching week in and week out, most Sundays in the pulpit, I started caring more about the words I was using and the phrases I chose. Reading began to impact me in more significant ways. As words became more important to me, I started manuscripting my sermons.
While many people work toward fewer notes for speaking, I went the opposite direction. I started writing 3,000 to 4,000-word sermons every week. That built an interest in writing and eventually allowed me to think, “Maybe I could do this in articles and books.” That was the beginning of my path toward writing.
How similar are preaching and podcasting?
Thomas: That also leads into podcasting. I have found that my solo podcast episodes end up being delivered almost like sermons. I often have 3,000 or 4,000 words of notes going into an episode.
I do not read straight from the notes, but I hash it out ahead of time. It feels like I am presenting a sermon on book marketing. I do not know if that is common, but it feels like a similar communication technique. Do you experience that as well?
Chase: I do. In the pulpit, sometimes out of insecurity, I would say something and not feel confident I had said it correctly or that the audience had received it. So, I would try saying it again, or I would circle back to it.
I realized I was spinning my wheels because I did not trust the words I was using. Writing became a way to make sure I was saying what I wanted to say and then trusting that the audience had received it.
From there, it grew into enjoying the writing process and the editing process. Editing is just as much a part of it as the writing itself.
Are you a writer who speaks or a speaker who writes?
Thomas: In publishing, we talk a lot about whether you are indie or traditional, or whether you are a pantser or an outliner. Another helpful distinction is between writers who speak and speakers who write.
Both are legitimate approaches. I would say we are speakers who write. We came to writing through speaking and had to learn how to write. For other people, it works the opposite way. They learn writing first, and speaking grows out of that.
Chase: I agree. I see things in my writing that work well in speaking but not as well on the page. Repetition or alliteration can be powerful when spoken, but in print it can feel like too much.
It is okay if those things show up in a first draft. You learn to recognize them and edit them out. I probably do write from my speaking background.
Thomas: I really learned the difference when I started turning episodes of my other podcast, Novel Marketing, into blog posts. What works for audio does not always work for text.
When did you start thinking about writing a book?
Chase: That question is one a lot of people struggle with, and I did too. I did not know if I could do it.
After seminary, I spent some time writing what I thought was a book. Really, it was an exercise in finding my voice. It clarified my thinking, but it was not publishable. I did not yet know who I was as a writer, so I set it aside.
Thomas: That experience is almost universal. Most people’s first book is not a masterpiece. Your first book is therapy. It is how you learn to write a book.
Chase: Exactly. It was me working through my influences. It was a strange mashup of things I had read and liked, but it was not genuine yet. It was not really me.
Later, I preached a sermon series through the Book of Judges, and something about the Samson stories stood out to me. In preaching, you sometimes feel like you only get 75% of the way there.
With Samson in particular, I felt like there was more to the passage than I could flesh out in a Sunday sermon. I wanted to explore that, so I started taking notes and imagining what it might look like as a book.
I knew enough to understand the traditional publishing process. You put together a proposal, sell the concept to an agent and publisher, and then write the book. I took a somewhat unconventional approach and wrote the book first.
I needed to prove to myself that I could do it. I wanted less pressure from other people’s expectations. A lot of that first draft never made it into the final manuscript. I cut things and rewrote others, but I was learning as I went.
I worked with a writing coach, Mick Silva, who is now at Zondervan. I hired him on the side for accountability and guidance. I finished the manuscript, and if nothing else, I proved to myself that I was capable of writing a full-length book.
What happens after you finish your first manuscript?
Chase: In my mind, I had a two-year timeline. I thought it would take me a year to write the book and a year to find an agent, land a contract, and publish it. I had no idea how long the process from contract to release actually takes.
I did find an agent fairly quickly, which I was grateful for. She was very honest with me. She said, “I think we need to spend a year continuing to grow your audience through the Pastor Writer podcast, and we need to spend time really honing the book proposal.”
What I had was not strong enough yet. She was responding mostly to the writing itself. That was hard to hear, but we spent a full year growing the audience and refining the proposal.
Why does platform matter so much to publishers?
Thomas: It is amazing how important platform really is. Part of the reason platform matters, is that many publishing companies are not run by Christians. They are run by secular organizations where the Christian division is just an imprint.
Even the Christian companies owned by Christians are rarely run by evangelical Christians with conservative orthodoxy. Some are, but many are not. A lot of the staff do not attend church or believe in hell. They are not the kind of Christians who make up the typical readership of Christian books.
