One series rotates its Kindle pricing every few days, so the lowest prices might already be gone by the time you read this. Worth going through the list now rather than saving it for later.

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The Signs in Heaven Series — Ender E. Law

Four of the five paperbacks in Ender Law’s Bible prophecy series just dropped from $12.25 to $9.75. The fifth, The Signs of Jonah, is stuck at $12.25 for now. Not a pricing decision. A formatting glitch on the file that Ender’s still fighting with.

Starting tomorrow, all five ebooks rotate through a two-week promotion, and some will be 99 cents. If you enjoy prophecy, this is the cheapest the series has ever been.

Shop The Signs in Heaven Series →

Parenting Paths Devotional — Bethany Heyne

Bethany dropped her 90-day devotional to $2.99 on Kindle. That’s the floor It’s also in Kindle Unlimited, so KU members read it free.

Grab Parenting Paths Devotional →

Nuns with Guns — Jan Johnson

Yes, that’s really the title. Jan’s Nuns with Guns is $2.49 on Smashwords right now. If you’ve never read her, this is about as cheap a way in as you’ll find.

Get Nuns with Guns on Smashwords →

Faith With Work Boots On — Maury D. Wood II

Maury’s Faith With Work Boots On: A 7-Week Journey Through the Book of James is down to $12.99.

Pick up Faith With Work Boots On →

Anxiety...and How to Conquer It / Grace in the Ashes — Dr. Mike & Susan

Dr. Mike and Susan cut 22% off two new titles, Anxiety...and How to Conquer It and Grace in the Ashes: The Soul’s Journey Through Grief, but only on the digital copies through their own site. Want the paperback instead? Grab it on Amazon!

Grab Digital Version - Anxiety

Grab Digital Version - Grace in the Ashes

Shop the paperback editions → Anxiety and How to Overcome It

Shop the paperback editions → Grace in the Ashes

Once the holiday ends, most of these go back up. If any of these five interest you, grab it before the weekend ends!!

Many Blessings!

— Thomas M. Hamilton

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You know that feeling when someone asks how you’re doing, and you say “busy,” and what you actually mean is “I haven’t stopped moving long enough to find out if I’m okay”?

That’s the opening question of a new book I want to put in front of you today, a book called Valuable by Design, written by , an author I’ve had the privilege of working with directly on this launch.

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Performance-based identity

Mahoney spent two decades chasing an answer that performance could never give him. By his early twenties, he had enough wins stacked up to look impressive from the outside, and enough emptiness on the inside to know none of it had actually answered the question underneath all his striving.

That question is the one a lot of us keep to ourselves:

If I stop proving myself, will I still matter?

Mahoney names this pattern Performance-Based Identity: the habit of looking to achievement, perfectionism, people-pleasing, usefulness, or approval to tell us what we’re worth.

If any of that sounds familiar, you’re the reader this book is for.

A train platform in Portland

Mahoney’s turning point didn’t happen in a church service or a counselor’s office. It was on a train platform in Portland, in an ordinary moment, when the striving simply ran out. No more performance left to give.

Valuable by Design blends that kind of memoir with biblical truth and practical insight, so you’re not just reading someone’s testimony. You’re holding a framework up against your own life and asking where this pattern is operating in you.

What this means for you

This book will help you:

• Spot the hidden rules that keep your worth on trial

• Understand why proving yourself once felt necessary

• Tell the difference between healthy excellence and fear driven performance

• Interrupt shame, comparison, and approval seeking before they run the show

• Live from the worth God already gave you instead of the verdict the world keeps demanding

It’s for the achiever who can’t rest, the helper who can’t say no, and the believer who knows the truth about grace but still hasn’t let it reach the part of them that’s still performing.

Pre-order for 99 cents, get the Pacing Meter free

Valuable by Design is available now for Kindle pre-order at 99 cents, releasing September 19, 2026. That price won’t last, and pre-orders are more important than people realize. They’re one of the biggest signals Amazon uses to decide whether a book gets pushed through the algorithm on launch day. Every pre-order is a vote that says this book deserves to be seen.

So here’s what I’m offering to make that easy.

[Pre-order Valuable by Design →]

Once you’ve placed your order, send me a screenshot of the confirmation, and I’ll send you a free copy of The Pacing Meter, the tool I built for writers in the VIP Vault.

Paste in a page of your own writing, and it maps your sentence rhythm bar by bar, so you can see exactly where your pacing goes flat, where you’re leaning on crutch words, and where your sentences have started to sound the same. It runs entirely on your own device. Nothing you paste gets uploaded or stored anywhere.

Ninety-nine cents. A screenshot. A book that might name something in you that’s been waiting to be named. Plus a free tool for your own writing on top of it.

That’s the trade. Let’s make it.

