Contact: Neil Eskelin, LifeBridge Books, 704-968-8753

CHARLOTTE, N.C., Jan.15, 2018 /Christian Newswire/ -- After producing and publishing more than 200 Christian books, Neil Eskelin, president of LifeBridge Books, offers his advice to ministers who have a sermon series they want to see published as a book.

Here are the five most common mistakes:

1. Their writing lacks "you" power. Since the goal is to help readers, try to use the word "you" ten times as often as "I."

2. They forget they have a personality. To develop a relationship with the reader, sprinkle your manuscript with personal stories--at least one or two per chapter.

3. They fail to grab the writer's attention. After writing a chapter, pull out the best illustration and move it to the beginning. Start strong.

4. They need to use a thesaurus. If you are writing on faith, vision, or any particular theme, don't use the same word over and over in successive sentences or paragraphs. Find synonyms to get your point across. Also, if you use an unusual word, once or twice in a book is enough.

5. They need to give the reader a break. We see far too many long passages. Readers are easily bored, so keep sentences and paragraphs short. Also, we like to use a subheading on at least every other page.

6. Their title lacks life. The book we produced for author Benny Hinn was originally to be titled, "The Person of the Holy Spirit." We changed it to "Good Morning, Holy Spirit," and it sold several million copies. The new title had imagination and life!

7. They design their own book cover. Get a pro to produce two or three possible covers and tweak the best one until it can compete with any bestseller. Research shows that the cover is 80 percent of the sale.

Says Eskelin, "Pastors need to explore publishing options. Most of the books we produce for pastors are published by LifeBridge Books, which has national distribution, but many our clients self-publish, or want a manuscript to present to other publishers. We prefer taking rough sermon transcripts and creating the first draft. This saves the pastor untold hours of writing and shortens the production time from months to weeks."

For more information about turning sermon series into books, contact Neil Eskelin: 704-968-8753 or neil@neileskelin.com.