There is a very specific kind of person who reads Christian books and visits Christian bookstores, and they tend to be theologically conservative. Often, the people running Christian publishing companies are not. Because of that, they do not understand the reader. They do not know what will resonate.
What they need from the author is proof. They need you to demonstrate that you resonate with an audience they do not fully understand. You do that by showing a large email list, a strong podcast following, or thousands of people who come to hear you speak. They cannot reliably predict what will hit because they do not fundamentally understand the market they are publishing for.
How did you build your platform while refining your proposal?
Chase: To that point, I spent a big part of that year placing articles. That was relatively new to me and a skill I had to learn. I was networking with editors and trying to place articles as part of building the platform and proving myself within the community. I was also building bylines.
The biggest hurdle that year was understanding concept. Everyone kept talking to me about concept, and I thought I understood it. I would say, “Here is the concept, and here is who will read it.” But it was not clear enough.
I did not understand how important concept was for a new writer. When I looked at the books I was reading, I would think about someone like Tim Keller. In some ways, Tim Keller does not need a concept because he is the concept. He can write a book on prayer, and people will read it because they want to hear what he has to say.
If Chase Replogle writes a book on prayer, that means nothing to anyone. I am not a concept. That means the book itself has to be the concept. There has to be something compelling enough about the idea to make someone pick it up, because no one is buying it for my name as a first-time author.
It took me a long time to understand how important that was. Part of that was because I love books like Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis or the writing of Eugene Peterson. But the truth is, I cannot write Mere Christianity. I do not have that name recognition. Figuring out how to create a strong concept for a first book as a new author was a major hurdle, and it took time to process.
What happens to many “first books”?
Thomas: Even C.S. Lewis could not write Mere Christianity as his first book. His first book was not very good and probably should not have been published. Nobody reads Pilgrim’s Regress. Even Lewis fans will say, “It is not his best work.”
Chase: Eugene Peterson’s first book was Like Dew Your Youth. It was written for parents raising teenagers to help instill faith. It is out of print and hard to find. It is the same story. That was his first book, so it takes some pressure off your first as well.
Thomas: That is true, although it is harder now. If your first book is not successful, getting a second chance can be difficult.
In the past, so few people wrote books because writing on a typewriter was so difficult that finishing a manuscript alone gave you an advantage. Now the physical act of writing is much easier, which makes the later steps harder.
It takes a few books to become a big-name author. When we say, “big name,” think of Stephen King. His name is bigger than the title on the cover because people are buying a Stephen King book. You have to earn that.
For most authors, especially early on, the title should carry the strongest font weight. It should be the biggest, boldest element on the cover because that is what grabs attention. That is exactly what you are describing.
It is hard to hear that you are not Stephen King or a celebrity pastor. You can get there, but you have to be faithful in the small things. You have to be faithful with smaller books first.
How did you develop the disciple and endurance to keep writing when it was hard?
Chase: For me, there was always a next-step goal. If your only goal is to publish a book, it takes so long to get there that it can be discouraging. You need smaller goals leading up to it.
Finishing a manuscript, finding an agent and learning how to turn a manuscript into a strong concept and proposal were all huge achievements.
These hurdles are bigger than you think. You have to resist thinking about the finished book, the speaking tour, the sales, the curriculum, and the podcast interviews. That is where your mind wants to go.
Instead, you have to focus on the next goal, and do it as well as you possibly can, instead of seeing it as something you have to get past to reach the thing you really want.
How does real-life ministry effect the writing?
Thomas: One advantage of developing a platform is that it allows you to minister to people right away. A mistake I see is authors saying, “I need to write a book so I can minister.”
No. The book comes out of the ministry you are already doing. You are a pastor with a podcast. Every week, you get the opportunity to bless people with your words. The book flows out of that work.
Start helping people now. Be faithful where you are. Bloom where you are planted because you never know what unexpected things might happen.
What happens when publishers say no?
Chase: We refined the proposal and started sending it out. We got good feedback. Editors loved the writing and felt good about the concept, but they had concerns about the platform size.
At the time, the podcast was getting around 1,000 downloads a week. I had about 1,500 people on my email list. We were talking with medium to large Christian publishers, and they could see the trajectory, but they all said no.
Every “no” came with an asterisk. They said, “Come back in another year and let’s see where the platform numbers are.” To put it in perspective, I had written a manuscript, found an agent, spent a year refining the proposal and platform, and now I was being told to wait another year.
So, I did. I spent another year writing articles, growing the podcast, and intentionally building the email list. After that year, I finally received two offers, one from Zondervan, and we signed a contract.
