 Having comp (comparison) titles is an essential step when you are planning to query agents with your manuscript, but their use doesn’t stop there. Keep reading to see how to use them as an indie author. Common querying advice tells you to limit these to new(ish) successful books, letting agents know what your book is about and who your target readers may be. Finding books that are similar to yours is not easy. This is yet another reason why pursuing traditional publishing can be off-putting to new writers.
However... Here’s the thing: comps are a GREAT thing to have for indies too! Instead of showing an agent who your audience is...take it straight to them! AND, when you are targeting the reader, not an agent, the potential comp pool opens up—TV shows, movies, older popular books, books/shows/etc. with a cult following. The list is endless. Don’t forget to add those comp titles (I find two to be best) to your book description. It will tell potential readers right off if your book is for them, plus it is an automatic source of precious keywords for you. I did #pitchwars over on twitter, with my comp line being most of the pitch. This netted me several potential readers. Yes, new readers based almost solely off that comp line. Knowing your target audience, and SHOWING them you know them, is huge. Have fun with it! Comps need not be totally literal. They don’t have to be comparable to your plot or characters; it can be vibe, style...anything. That book I mentioned? My comp line is: The Girl Who Met Tom Gordon meets YOU. TGWMTG is an older book, far too old for agents to be impressed, but the paranoia vibe and the forest setting hit perfectly. YOU (both the show and the series) features a charismatic stalker, Joe. He and my stalker Jared could be besties, so I knew from the get-go that YOU had to be on my comp list. Between the two it paints a vivid picture of what my book may be like, and can also show how it’s different from each. I choose comps that may feel worlds apart. This will highlight that my book is not trying to be the same as either of them; it is something all its own. Still, readers who enjoy either story are left intrigued—wondering where the combination may go—hopefully, enough to pick up the book!
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 I’ve recently seen some comments about editors upset that writers have used their reworked suggestions in the finished stories, and if I was reading one of those “Am I The A-hole” pages it would be an Everyone Sucks Here answer. I’m going to go at it from both a developmental editor and receiver of line editing standpoint.
1- As an editor I am very careful about offering direct suggested rewrites, NOT because I think ‘OmG sOmEoNe iS gOiNg To StEaL mY wOrDs’ but because I don’t want to force my words on a writer. When I’m working with new writers, I will (almost) never offer any kind of rewrite. My voice is not theirs, is not their characters, is not their style, etc. I will offer plenty of ideas and directions to go in, but I don’t want to trample on their style, especially when they may be just finding it. With writers who have a distinct style, I may add rewrites with the note “but better, or but in your voice (etc)” to remind them to make it theirs, or at least make sure it fits. If it works for their story, I don’t care one bit if they take it as-is. It’s my job to help, they are paying for it, those words are part of the deal. 2- As a writer getting edits, I get those suggestions. I interact with them much as I do as an editor. I have to turn it into my own style to fit the voice of the story. But, sometimes that rewrite is already perfect, and yes, I will totally use it. I think the issue that started the initial post I saw was that they were short stories, and it’s unclear how much input the editor gave that was taken as-is. Yes, there is room to argue that if too much was substituted in, who really wrote that story? But, I don’t think we can blame a new writer when someone they perceive as being experienced (in both writing and the editing process) comes in and says ‘write this’ and then doing so. You have to work out a relationship with your editor, it’s not just a hand-off. They are an important part of your team, and you need to understand each other. So, should you take words directly from your editor? ...maybe. If it’s a lot of words, you could verify they think it’s alright. Double check that the new line feels like it is your voice. Does it fit within your world? When working with an editor for the first time, ask questions! Pay attention and learn about the process and get all you can from it. Be a good student, be thoughtful, and be serious about your work. Don’t blow it by being an A-hole. Should an editor give direct rewrite ideas? ...maybe. Will you be upset if you see that line used as-is? Are you offering so much ‘help’ that you are bulldozing their voice, or is it just a helpful snippet? Do they know enough to know the difference? When you are editing for someone, YOU are the professional in the equation. Assume every client that you haven’t worked with before is a total newbie (but don’t be condescending). Be helpful, but also kind. Take a moment to understand where they are in their writing journey and show them what it means to be edited—every interaction they have with you is a teaching moment. Don’t blow it by being an A-hole.  Just over three months ago, I gave in and made a TikTok account. I’m a slow adapter—I barely use Twitter (even before the chaos there) and never really settled into Insta, so I had little hope for this app overrun by Gen Z.
