Is it self-promotion?

The only planned launch of my latest book was cancelled in the last minute and I cared less for that. I have sold my other 4 books without much fanfare and the fifth book that I published (it is my 6th book as the first is published by T & T Clark in 2005) has already sold 100 copies in six churches that I had preached it since 29th October 2023. But yesterday on Sunday I shared about how I came to write all my 6 books in 10 or 12 minutes and after some reflection last night I thought it might have been a bit excessive and felt some conscience pangs as self-promotion. Then on further reflection in the past 12 hours, I also realized that often times, an author would launch his or her book and if it is a public event the author will usually speak for 30 or 40 minutes about the book with another 20 minutes for Q & A.

I have followed many book launch over Youtube in the last few years, some of which I enjoyed very much if the topic of the book interested me. So to speak about 2 minutes for each of book is trivial in comparison and each book took on average between 6-12 months of full-time work from start to finish. Only Departure Points has some editorial and design works which I paid for as it was published by one of the premier publishing houses in Sabah. But in a church context with mostly secondary educated audience with only a handful of degree holders, my sharing was hard going in the sense that not that I did not think it had the intended effect as I could see most church members listen to my testimony in rapt attention, but that I also knew a few might take it the wrong way and saw that as being self-promotion. 

At the end I was pleased with what I said, concise and restraint (you can't say much in two or three minutes for one book). For instance, out of the 100 stories I told in Departure Points I only mentioned how I managed to get three prime real estate/lands to be registered under our denomination's name when I was Treasurer and trustee of the denomination. 

For my Revelation's monograph I told them how proud I was that I am among a few Asians ever mentioned in commentaries dominated by the authors who are based in the Western world. You will find my book mentioned and cited and commented on in commentaries and monographs written on Revelation which came out in the past 15 years. 

The end result was that I needed to make a break through (my main text on Saturday night was the Breaker text from Micah 2) and the break through is that youths start to read (it is almost non-existent now) but yesterday was just the beginning and I will repeat my story until I break through and create a new generation of Bible readers and spiritual leaders who feed on solid food, even good theological books.