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Despite reports of the demise of publishing in general, and Christian publishing in particular, book making is a $100 billion per year global industry. So there is still a huge demand for books. Religious books make up $13.9 billion of that, with the majority of those being Christian.

As a reader or author, you probably have a strong preference as to format. Maybe you love hardcovers, or you prefer paperbacks. Or perhaps you are a Kindle addict and love reading books on your phone or a dedicated reading device. Maybe you think, “the future is digital” or “nothing beats a physical book.”

The statistics do not lie. In the USA Trade 37% of all revenue comes from hardbacks, 37% from paperbacks, 7% from ebooks and 7% from audiobooks. The mathematicians among you will notice that 12% is missing from this total, we can only surmise courses may well be a large part of that gap.

When it comes to religious books the picture is very different. Hardcovers accounted for more than 62% of sales, paperbacks 17%, and digital was 11% in total.

Therefore, if you are publishing your own books, it is crucial that you release all three formats, or you will miss out on some customers. You may even find that some of your keenest readers will buy two or more different formats of your book!

But here’s a challenge for all of us. How do we ensure Christians discover good books that will help them at the moment that they need them most. With so many books out there having the support of large commercial organizations, what hope do indie authors have of getting their books in front of potential readers?

We sometimes feel powerless to make a difference. But you would be surprised how much impact a growing community like ours can make in helping algorithms know which books to show which people.

That is what Christian Book Finder is about. How can you help us help all our authors and potential readers?

1. There is a power in working together. As our virtual bookstore front grows then all participating authors will benefit from the increased attention. If you haven’t already, please submit your book for free or ask an author you know to do so.

   Submit Your Book

2. Read our books. Stating the obvious, find some books you think you might like here and read them! If you buy a book through one of our links Amazon gives us a small referral fee to help keep this site running.

   Browse our Latest Books

   Browse our Top Books

   Browse by Type of Book

3. Restack our books. If you like the look of a book, even if you don’t decide to read it yet, please hit “restack with note” on the book page with a comment on what you like the look of. For example, “this Christian novel looks gripping, maybe I will read it this summer.”

   While you are reading a good Christian book please share quotes you like as notes on your profile, this could be as a restack from one of our book pages. Show your readers the highlights of one of our books. And if you notice a good quote shared by someone else hit restack so it spreads more widely.

4. Review our books. It only takes a small steady stream of reviews posted to Amazon to tell them that a book is worth sending to other potential readers. The single best thing you can do for an author and other Christian readers is to review every book you read on Amazon, on Goodreads, and also on Substack. If you write a review please place a link to it in the comments section on the book’s page.

5. Recommend our books. Word of mouth still makes a huge difference. Imagine if everyone who read one of our books and liked it told their friends and family about it, or suggested their favorite blogger or podcast host feature it.

6. Buy our books as gifts for others. If a book has had a big impact on you, why not buy another copy to give to a friend or family member?

Those of us who are authors long for other people to review our books. This is to understand what people think about our work, but also because we know it is the single best way other readers may find our books. We also rejoice when others restack a quote from our books.

But are we all doing these things enough for others? If you are an author now, or hope that one day you might be one, please review unto others as you would have them review unto you.

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If you really love Christian books and would like to get ahold of them before they are released, join our book launch team,

Help launch books

Hello friends!

I would like to extend to you an invitation to a live webinar, this Saturday, August 29th. We will be discussing Christian Book Finder’s development in a new web tool and you get a sneak peek!!!

During this live webinar, I’ll show you how to use the Demand Lab to:

• Research demand for your book idea

• Analyze the competition

• Discover stronger angles for your book

• Make smarter decisions before you spend months writing

This will be a soft launch and a basic explanation on what the tool is capable of performing with Amazon marketplace data. VIPs get the tool for free. Consider upgrading to Christian Book Finder so you receive the full benefits.

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How do I join? Simple. RSVP to this link below:

Webinar Link – RSVP

If you want to attend, make sure you RSVP to the link above.

No complicated registration forms. All you have to do is RSVP and show up 🚀

We hope to see you there!

It’s a Tuesday morning, the coffee is hot, the air is fresh, and you go to check your KDP dashboard. You worked hard on your book. You’re excited to see who bought it, and you want to know if your labor paid off. But scroll down to the royalty line and you see Amazon taking a cut — thirty percent off the top. No negotiations.

Many authors have just accepted this as the cost of being discoverable. But what if I told you, that isn’t true anymore?

Read on.

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The trend is already here

According to Written Word Media, thirty percent of working authors are already selling books directly to readers, avoiding Amazon entirely. And, get this, another thirty percent say they plan to start this year. YOU NEED TO BE PART OF THAT THIRTY PERCENT.

In addition, the authors making over ten thousand a month sell direct already.