Then came another unexpected turn. They asked me to take the Samson book and condense it into one or two chapters and then apply that approach to five men of the Bible. They reworked the concept to appeal to a broader male audience.
It was essentially a rewrite. Even forcing the existing manuscript into two chapters required rewriting them completely. Two years after thinking I would get a contract, I signed one and then faced another full year of writing a new manuscript.
How did you respond to a complete rewrite?
Thomas: That is a major shift. You are not throwing everything away, but you are setting a lot of it aside and effectively writing a third book.
Chase: I actually got excited. First, the Zondervan opportunity felt like a huge blessing. They were excited about it, and that mattered.
Second, I knew I was a better writer. I had spent two years writing articles, interviewing people about writing, and building the podcast. Turning away from that earlier work was hard, but I knew I could do something better. I knew my voice better.
I jumped into the manuscript with intensity. I had a plan to meet the deadline. This was during COVID. I got about two-thirds of the way through the manuscript when my agent texted me and asked if she could call.
She told me very plainly that Zondervan had decided to terminate the contract due to COVID and shifting priorities. I was two-thirds of the way through a new manuscript and suddenly had no contract.
It was a lot to process. But I knew immediately that I had to keep writing. I had momentum. I had the idea. I needed to finish the manuscript, even without a contract in place.
What did it feel like when the contract was terminated?
Thomas: What did that feel like, getting the news that everything you had done had come to nothing?
Chase: It was hard. I am a Christian, and from the beginning I felt like this was a calling. In everything I have done, I have tried to be faithful to what God has called me to do. I am not trying to be a famous celebrity or make a bunch of cash. This is part of who I am as a minister.
I tried to recognize there was still some good in it. Zondervan invested a lot of time in the concept and helped me figure out how to tackle it for a bigger audience. I still had that. They had freed me up to work on the project, and I was making good headway. I felt like it was a good idea, the platform was growing, and I believed we could land something else.
Still, it was disorienting. I took a few days off from writing, did something totally different, and tried not to think about it.
But at some point, the next step was still the next step. I had to ask, “What is the goal now? What is the work in front of me right now?” That is all you can do in this process, focus on the work in front of you. My next goal was to finish. We could deal with the lingering question of which publisher at a later time. I just needed to finish.
What happens to the advance when a publisher cancels a contract?
Thomas: Did you get to keep your advance? What are the ramifications of a publisher pulling the plug on a book before it is finished?
Chase: It is a complex conversation, which is another reason it is good to have an agent. I was very thankful I was not navigating it on my own.
They allowed me to keep the half of the advance that is normally paid on signing, but I would not receive the other half that would have come when the manuscript was submitted.
It was not an advance that would change my life or allow me to quit my job, but we had planned some things around it. We had made decisions based on when we expected that money to come in, so there was a challenge there. It did have some impact.
But I believed it was not the end of the road. Everyone I talked to, including my agent, kept telling me, “Hang in there. This is just another bump. We are going to place it eventually.”
So, I kept writing. I kept working on it. That was the one thing I knew I could do. I could keep making the book better.
Did you consider going indie after getting the rights back?
Thomas: One way to see it is that you were given money that would allow you to go indie if you wanted to. You got to keep the advance, even though it was only half. You also got the rights back.
Chase: We talked about that. I asked my agent directly, “Is this a sign I should take that path? Is this an opportunity?” That is going to be different for everyone.
From the beginning, we tried to make long-term decisions. I am trying to think about a career in writing, not get hung up on one book or one idea.
We decided to give it more time, finish the book, and pitch to other publishers. We were in the middle of COVID, and everybody was terrified. Zondervan cut the contract because they were cutting contracts. It was not a great time to pitch other publishers.
So, we decided to give it a few months, then start pitching again and see where things were.
How did COVID change what resonates with readers?
Thomas: I were running a publishing company during that time, I would have scrapped a lot of books, at least for fiction. The pandemic, the lockdown, and all the drama around those changed readers.
That means what resonates now is different than what resonated a year ago.
There are a few classics that resonate across generations, but those are one-in-a-million books. People say, “They do not make them like they used to.” The truth is, most of what they used to make did not last because it was not that good. The stuff that survived is what we remember.
Even an author who writes classics, like C.S. Lewis, has books people do not read regularly. My guess is that among everyone listening, maybe one person has read Pilgrim’s Regress in the last year. Maybe none.
In a way, this kind of disruption can be an opportunity. It forces you to reconnect with what people are feeling now. The pains are different.