Luckily, the Booktok side is more diverse, so I’m not the oldest one there, yay! But I was not good at it. I haplessly attempted random videos to get views and the illusive 1k followers so I could get a link in my bio. I never thought I’d see the day. But here I am, just over 60 days in and I reached that this morning, and most are readers or fellow indie authors, with only a handful being spammy randos. If I can do it, so can you. Seriously. 1- Make those silly, lip-sync videos*. Yes, really. They seem ridiculous at first, but get creative in connecting them to your genre/niche and they get fun fast. I’m not great at them, but they are a great way to connect with people. Just do it. Also, make one of those (literally) begging for follows ones, pin it and wait. That one video got me 150 follows. (*note, you can do these without being on camera, you just get creative about it) 2- Be consistent. I don’t think you have to be consistent in video type. I mix up the fun ones with page-flip ones to keep my books out in front of people. But you need to POST consistently. I do 2 videos a day, one fun, one flip. Shoot a bunch of fun ones all at once, you don’t have to make a video every day. 3- Interact! Posting and running will get you nowhere. Spend a bit of time each day watching/hearting/commenting on videos in your top hashtags. This is your community. Find them, make friends, and have fun. Indie publishing is not being at war with other indies; team up, make connections, and work together. I know my whole 1k followers aren’t much, and I’m still working my way out of the 200-300 view trenches, but it is the start. I can link my books on my bio now, making it easier to convert sales. Am I an expert, far from it—I am a TT beginner and I got there. These are really simple, even bare-minimum, tips that anyone can do. Go forth and get those followers!  Editors are a lot—of money, of work to find, of time to work with, of emotional effort. So it’s tempting to look at something like ProWritingAid or Grammarly and think “Thank god! This is it! No human interaction!” But it’s not the same, and I doubt it ever will be. I’m not saying don’t use them at all, I’m saying, don’t only use them.
I know, handing over your book baby to a total stranger and waiting on pins and needles for them to point out what’s wrong is no fun. Whether you’re in the developmental editing stage or line editing, you’re going to get comments, lots of them. Until now, you are the only one to have read your book, and maybe a friend or family member who has told you how wonderful it is and what a genius you are. Now you are looking at your options: run it through an AI program and get ‘private’ feedback to fix and move forward, maybe even straight to publishing or, research, hire and work with a real life human editor. A person who will take a professional look at your work and objectively point out areas that need work, someone who might (will) not tell you it’s perfect and you are going to be a bestseller tomorrow. Someone who will see your work for how it fits in the publishing industry and share that insight with you, whatever that reality may be. No one likes to be told their story needs work, but if we want to improve we all have to hear that. No story is perfect (or even great) from the get-go and we cannot make it better on our own. We need other, real, live people to help us on the journey from draft to publication. We must suck up the anxiety, fear, whatever, and put the manuscript in front of those who can help us. When a local, in-person, writing group offered free first page critiques, I stood in line waiting my turn in full-on panic mode. That page was NOT ready for an editor, but I’m glad I put it out there for the professional critique. For me, that was a milestone. I told myself, If I can manage to do this in person, I sure as heck can work with someone online when I (and my story) are better prepared. These days, I love seeing my story pop up with a bunch of comment notifications from my editors—I trust them and know they want the best for my work. All stories need this. It can take time to find the right people, and some ups and downs, but you have to put yourself and your work out there or it will never get better. You can still use those AI programs, but think of them as a preliminary tool, not a final step.  We write for readers, and it is important not to forget that. If we don’t work to give readers what they want (the FEELS - in all possible iterations) they will not connect to our work. A scene that may play out exactly as you envision in your mind may not be the right payoff for a reader. It’s easy to miss as you write. Especially when that payoff is part of a sub-plot. You get so caught up in the main arc that when those pieces fall into place, everything surrounding it gets fuzzy. But when not paid off, those moments are the ones that might make your reader throw your book at the wall.
