Proposals can daunt just about any writer. But throw in comparative titles into the mix, and we may have made the process ten times harder on ourselves.
Comparative Titles: Recently published titles, in your book’s genre, that share similarities in theme, tone, or style.
It sounds simple enough, but when you have to come up with 3-5 titles, published by B-list authors, within the past five years, it makes the search all the harder. In this article, we’ll explore ways to find your book’s comparative titles, so you can wow publishers and agents.
Follow the Footnotes
You may know that your book shares similarities with another one.
For instance, my spooky MG shares similarities with Kristiana Sfirlea’s Legend of the Storm Sneezer. If I plug the title into Amazon, it shows me results of other books bought that are similar to this. I peruse the blurbs and the first pages of those books. If they seem to match mine, I buy them.
“Wait a minute!” You may say. “Why do I have to buy them?” First of all, you support authors, yay! Second of all, you want to make sure that you didn’t just choose a book simply by the back cover copy alone. As we’ve learned the BCC doesn’t always tell us the truth about the book’s contents. Better safe than sorry.
Goodreads Lists
So you have to find a book published within the last five years.
No problem. Goodreads has lists of books in specific genres, published in specific years. Peruse the lists and find books that seem to match the tones or themes of yours.
You can find plenty of books in Paranormal MG published in 2020. Believe me, once you find these lists, you’ll have no problem finding books that are similar to yours.
Ask Reader’s Groups
Facebook has PLENTY of readers groups. Ask them in threads if they have any recs. of books, that are recently published, like yours.
It will surprise you how many recommendations you’ll receive. I’m part of a Christian readers group, and readers have obscure requests all the time. On average, these requests receive 30-100 responses.
Ask Authors in the Genre
Want to know comp. titles for your books? Ask authors who have published similar books in your genre. Odds are they have plenty of ideas for you to read.
After all, if we want to be good writers, we have to read lots of books in our genre, so we can understand the trends, the vogue voices, and of course, because we have loads of fun doing it.
It can be difficult to attract publishers when you have a small social media presence. No matter whether our age, our ailments, or our life circumstances have gotten in the way, at times writers need to take a step back from growing their platform. This may mean that the platform will diminish or lose followers because they haven’t kept up with it as much.
We’ve know writers who have developed vision problems and where staring at a social media scheduler simply isn’t conducive to their health.
With all this in mind, can we still woo a publisher, especially when our platform has taken a hit? If so, let’s dive into the ways to snag that publisher even when experiencing diminishing returns.
Do what you can
If we’ve learned anything about social media, it’s that once you have it figured out, it changes again. Sometimes people do better with a sporadic posting schedule or they must scale back a significant amount.
Find what works for you and your health. No, you won’t have tens or hundreds of thousands of followers. But you prioritize yourself. After all, you can have millions of followers, but if you don’t write well, a publisher will not want your book.
Publishers care about writing first, speaking of:
Continue to read and write
If you can’t work on platform, continue to write.
And if you cannot write, continue to read.
Publishers do care about platform, but they want, most of all, good writing. So practice and hone those craft skills. You will need those the most.
Explain what happened
Many publishers, having experienced tragedy themselves, will understand your situation. Provide a paragraph of explanation about the dip in platform if they ask.
At the same time, show them how you’ve grown platform before in the past, prior to when you needed to step back. This can show them that you have an entrepreneurial and marketing spirit, even if you can’t exercise it now.
Hire an assistant
Can’t do the work yourself? No worries, hire an assistant to schedule posts for you. We highly recommend reaching out to local colleges for students who are savvy with technology and work for reasonable rates.
That way you can show publishers you still intend to build platform, but may need a little extra help to do it. Don’t worry. Best selling authors hire assistants all the time.
This past Thursday we had the privilege of announcing LIVE our Serious Writer Award winners. We had literally hundreds of entries for these contests, and all the entrants made the decisions very difficult for our judges this year. Some entries differed in scores between fractions of points.
At our awards ceremony, we announced top finalists (who will receive a certificate in the mail) and the award winners. We called out five names per contest, including the winners. In the case of one contest, this meant two winners and three top finalists.
In this blog post, in alphabetical order by author last name, we will announce the top finalists and then the winners of each contest.
Stay tuned for announcements soon about next year’s contests.
Writer of the Year Award Winners
Our only contest for unpublished writers, the Writer of the Year, by far had the most entries. Judges had to nitpick even minor details to differentiate the finalists, top finalists, and the award winners.
Below are the Top Finalists for this Category:
Tammy Kennington for Conquering the Giants: Overcoming PTSD and Child Abuse
Michele McCarthy for A Funny Thing Happened on My Way from Here to There
Kenzi Nevins for Rosewilde
Patsy Reiter for Story of the Year
Other Finalists for this Category:
Pamela Glover for Tightly Strung
Annette Griffin for Mama Mantra
Kaci Hindman for Honorable Mention Trophy Wife
Renee Hodges for Saving Dusty
Nancy Hull for A Puppet for PFC Eldon
Julie Lavender for A Gingerbread House
Seralynn Lewis for Forgiving Shannon
Patsy Reiter for An Open River
Sarah Rexford for The Convergence
Ryan Wetter for A Shopping Mall Santa and the Curious Kid
Below is Our Winner of the Writer of the Year Award:
Jennifer Daniels Neal for Elixir
Book of the Year Award Winners
This contest was for books published in 2019. We had a lot of entries for this one, including several contributed by traditional publishers. We had more publishers submit this year than in year’s past.