Think about that. Top earners in the industry decided Amazon’s cut just wasn’t worth it anymore, and it paid off for them. The reasoning behind it is simple. They wrote an excellent book and Amazon takes a good chunk of their sales. Doesn’t matter how well written it was, or how loyal their readers are — Amazon gets a piece of the pie.

But when you do direct sales, having your own ISBN number, and distributing anywhere you want, you avoid the 30% tax. You set the price. You keep what’s left after printing and shipping. Nobody stands between you and the reader who already trusts you enough to be on your list.

So why hasn’t everyone done this already? Because the old version of “selling direct” meant building a Shopify store, learning inventory management, and hoping you could drive your own traffic to a website nobody’s heard of. That’s an entire business to run on top of writing books.

That version is dead now. DEAD. Oh, and the marketing creators still shouting about Shopify? You want to know why they are still beating that dead horse? It’s because Shopify PAYS to mention them in their YouTube videos, newsletters, and podcasts. Building a Shopify store in 2026 is literally the worst advice ever, and I’ll explain why.

Shopify only solves a problem you don’t have.

Shopify charges thirty nine dollars a month, plus transaction fees, for a storefront. That.Is.Ridiculous. That price makes sense if you’re starting from zero — with no audience, no traffic, and nothing but a product and a dream. Shopify’s whole pitch is: we’ll make you look legitimate and give you an app ecosystem to bolt on. Okay. That’s nice. But you’re still starting from zero and you still need to drive traffic to the website.

But here on Substack? You’ve already got a newsletter. You’ve got readers who open your emails and click your links because they know your voice. Shopify doesn’t send you a single one of those readers. It’s just a fancy online cash register — an expensive one at that — and they want thirty nine buckaroos every month just so you can “hope” to sell something.

You don’t have to do that here. Substack is basically a distribution engine that happens to also let you sell things. It pushes your writing through Notes, recommendations from other writers, and through its own discovery feed. People find you without you spending a dollar on ads. And connecting a custom domain costs a one-time fee of fifty dollars, plus whatever you pay a registrar for the domain itself. After that, there are no monthly fees. Nada. Zip Nothing ever billed again, except your custom domain — which is pretty cheap and affordable in most cases. I pay $12 a year for my custom domain:

👉 www.christianbookfinder.com

So how do you make Substack your online-direct sales- bookstore? I’ll show you!

Step one: set up your Substack storefront

Start with a Substack publication. If you already have one running, you can build this directly inside it — you don’t need to start over.

Go into your settings and connect a custom domain. See the “related article” above if you need steps on how to do this.

This is a fifty-dollar, one-time step. Once it’s live, your publication has its own web address instead of living at yourname.substack.com, which matters for two reasons: it looks like a real bookstore to a new visitor, and it starts showing up in Google search results under your own name instead of Substack’s.

Your Notes feed and recommendation network stay fully intact after you connect a domain. You don’t lose Substack’s built-in discovery by going custom. You just add a layer of search traffic and branding on top of it.

Step two: get your own ISBN

This is important and a lot of authors miss this, so pay attention here. If you let Amazon assign you a free ISBN through KDP, that ISBN is locked to Amazon. You cannot use it to sell through print-on-demand, a bookstore, or anywhere else. That’s separate from KDP Select, which is the ebook exclusivity program — this is about the print ISBN itself.

The fix is straightforward. Get your own ISBN, either through your publishing imprint or purchased directly, before you set up your direct sales edition. That one decision is the difference between a book that can only ever live on Amazon and a book that can be sold anywhere you want, forever.

And, you can still publish to Amazon with your own ISBN.

Step three: connect print-on-demand fulfillment

This is where authors usually get stuck. Selling direct is one thing. Shipping a physical book to a stranger in Ohio is another thing entirely. Nobody wants to run a mailroom out of their house.

This is where a print-on-demand partner comes in, and it’s worth understanding exactly how it works, because it removes the one real obstacle standing between you and a functioning bookstore.

Nothing gets printed until a reader actually clicks buy. Here’s exactly how to get a title live on Bookvault, one of the platforms built for this.

How to upload your book to Bookvault

1. Create your account. Head to bookvault.app and click Sign-Up/Login. This gets you into your dashboard, where every title you publish will live.

1. Start a new title. From your dashboard, add a new book. You’ll be asked for the basics — title, author name, trim size, and binding type. Stick to paperback for U.S. direct sales, since that’s the format that prints domestically instead of routing through UK production.

2. Upload your interior file. This is your fully formatted manuscript, exported as a print-ready PDF. Bookvault checks it against your chosen trim size and page count automatically and will flag any formatting issues before you move forward.

3. Upload your cover file. Your cover needs to be sized to the exact spine width for your page count. Bookvault’s spine width calculator on their site can generate this for you if your designer hasn’t already built it to spec.

4. Order a proof copy. Before your book goes live for sale, order one printed proof for yourself. This catches anything a screen won’t show you — color shifts, margin issues, paper feel.