When you develop a plot (or sub-plot) you are making a promise to the reader: This will go somewhere, you will get a payoff for sticking around. And you HAVE to keep that promise. No if’s and’s or but’s. I’ve recently finished working through Cassia’s novel that must not (yet) be named, and it has shown so much improvement. I’m proud on her behalf for the quality she has added. That said, I might have swapped from professional-dev-editor to friend-reading-the-book and left a comment with some expletives in it when the sub-plot came to a head only to linger on the edge without pushing over. Her character was going to make a deathbed decoration... did make a deathbed declaration... but we didn’t get to know what he said! Total book-throw moment for me, and thank goodness Cass is a good sport, because my comment that followed was not exactly friendly. ( Her reply: “I love that you got so worked up… I like your unfiltered sentiment”, so all is not lost, she’s not running and hiding from me today.) I kept reading, and those words of his kept getting teased, but never delivered. Finally she saw the comment and replied... “don’t you just want to imagine them?” As a writer to a writer, that might make sense. Often, what we make up in our head is better than what we can put into words. But—huge BUT—our readers are not writers. They need us to put what we want them to know on the page. And they deserve it. I went on and marked places where she could use this no-show technique to build tension and purposefully irritate readers just enough so that when we get a final reveal of the words (the pinnacle of this sub-plot), it’s a huge moment. I finally got those words pulled out of Cassia and they are everything I’d hoped for. I am so excited to see how this book continues to be reshaped into something amazing. Some people look at self publishing and think—good, I wrote my story, I’ll just pop it on Amazon and people will love it! No, no, they won’t. You cannot do this alone, and that is hard to hear, especially when you then look at price points on the various services you need to publish a book. Covers, website, marketing, editors, formatting... The list goes on and on and the $$$ goes up and up. Many things you CAN learn to do yourself, but not without time, effort, and often real $$ shelled out on programs to do them. Everyone had to ‘pay their dues’ (generally, I hate this phrase, because I think it breeds an environment where people get taken advantage of, but hear me out) you have to put something in (besides your self-edited draft) to get something out of the publishing industry. It’s that simple, and that something can definitely be time... lots and lots of time. The less $$ the more time it will take. But that’s fine, you are on your own schedule. Do what you have to do. I have. If you are like me, you just started out with some vague idea that you will write a book. Great, done. Nailed it. Then you are faced with making it something that people will want to read. Oomph. Here’s where I get honest and break down what I spent putting out my first romance series (3 novellas, in ebook and paperback). I’ll preface this by saying: I’m not a bestseller... yet (though I have ranked #1 in some free categories!). But my method is ever-improving and so are my results. I’m right here with you on this journey. Let’s enjoy the ride together.  Part 1 - Covers My first step was finding a cover. I (luckily) had some background using photo editing programs and doing design, so this was one place it made sense for me to study up and learn to do it myself. There are also tons of great resources and groups out there to help you with this (Indie Cover Project on FB is amazing, if you can take the sometimes harshly delivered critique). Stock photos can be free and cheap, so once you develop a good eye and the skill, you can definitely make your own covers (hint, you can also barter and make other people’s covers too!) Covers ($0) - I’m pretty decent with a variety of free editing programs (photofilter (http://www.photofiltre-studio.com/pf7-en.htm), photopea (photopea.com)) and also decent at making free stock work for me. So I did my covers myself. I made no less than 5 versions of each over literally weeks as I went round for round with feedback from various sources. I spent so much time scouring stock sites, even going out and taking my own photos for some versions (those didn’t make the cut, but I can use them in marketing images) I absolutely ‘spent’ more in time than I would have paid for a cover designer, but again... I had the time, not the cash. And each time I do a cover, it takes a little less time. Part 2 - Interior Once covers were sorted (I did all three at once so I knew they would be cohesive) the inside needed attention (let’s assume MS is ready, I’ll talk about editing in post #4) It’s not something you think