For fiction, I feel like man-against-society plots resonate more right now. That is one reason 1984 sold so well in 2020, people were looking for a man-against-society story. Of all the Marvel movies, we only get a few like that. Captain America: The Winter Soldier is a great example, and it still feels resonant.
I think something similar is happening in nonfiction. A question I think people are asking is, what does Christianity look like now that we have accepted church is not an essential function? When churches closed during the height of the lockdown, we admitted to ourselves, and to everyone else, that church was not essential. Sunday worship was not essential. We said it was riskier to get the virus than it was to be isolated from the body.
That is something we have to grapple with. What does Christianity look like in a post-admission of nonessentiality?
When churches closed during the height of the lockdown,
Thomas Umstattd, Jr.
we admitted to ourselves, and to everyone else, that church was not essential. Sunday worship was not essential.
We said it was riskier to get the virus than it was to be isolated from the body.
That is something we have to grapple with.
What questions are people asking now that they were not asking before?
Chase: That is a really good thought. Looking back at that first Samson book, it was primarily about identity, written mostly for millennial men. Questions about identity have been culturally significant over the last 10 years, but I do not think in this moment they are as critical as some of the other questions people are asking.
Thomas: I agree completely. As someone who just lived through a terrible winter storm, no food in the grocery store, cannot drive on the roads, no electricity, no water, you know what you are not asking in the middle of that? “I wonder what my identity is. Who am I in Christ?” That is the kind of question you ask when times are good. That is not the question you ask when you are in a trench.
Chase: There have also been a lot of books written on identity since then. I think the topic has been addressed pretty well.
That does not mean every nonfiction book or fiction book needs to be pandemic related. Personally, I am kind of tired of reading about the pandemic, but I do think we are asking different questions right now, and we are dealing with different questions in our Christian communities. Your book has to live in that world.
I do not think I mention the pandemic once in the manuscript I have completed. But I am dealing with nihilism and disillusionment. I am dealing with whether it is possible to get better as a man. Those feel like the questions we are asking now more than, “Who am I?” or “Where does my identity come from?” It is a different set of questions, and we should be speaking into those.
How do you write to the moment without writing about the moment?
Thomas: When I say people have changed because of the pandemic, I am not saying you have to write about the pandemic.
It is the difference between writing a book about Y2K, which becomes dated, and writing a book that speaks to the fears Y2K surfaced. That is what Left Behind did. Left Behind had nothing to do with Y2K, but it resonated in the years leading up to 2000 because people were nervous about the future.
If you are dealing with cancel culture and man-against-society themes, Samson touches that. He was constantly in conflict with society. He did not fit. He was not a good Jew or a good Philistine. He was not a good subject or leader. Yet he was given divine power. He is a fascinating character.
How long did this publishing journey take?
Chase: I am still waiting on another contract. We started pitching again and had some opportunities come up. I have a couple of offers, and one we are very close to signing.
Just to put time perspective on it, it is already late in 2021, and the possible publication date, once I sign, would be March 2022, over a year away.
If you notice the pattern, every hurdle adds another year, then another year. I went back the other day out of curiosity, and I found some of the very first notes I wrote on Samson. From the time I wrote those notes to when the book will come out in March 2022 is just over six years.
The five-year author plan you talk about is more accurate than I would have liked it to be when I first started.
Thomas: When we talk about The 5-Year Plan to Becoming a Career Author, people say, “That is so long.” I tell them, “That is the expedited path.”
Most authors spend five years bashing their head against the wall, then five years making progress, and after 10 years they see a breakthrough.
How is the new version of the book coming?
Chase: I took Samson as one of the five men to focus on. The working title is The Five Masculine Instincts: A Guide to Being a Better Man (affiliate link).
It takes Shakespeare’s seven stages of a man and pulls the five middle ones out, the ages of maturing and growing. It treats each as a masculine instinct men experience, then pairs a biblical character with each instinct.
The book explores how an instinct can lead to destruction, or, by faith, can be matured into something useful and virtuous.
What does it mean to be a Christian man right now?
Chase: The way it fits into this moment is the question, is it possible for men to get better? Culturally, we have told men they are doing things wrong, and we have also seen men rebel against being told they are doing things wrong. It feels like there are two camps: you are either toxic, or you should indulge it.
I am trying to explore a third possibility. Does faith offer a way of maturing, becoming more like Christ through these masculine instincts? Not rejecting them but maturing them into something better through Christ. I think that fits into the broader conversation we are having right now.