5. Connect your sell channel and go live. Once your proof is approved, Bookvault automatically generates a product page for your title through Bookvault Shop, their own hosted storefront. That page comes with its own shareable link. Copy that link and drop it straight into your Substack post as a hyperlink or button, wherever you want readers to buy. The moment it's live, your title is ready to sell.

When a reader buys, the order routes to Bookvault automatically. They print it, they package it, they ship it straight to the reader’s door. You never touch a copy. You never hold inventory. You never guess how many books to order and hope you don’t get stuck with a box of unsold copies in your closet.

For authors shipping within the United States, standard paperbacks print through a domestic print partner, which keeps shipping times and costs reasonable. The one exception is jacketed hardcovers — those still route through UK printing, which means a longer wait and a higher price tag for U.S. customers. Stick to paperbacks for your direct sales catalog and this isn’t an issue at all.

On pricing, there’s no flat percentage taken off the top. You set your own retail price. Your fulfillment partner charges you a print-and-ship cost based on page count and format. Whatever’s left over is yours. Getting a title live has a one-time setup cost of around twenty dollars per book. If you’re publishing a high volume of titles, paid monthly plans lower your per-book costs, but for most authors starting out, the free plan with the per-title setup fee is plenty.

Compare that to what a traditional retailer takes. Selling through a bookstore or wide retail channel usually means giving up thirty-five to fifty-five percent of the cover price before you see a dime. Direct sales through your own storefront is the highest-margin path there is, because nobody’s taking a cut just for standing between you and the reader.

Step four: embed the checkout link

Once your book is uploaded and connected, you’ll get a checkout link. Drop that link directly into your Substack posts — in a launch announcement, in your welcome post for new subscribers, anywhere a reader might be ready to buy.

A reader clicks it, pays, and the order fires off to fulfillment automatically.

What this actually looks like, start to finish

Strip away the jargon and the whole system is four steps. Start a Substack publication if you don’t already have one going. Connect a custom domain for that one-time fifty-dollar fee, which keeps your Notes feed, your recommendations, and your Google search traffic all working together instead of picking one or the other. Upload your book’s file and cover to your print-on-demand partner, and get your own ISBN if you haven’t already. Then embed your checkout link right into your posts, so a reader can go from reading your newsletter to holding a physical book in under a week, without you touching a single step in between.

That’s it. No warehouse or Shopify bill eating into your margin every month whether you sell anything or not. No Amazon standing between you and the reader who already decided they trust you enough to open your email.

Amazon still has its place — it dominates the market, and plenty of readers will still find you there first. But it doesn’t have to be where the sale actually happens. The thirty percent of authors already making real money outside of it figured that out first. The rest of us are just catching up.

Be the author that catches up.

— Thomas

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And I want you on it.

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What Does ARC Mean?

ARC stands for Advance Reader Copy. It’s simple: you get a book before it releases, you read it, and you tell people what you thought — usually with a short review on Amazon once it’s live. That’s it.

CBF covers fiction, nonfiction, devotionals, memoirs — the full range. Whatever you actually enjoy reading is on the table.

What You Actually Get Out of This

This isn’t just “do me a favor.” Here’s what being on the team means for you:

• You read new Christian books before they’re available to the public — fiction, nonfiction, devotionals, memoirs, whatever CBF is featuring next. Every time. Not sometimes.

• You pick what you read. When a new ARC opportunity drops in the group, you choose whether it’s for you. No pressure to say yes to every book, and no assigned reading. If a title doesn’t interest you, skip it — the next one might.

• You get insider sneak peeks — covers before reveal day, story details before anyone else hears them, and a look behind the curtain at what’s coming next from CBF authors.

• You get limited access to our VIP shared drive — behind-the-scenes files, author materials, and extras we don’t put out publicly.

• Your opinion actually shapes something. Early reader feedback helps authors and helps me decide who we spotlight next. You’re not just reading — you’re part of the process.

• You’re first in line, every time, for every future book. Once you’re in, you’re in. No re-applying, no waiting for an invite each launch.

What I’m Asking in Return

Just one thing: when you finish a book, leave an honest review. Doesn’t have to be long. A few real sentences beats a rushed five stars every time. If you loved it, say so. If there was something you didn’t like, say that too. Honesty matters here.

Where This Happens

I’m running the team through a private group chat on the Signal app. That’s where I’ll post new ARC opportunities, drop sneak peeks, and share the behind-the-scenes stuff that doesn’t make it into the newsletter.

There’s no sign-ups or account to create. You just simply download the app, enter your name, and wait for my approval to let you in!

Just send me a message here on Substack, and I’ll personally add you to the Signal group.

This Is Just the Beginning

If this sounds like you, I’d love to have you. Reply with your name. I’ll see you in the group chat.

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