The path to publishing success is rarely smooth and easy. There are bumps and bruises along the way. Writing requires hard work, some sleepless nights, and sometimes heart-wrenching disappointments.

But there’s also so much God-given joy in the successes as well as the failures. 

As we walk this journey, hearing from authors who are farther up the path is a huge encouragement. They can tell us what’s ahead and help us learn from their mistakes and victories.

I recently interviewed long-time Christian speaker and author Liz Curtis Higgs, who’s experienced many highs and lows on her publishing journey. She’s the author of 37 books, including Bad Girls of the Bible, which has sold over a million copies. She’s spoken at over 1,800 conferences in all 50 states and in 15 countries. 

Liz Curtis Higgs: I have had a few bumps and lumps, and I’m happy to talk about them because the truth is we don’t usually learn from people who “do it right.” We learn from the mistakes they make. Although I’ll be honest, I still have to make the mistakes myself. I could sit and listen to a pro who’s been out there longer than me, and I’d nod and take notes, but then I’d go make my own mistakes.

My dad often told me when I was growing up, “Success is a poor teacher.” 

How did Liz Curtis Higgs get started writing?

Thomas Umstattd, Jr.: So, how did you get started in writing?

Liz: I was a radio personality for ten years, and about halfway through that career, I met Jesus, and it changed everything. It didn’t change the station I was working on. It just changed the woman who was at the station. People always laughed and said, “Liz, it became Christian radio the minute you became a Christian.” And it was true.

I was blessed to work at places that let me talk gently about my faith and interview people like Amy Grant. It kind of changed the show, if not the station.

I had a wild and woolly testimony, and in November of 1982, I was asked to share my testimony at my church.

I was scared to death. I didn’t eat for three days before the speech.

I was used to being behind the microphone in a studio where nobody was looking at me. It didn’t matter how I was dressed or whether I had makeup on. But suddenly, I was going to stand in front of my church of 500 people who knew me and thought I was basically a good girl. 

I shared a seven-minute speech, and I told my whole guts-to-glory story. People laughed and cried and then stood up at the end. 

That was my first time to speak publicly and share my testimony. I went shaking back to my seat, and my pastor said, “Liz, I think this is what God has for you.”

I said, “No way, baby. I haven’t eaten in three days. This is not how we’re going to do this.”

But my pastor was right. Five people who were not from our church were there, and they asked if I would share my story at their churches.

So, I began to speak. I was still in radio full-time, but I was also speaking when I could. Churches started to invite me back, but I only had one testimony, and I knew I couldn’t tell the same story, so I began to develop material as a speaker. 

By 1987, I was speaking 90 times per year, still doing full-time radio, and I’d had my first child. Something had to go, so I said goodbye to radio after ten blessed years. It was nuts because it was my full-time job, and I was the primary breadwinner. But with 90 presentations that year, I had only made a total of $5,000.

Leaving radio was a scary leap of faith. But I felt strongly called to become a speaker. Of course, I was a mom too, and I could arrange my speaking around my mothering. The kids often went with me, so it worked great.

Thomas: And this all happened before you wrote a single book.

I want to point out that there are two kinds of authors: speakers who write and writers who speak. 

Someone who practices on stage for five years, honing their stories, is a speaker who writes. The advantage of being a speaker who writes is that you get to test your material to see if your jokes are funny and if your stories make sense. If you get questions at the end about something everybody misunderstood, you can clarify that point the next time you speak.

The writer who speaks spends more time revising their books with editors. It’s a different process, but there’s more than one path to publishing success.

Liz: For many years, I thought of myself only as a speaker who writes, but there was a shift down the road. 

By 1992, I was giving about 120 big presentations per year and finally making some serious money, which was a blessing. I was primarily speaking in secular settings to some associations, schools, health care environments, and churches, but mostly big arenas for big groups.

Besides your testimony, what did you speak about?

Thomas: What topics were you speaking about in those secular settings? I imagine it wasn’t just your testimony.

Liz: Not at all. In fact, I had to sneak the testimony in, and I found lots of fun ways to do that. 

I would say to an audience, “The woman standing before you today used to be quite a different person. In fact, I worked with Howard Stern, who told me to clean up my act.”

Now that will get an audience’s attention if they’re at all familiar with Howard Stern. That line would make them lean in and want to know more. It opened the door. 

In churches, I was very open about my faith and teaching the word, but in secular settings, I was called a “motivational humorist.” I brought motivation, which often segues to inspiration, which can segue into Scripture. Plus, I was funny, and humor tears down a lot of walls of resistance. Funny stories make people feel relaxed. 

A bright woman once told me, “The audience feels what you feel. If you feel relaxed, they do too.” It’s true for writing and speaking. 

When you’re relaxed in your writing voice, when you aren’t trying to impress or get out of your area of knowledge, when you stick with what you know, and you share it honestly, your reader relaxes too and lets you in.

Thomas: I like to define “voice “as how you write when you’re not scared or afraid of criticism.

Finding your voice is the same as finding the courage to say what you actually think and put it on the table.

Liz: Yes. I had to find that voice on the platform, which made it easier to segue into that voice on the page. In fact, people always say, “You write just like you speak,” and that was my goal. 

Eventually, a publisher heard me speak and said, “Do you mean to tell me you’re speaking to 120 groups per year, and you have no book in the back of the room to sell?”

I said, “Well, I’m working on one.”

I sent it to them, and they said, “That’s great. We’ll take that one and two more.”

I’m embarrassed to share that story at writers conferences because it makes it sound so easy, and it’s not how publishing contracts typically happen.

Thomas: But it wasn’t easy. You spent ten years building a platform, which was a speaking platform. For someone with a large platform, getting a publishing contract is “that easy” in the sense that publishers know they can break even on an author with a big platform regardless of whether the speaker can write.

In fact, if your platform is big enough, a publisher will pair you with someone who can write. For example, if you’re the Prince of England, they’ll make it work.

Liz: I was an English major in college, so I was a writer, but I was not a published writer.

Early on, the publisher offered to pair me with a real writer, but I had some writing abilities and some knowledge of how to put words together, so I declined. I knew I couldn’t stand in front of an audience and talk about a book I didn’t write. I can’t possibly do that. The ethics don’t work for me. 

Now, having said that I know there are Christian authors who have cowriters and ghostwriters, and I’m not making a judgment on that. I’m just telling you where I was coming from. I could not have slept at night if I had anybody else write my books. I’m super grateful for the input of a great editor, and I’m happy to make recommended changes, but I wanted to write my own books from my heart with my voice on the page.

God, in his goodness, made me a speaker first so that I could bring the expertise and platform to the writing. Remember, this all happened way before social media. I didn’t even have email. I had to send manuscripts on floppy disks!

Thomas: The original form of platform was speaking from a stage. Email, websites, and social media are relatively new tools for authors. But public speaking from a stage has been practiced for centuries. Even Mark Twain went on a speaking tour in the 1870s to promote his book. 

Liz: In my case, I didn’t do public speaking to sell books. I did it to encourage an audience. But as people would ask, “Do you have this in book form?” I figured I needed to offer that. 

When Thomas Nelson came to me and said, “We’ll take this book and two more,” that’s when I understood, “Oh my word, it’