How do you launch a book with power?
When we neared the launch date for our book, The Shepherd’s Song, we began to become anxious. Pressure built. How could be good stewards of this book that we felt God had place in our hands? What to do? We read, we Googled, we asked our friends but nothing seemed quite right. Then, we remembered.
The basis of the book had been prayer. We had prayed together during the writing of the book. We had prayed for each other and we had enlisted a prayer team to pray. The answer was simple. We would launch the book with prayer. But how?
Forty days out from the release of the book we began a forty day prayer launch. We prayed first for God to give us 40 people who would pray for 40 days. We put the request out on social media and we had 164 people sign up to pray with us. God blessed us abundantly.
This is how we set it up:
We created a list on Mail Chimp with a sign-up form that we posted on Twitter and Facebook and sent out to our newsletter list. t was a simple request for anyone who wanted to join the prayer launch for the book.
We sent a one-sentence email prayer by Mail Chimp to the 164 people each morning for 40 days. Like these short prayers:
Put this book in the right hands at the right times.
Prepare the hearts of the people in Germany for this book.
Bless the marketing team as they plan for this book.
Bless the readers to accept God as their Shepherd.
For 40 days we all prayed. Then the book went out!
So, how do you evaluate the success of a prayer launch? You can’t measure the results in numbers. But here are some things that happened afterwards.
During an event at a church in South Carolina a woman we did not know came up and introduced herself. She said, “I prayed for this book.” A few tears were shed!
A woman in North Carolina was one of our first reviewers on Amazon. Her life had been changed by the book as she prayed for others to be moved by God’s Word.
Several of the prayer partners wrote to tell how the daily prayers had been used by God in their own lives on a particular day.
Best of all we were reminded daily that the book was God’s and not ours. That He would use His ways to share His words. That we had no need to be anxious.
What do think about a prayer launch? Some of you may have been part of this one. We would love to hear about it from your perspective.
Betsy Duffey and Laurie Myers
WordServe Water Cooler 
What a wonderful idea! I hope and pray I will have both one day–a book and a prayer launch!
Love this post, and idea. A prayer launch. What an amazing and thought-filled way to release a book, propelled by God’s power, not by ours.