How do timeless truths connect with shifting cultural moments?
Thomas: I love the thinking you are doing, because while culture shifts, there are timeless truths. The resonance of those truths changes depending on where we are.
We just came out of a season where identity was the thing. There were many popular books on identity. In a way, you dodged a bullet. Writing the very best identity book at the end of the identity phase would not have set you up well for your career because people have already read that book. They have probably worked through it.
The church also deals with different besetting sins in different eras. Two hundred years ago, a major question was, “Can you be a Christian and a slaveholder?” Can you be a Christian and worship alongside people who own slaves? What do the Bible passages about slavery mean, and how do they apply? Those were huge questions for a long time.
We are not wrestling with those questions in the same way anymore. We have come to answers, and, hopefully, we have settled them. The church has ended slavery more than once in history.
What questions are Christians wrestling with next?
Thomas: What challenges do you see your congregation facing? What are the big questions and the real stumbling blocks? What do you see yourself addressing in a next book?
Chase: These are big and hard questions. I will share what is on my mind right now, but it is always changing. I am constantly reading, having conversations, and trying to figure out what comes next, what I am interested in next, and what questions need to be addressed.
We are still trying to figure out how to pursue racial reconciliation in the nation. There have been great books and good conversations, but I do not think we are done. There is a long way to go.
Technology is another area. We are just scratching the surface of how technology is impacting ministry. As more churches are online, questions about community become more urgent. What does it mean to be part of a church? What is a church? Those questions are being debated in ways they were not before.
We are also moving toward a more post-Christian society. I am seeing people come into church with no biblical knowledge. There used to be assumptions you could make. You cannot assume those things anymore. We will have to think carefully about how the gospel is presented in a post-Christian world.
Another area I am watching is how faith and politics interact, or more broadly, faith and cultural engagement, especially around power. There has been a lot of writing on it, and publishers rushed books in the last year. Some of it felt tied to the moment. I think there is more conversation to have in the months to come.
I live in Springfield, Missouri. I would not say I have faced persecution for my faith, but I do feel the acceptance of Christianity shifting. Something about it feels different, and sometimes suspect, especially in the broader culture. I do not know exactly what that will look like. I do not have a crystal ball. In some parts of the country, that suspicion is stronger than it is where I am. In others, it is less. But the church as a whole will have to navigate a world where faith is not favored and is not assumed.
On top of that, there will always be a place for books that help people practice their faith in the context of their actual lives. Christian writing can become focused on society and culture, and we cannot lose sight of the personal. I am a father. I am a husband. I live in a community with neighbors. Faith is not just an abstract idea. It is lived out there. Books that help believers navigate that personally will remain important.
Why does direct access to people shape better writing?
Thomas: Those are all really interesting topics. One advantage of being a pastor, and if you are not a pastor, one advantage of having a podcast and other ways to interact with potential readers, is that you get exposed to the questions people are asking.
The nice thing about being a pastor is you get those questions whether you want them or not.
Chase: A lot of my writing toward men comes from the young men I have pastored. They are in my life. I also see older men in different stages, and I see the issues they are wrestling with.
A big part of my writing comes from trying to answer those questions in a way I cannot always fully explore in a Sunday sermon.
Thomas: The first viral blog post I ever wrote was titled, “What Is a Christian Man?” It came out of a discipleship relationship. We sat down and brainstormed a list of attributes of a Christian man.
I was a sophomore in college. I did not know much, and yet I ranked on Google for “Christian man” for years. It did not help me find a wife, by the way. Christian women do not search Google for “Christian man.” I was there, ranking number one.
One topic you mentioned briefly was the church and technology. There is one technology I have not heard anyone grappling with that has had huge impacts on the church, microphones and public address systems.
Think about how different church is now with microphones compared to before. Some things that were not questions before became questions once people were amplified. Power becomes more concentrated. Someone can have a church of 10,000 or 100,000. That was not possible before.
It also made the question of the role of women in church a bigger deal because now a woman who might not have been able to project to a large crowd can, with a microphone.
I am not saying microphones are bad. I am talking into a microphone right now. But I would love a conversation about whether microphones have been universally good for the church. What would church look like if we chose not to use microphones? How would it be different? Would it be better or worse? Jesus did not use microphones. Paul did not use microphones. They spoke to large crowds.
I am not saying you should write a book about that, Chase. I am just saying it is a question I wonder about. Has the microphone been good for the church or not?
Where do you get ideas before they become books?
