Last week, I sent my mailing list a download link for my newest book, Harmonic Prayer. With the sole exception of the "Christmas Card from God" I sent out around Christmas, this has been the most popular download to date.
So far, 682 people have downloaded a copy. (About 14% of my list. More on this in another post.)
I'm getting great feedback, which is why I released a "first draft" version of the book. (It's not exactly a first draft, as I did do some editing, and some sections came from earlier works, which had been edited.)
One of the responses I felt happiest about was this:
I'm happy to give you some feedback on your book however I would first like to say that I almost didn't download a copy due to your opening comments regarding the biblical quotes and "God", I found this off putting and after reading the book feel I would have been disadvantaged for pre-judging the content because of the warning. I decided to read anyway as I believe in at least trying to keep an open mind and am pleased I did so. Could I suggest that you re-think your wording in this warning to something along the lines that it is written from a western perspective and consequently contains many biblical quotations as this is still the predominant western religion.
I make this comment as I am of western (Anglo-Saxon) descent but have a strong aversion to organised religion. I have no issues with the concept of "God" or "The Universe" or any other title attached, and have delved into Buddhism and Taoism even though raised in a relatively strict Anglican household, I didn't find any of the scripture quoted offensive and with the appropriately worded rider, totally acceptable.
As you can tell from Steve's response, I told my list that the book may offend some people, as it contains numerous references to God and various quotes from the Christian Bible.
Frankly, I expected several comments about sloppy sentence structure, or awkwardly-worded phrases. There have been virtually no such comments, although I did get a few that pointed out a few typos I missed in my quick edits.
Actually, a number of folks have mentioned that the book flows very well from topic to topic, and that they found it very easy to read.
I expected a LOT of comments about the various product references that were included in the text, but have only received one so far. Actually, I've seen a couple of sales come in from those references, so maybe I won't edit them out completely, but will merely tone them down.
For the most part, the comments I've received show me that the book is serving the intended purpose, and people are being helped by it. And this tells me I'm on the right track.
And THAT is the primary reason I made it available as a free download for my list subscribers.
As my regular readers know, I've been focusing on the topic of prayer since my Hawai'i trip in February. Not only is it a more common way to refer to the general concepts I write about, but it also serves as an umbrella topic for most of my material.