The Top Ten Series

A Report on the Readership

The TOP TEN EVENTS IN BIBLICAL HISTORY series is now complete, and the results are in. Before I show you those results, let me tell you how this whole thing came to life.

Any writer will tell you that writing is hard work, especially when research and continuity matter. Maybe it’s not the task itself, but unless you’re the Apostle Paul or John Grisham, the discipline of sitting at a keyboard from early morning until late at night takes a toll.

Over the years, I’ve spent more hours with my friend the chiropractor than I care to admit. It’s that stubborn decision to keep writing at midnight, when your back is begging you to go to bed at 10:30, that eventually shows up in your neck, shoulders, or somewhere even less dignified.

Then there’s the moment when you wake up in the middle of the night with an idea that refuses to let you sleep. You tiptoe back to your office to get it down on paper before it disappears, hoping not to wake anyone. There are few words more damning from a spouse than, “What time did you come back to bed last night?”

Busted again.

If memory serves, I’ve published eight books. I say “if memory serves” because most of them sold so few copies that their existence has faded slightly from my mind. I’ve often compared myself to a friend who once ran for mayor of our small town. The local experts said there were 10,452 possible votes. My friend, a hometown boy who went off to the University of Texas, finished law school, and came back to practice law, received 132 votes. About 50 of those were questionable.

The last book signing I did followed Hillary Clinton. Same bookstore, northeast Arkansas. She sold over 500 books and signed her name on a wooden chair, a tradition at that store.

The next month, I showed up to sign that same chair and sell my book. Thank God for mommas. My dear mother brought her sister, a third cousin once removed, and the janitor from the local high school. My wife came along but missed the signing after the long trip from Vail, Colorado gave her a sore back, so she went for a walk while I tried to put food on the table.

I sold fourteen copies of that blooming book. The only lasting artifact from that trip is a photo of the chair that Hillary and I both signed.

Her name is across the top of the chair.
I got the back leg.

As a friend of mine who just published his first book recently said, “A man will starve to death trying to make a living writing.”

So yes, I’ve digressed. But all of this is simply to say that writing isn’t quite what people imagine it to be.

Take the TOP TEN series. If you read all ten episodes, you probably spent about forty-five minutes total. Each episode, on the other hand, took roughly seven hours to research, write, design graphics, and finally persuade my editor it was ready. That’s about seventy hours of work to produce something that takes less than an hour to read.

With that in mind, you can decide for yourself whether the options, free or eight dollars a month, seem excessive. I will always offer this content for free. I would rather be read than rich.

Thank you for supporting the work.

Now, the facts.

Using Episode #1, There Is Purpose to Our Creation, as our baseline, we launched the series on January 12.

By Episode #3, The Covenant with Abraham, readership had increased 37 percent over Episode #1.

After Episode #3, something remarkable happened. SUBSCRIBERS began hitting the SHARE button and sending these episodes to their friends. That trend continued every week through the end of the series, with referral rates increasing steadily across the remaining seven episodes.

Episode #8, The Birth of Jesus Christ, was published on February 13. On February 14, I inserted A Love Story as a Valentine’s Day post. Every indicator suggested referrals would drop. They were wrong.

That Valentine’s Day post produced the highest engagement percentages of anything I’ve written in twenty years. Over sixty percent of subscribers shared A Love Story with someone who was not already a subscriber. That is almost unheard of in this industry.

Even better, the Valentine’s post didn’t disrupt the TOP TEN series. It enhanced it. Referral rates for Episodes #9 and #10 increased as a direct result.

In all my years of trying to write words that matter, it has been deeply meaningful to know that those same words mattered to you.

Thank you for making it happen.

Ben Gill