Chase: You are not the only person wondering about that. One way of putting it is, “Are we doing church the right way, or are there other ways?” Are those other ways new inventions, or are they a move back to church as it once was, a restoration movement?
The questions around what the church is, we need more books on those. I need more books on those.
As we have seen prominent, celebrity pastor failures, I think people are also asking, “What is a pastor?” What is the place of power and authority? How should I relate to well-known Christians? Those are real questions.
As a writer, you should also be plugged into the periodicals your audience reads. I read blogs and magazines related to ministry and church because that is where early ideas get fleshed out. You see the conversation in blogs, podcasts, and articles before it becomes a book. Often the people writing those pieces are the ones who will later write the books.
Books tend to lag three, four, or five years behind those conversations because of how long writing and publishing takes.
How do you stay in tune with what readers care about?
Thomas: I totally agree. You have to be listening to the music if you want to be in tune. In writing, that means reading the articles, listening to the podcasts, and knowing who the influential voices are.
That does not mean you have to agree with them. Your bestselling book might disagree with the prominent voices or point out a blind spot.
And even if someone says, “That has already been done,” it needs to keep being done. There are always new generations that need to be reintroduced to passages of Scripture. Different eras emphasize certain passages over others.
I would love to see BibleGateway statistics on the most popular verses, chapters, and books, and which books are being ignored, and what impact that has.
Chase: The opportunity is knowing what questions people are asking and also knowing which parts of Scripture have not been mined for those questions.
If you can say, “We have neglected these passages and stories, and they address the questions everyone is asking right now,” then you have something interesting. You have a concept that is not being said yet.
Where can people follow your journey and your book updates?
Thomas: For people who want to keep up and know what happens next, whether you sign the contract, and when the book comes out, where can they find out more about you?
Chase: It is a rollercoaster, so who knows what will happen. I may be six more years down the road. We will see.
My Pastor Writer podcast is one of the main places I share milestones and updates, usually in monologue episodes. The website is PastorWriter.com. Wherever you listen to podcasts, you can search Pastor Writer and find it.
I also have an insider Facebook group at pastorwriter.com/insider, and it will take you to the Facebook group where you can request to join. It is a great place to ask questions. There is a growing community, including some good writers and some editors. It is a great place if you want the most in-depth writing content. I also have a video in there where I cover this whole timeline and break it down in a Facebook Live.
Thomas: That is a great, cancel-proof way to tell people about your community. If you get kicked off Facebook tomorrow, you can point pastorwriter.com/insider to somewhere else.
What does it look like to build a platform the right way?
Thomas: One final pro tip. One reason I like Chase, and why I keep bringing him back on the podcast, is that even though he still does not have a book out, he is doing a lot of things right along the journey.
Chase is also a webmaster. I think that is how you support yourself as a pastor. Your website is a great example of a website done well. You know what you are doing, and you put a lot of care into it.
Even though you are not seeing the results yet, that does not mean you are doing it wrong. Sometimes people use the wrong method and still get quick results because of serendipity or because somebody famous recommends them.
But I think the way you are going about this, slowly and deliberately building a platform, slowly and deliberately getting to know the people you are writing to, is the right approach. You are learning to love them better, listen to them, and write to the questions they are asking. Many people do it backwards and try to find people asking the questions they already wrote the answers to. That is a totally different mindset.
A lot of people write the book and then try to find readers for the book. But that is not the Christlike way to do it. If you want to be a leader, you have to serve. You start with love for your readers, then you write your book out of that love. Write a book for your readers, rather than trying to find readers for your book.
Chase: It has been fun. It is not just about the book. If the book never got published, I think I would still do the podcast. I think I would still keep blogging. It has become such a part of my life. I enjoy it, and I have gotten to know so many great people through it.
I would not say I am doing platform work because I love building a platform. I do it because I love the podcast and the community around it. At this point, I would have a hard time walking away from it.
Thomas: The podcast is ministry and it is blessing people. You have more people listening to your podcast than you have on a Sunday morning.
Chase: Yep, true by multiples.
Thomas: That is true for just about every podcaster, because there are a lot more pastors than there are podcasts, at least for Christians. Real podcasts. Every church has sermons you can download, but I do not count those.
Your podcast is a very real ministry. That is the way to think about platform. Platform is not something you do for your book. It is something you do for your readers. It is a way of blessing your readers.
Whether the book happens or not, you are still blessing your readers. You are still honoring Christ. I think that is really good.
Connect with Chase Replogle
The Five Masculine Instincts: A Guide to Being a Better Man (affiliate link)