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Spreading God's message
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Christian author Kenneth L. Morgan needs help from the masses as he attempts to spread his inspirational and religious message.

Morgan hopes to create what he calls volume sales of his three books, which are currently only available online.

"It's like supply and demand," Morgan said. "There's a market for my books, but unless people actually go in and request them by name, they will never appear on bookshelves. My goal is to get them on bookshelves in the stores."

It is a problem faced by many local writers, Morgan said. When he sells one of his books on his own, that sale does not go toward the volume of sales needed to reach his goal.

"If people ask for the books, that will put a demand on the supplier at the bookstore so they will say, 'OK, these books are in demand. We've got to get Kenneth Morgan's books on the shelves in the stores.'"

Morgan's books are published and marketed by iUniverse, but he said there is still a lot of leg work he has to do to get the word out.

"You really want to get them in the public eye," Morgan said. "There is only so much you can do to market and advertise your book. But if the book is in the bookstore, people will be more likely to pick it up. It's much easier than having to search for it online."

Morgan's writing process began 10 years ago when he began writing song lyrics for fun. This hobby soon led him to begin writing greeting cards to be sold in local stores.

"They were inspirational to me," Morgan said. "I just started writing my thoughts down, which turned into the greeting cards. The cards weren't selling as good as I wanted to because nobody knew I had them out except local people. So it was like one thing led to another thing which led to another thing and I went from the songs to the greeting cards to the books."

After writing hundreds of cards, Morgan decided to combine them into one volume. This eventually became his first book, "Poems of Inspiration."

While he was in the process of getting "Poems" published, he began to write a weekly religion column for The Covington News. Those columns formed most of his second book, "More Than Just Words."

Morgan said that his first two books served two purposes as both inspirational and religious books.

"It can go either way," Morgan said. "It can be inspirational for those in need of inspiration and religious for those who are religious. I just wanted to motivate and uplift people. We all go through issues as people and sometimes we need to be lifted up. We need help getting from one day to another."

For his third book, "God is Still Speaking," Morgan focused on a more personal and religious message.

"I just wanted to make people aware that there is a God, he still speaks and to make them aware that his presence is still here," Morgan said.

Morgan said he went to church when he was a child, but lost his way until his 30s.

"As you grow older and become who you are, you begin to see things in the right perspective," Morgan said.

He now serves as pastor to the Times of Refreshing Ministry, which is new outreach ministry in Newton County.

The ministry hopes to one day form a church, but until then Morgan said they will spread their message as best they can.

While Morgan has no books in the works right now, that could change at anytime, he said.

Currently, Morgan is working in administration for city of Covington and is attending classes studying for a bachelor's degree. When he does decide to tackle writing again, Morgan said he would like to write a children's book.