Below are the Top Finalists for this Category:
Tama Fortner for Easter is Coming!
Linda Evans Shepherd for When You Need to Move a Mountain: Keys to Praying with Power
Rachel C. Swanson for Refine & Restore: Revive Your Heart, Release Your Purpose
Laura Zimmerman for Keen
Other Finalists for this Category:
Karin Beery for Practically Married
Hallee Bridgeman for Valerie’s Verdict
Penny Cooke for Pursuing Prayer
Pat Jeanne Davis for When Valleys Bloom Again
Elaine McCallister for Celebrate Grandparenting: 101 Ideas to Intentionally Connect with Your Grands
W. D. McComb for The Truth that Lies Between
Caris Snider for Anxiety Elephants
Deborah Sprinkle for Deadly Guardian
Below is Our Winner of the Book of the Year Award:
Jean Petersen for Kind Soup
Book of the Decade Award Winners
Bethany and Cyle noticed a lack of contests for books published more than a year ago. Because writers need to keep promoting their books years after they get published, our co-founders wanted to create a contest where authors who have published up to ten years ago can have a chance to get another award for their book.
This year’s inaugural contest hosted entries from books published between 2008-2018. Judges had such a hard time picking that two entries tied for the winning spot.
Below are the Top Finalists for this Category:
Lee Wolfe Blum for Brave is the New Beautiful: Finding the Courage to be the Real You
Linda Evans Shepherd for When You Don’t Know What to Pray
Doug Smith for [Un]Intentional: How Screens Secretly Shape Your Desires and How You can Break Free
Other Finalists for this Category:
Dr. Michelle Bengston for Hope Prevails: Insights From a Doctor’s Personal Journey through Depression
Lee Wolfe Blum for Table in the Darkness – A Healing Journey Through an Eating Disorder
Sharron K. Cosby for Praying for Your Addicted Loved One: 90 in 90
Dena Dyer and Tina Samples for Wounded Women of the Bible: Finding Hope When Life Hurts
Jill Roman Lord for If Jesus Lived Inside My Heart
Joshua J. Masters for American Psalms: Prayers for the Christian Patriot
Deborah Raney for A Nest of Sparrows
Deborah Raney for Beneath a Southern Sky
Lori Stanley Roeleveld for Running from a Crazy Man (and other adventures traveling with Jesus)
Linda Evans Shepherd for The Stress Cure
Below are the Winners of the Book of the Decade Award:
Tez Brooks for The Single Dad Detour
Robin Currie for The Very Best Story Ever Told: The Gospel with American Sign Language by Robin Currie
Once again, we want to thank everyone who entered. You gave judges a tough time, and we cannot wait to see the entries for the awards for next year!
We are absolutely thrilled to announce the finalists of the three contests for Serious Writer this year. As they finalists enter the last round, we will notify the winner of each of the three contests individually. They will be invited to our awards banquet (date TBA).
The top five in each category will be announced at the banquet as well.
Announcing this year’s Book of the Year finalists!
Announcing this year’s Writer of the Year finalists!
Note: we’ve omitted the titles from being listed here. Any entrants who have had more than one entry go on to the next round of the competition will have (more than one entry) by their name.
We are absolutely thrilled to announce the semi-finalists of the three contests for Serious Writer this year. Our judges had such a hard time narrowing down the semi-finalist lists, and we can only imagine it will be harder for them to pick finalists, and then winners.
Below you’ll find the lists for each contest.
Announcing this year’s Book of the Year Semi-Finalists. We had so many wonderful entries.
The Very Best Story Ever Told – Robin Currie author Easter Is Coming – Tama Fortner Books Kind Soup – Jean Petersen Willoughby Goes a Wee Bit Batty – Pam Halter I Know What Grandma Does While I’m Napping – Shelley Pierce Author Fire Dancer – Catherine Jones Payne Keen – Laura Croman Zimmerman In Search of the Beloved – Marian Rizzo Practically Married – Karin Beery – Author Off-Script Over-Caffeinated – Rhonda Rhea Deadly Guardian – Deborah Sprinkle Pocket Change – Debbie Archer Valerie’s Verdict – Hallee Bridgeman Shattered Treasure – Cindy Patterson The Watanabe Name – Sakura Nobeyama Dandelion Summer – Mary Ellen Bramwell – Author When Valleys Bloom Again – Pat Jeanne Davis Shadow of the Dagger – Anne Greene The Truth that Lies Between – W.D. McComb Restoring the Shattered – Nancy E. Head The Joy Box Journal – Adria Wilkins The Art of Hard Conversations – Lori Stanley Roeleveld Anxiety Elephants – Cari Snider The Gratitude Challenge – Stephanie Jones Celebrate Grandparenting: 101 Ideas to Intentionally Connect with your Grands – Elaine McAllister Pursuing Prayer – Penny Cooke I Am Cyrus – Dr. Craig Von Buseck Refine & Restore – Rachel C. Swanson – Author, Speaker, Life Coach When you Need to Move a mountain – Linda Shepherd Smack Dab in the Midlife zone – Leigh Ann Thomas
Because we’re judging this contest blindly, only the names will be provided of the authors who have advanced to the next round of the competition. Some authors have more than one entry going onto the next round. If this is the case, it is noted by their name in parentheses.