a lot about, until you face choosing it for yourself. Where do you want page numbers? What about chapter subtitles? Should you spell out the numbers? What is popular for your genre?!? Are you ready for more hours staring at a computer screen? Do you love hunching over your keyboard and wondering how one keystroke sent all your formatting into the twilight zone? Buckle up buttercup, let’s get to it! Anyone can do interior formatting simply enough in MS Word with enough patience. Will it be gorgeous? Probably not, but it will be fine. My biggest writing venture was springing for Atticus to format my books (thanks to my Nana for seed money there) and now I can pretty quickly put together professional interiors—but just like cover creation, there is a learning curve. I spent (and still spend) days tweaking things to get them how I want. Eventually it will be quick, but until then, I’m still probably spending more time-value than I would $$-value if I could just hire someone. (But just like cover design, this is another service you can barter with!) Interiors ($0 ish) My original formatting was all done in MS word. It took forever and left a lot to be desired. I wanted something fun and fancy, but got... standard. It was fine, and no one complained when the first editions hit the web. But I wanted better. Atticus sat on my ‘I’d love this’ list for a while, and when I got some unexpected birthday money, I jumped and bought it (cost: $147 atticus.io). It’s a great investment, formatting is smoother and comes out with much higher quality. Soon I hope to add this to a services list for future bartering. Part 3 - Website/blog Time to get your face out there! Your fans need a place to find you, and a website is the best thing for that. You can link out to all your socials, create a blog and share, share, share! It’s your homebase for links, books, stories and everything that is part of your brand. It can be as simple or as complicated as you want/are capable of. It may even begin simply as a landing page to build your mailing list and hand out freebies. A website is a big task and lucky me to have been the type of person who’s been messing around with site-building for some time. It’s another skill that takes time to develop, but there are some very user friendly hosts/builders out there (I am using GoogleSites, free hosting and you can bring a custom domain - https://sites.google.com/new). My site took me a couple of weeks to build, but I love it and it serves its purpose. I haven’t spent much (in $$$) keeping it up, and now have another skill I could barter with. Website ($10/yr) - I did all my design with and hosted on GoogleSites - for FREE - I simply purchased my domain through NameSilo (namesilo.com) for about $10/year. Design and creation was easy; drag-and-drop kind of stuff. It doesn’t have the greatest SEO offerings, but with enough messing around you can work in your keywords to your text well enough to rank decently. BUT it took me days of slogging through chatrooms to get Google to finally crawl and list the site, even though they are the ones hosting it. If I were paying myself a reasonable wage, I don’t want to think what it would have cost. Would a pro have been quicker? Would I have fewer gray hairs? Absolutely, but I only had time to invest here. If I can find the patience, you can too. Part 4 -Editing The elephant in the micro-budget publishing room is the edit. The place in writing where going it alone is no longer an option and where the costs can skyrocket. As always, knowledge is power here. Do your research, talk to other writers, and put in those hours. There are ways to get this done and stay on budget, but this is the place where you will encounter the most work since actually writing your book. No matter how much you learn, you simply cannot, and should not, do the edit on your own. Sorry. I’ve tried, for sure, but a second (or third, or fourth...) set of eyes is necessary. But.... you can find your people. Ones that may barter for something else you are good at (see previous posts in this series), ones who are looking for help on their own books... we all need something, and it’s not always $$. That is always the quick way, and if you have it, go for it and don’t get bogged down slogging through hours and hours working around your writing. Scroll around writer groups, read other people’s work, see who you connect with—it might not be who you think. But if you put yourself out there enough, and make enough connections, something/someone will work out. A note here: make sure your work as is good as it can be before you look for these people! You are more likely to make good relationships if you show up acting like a professional. That means lots of self edits; use an AI writing tool, do an audio edit, (this was a game-changer for me! Listen to your work out loud and you will catch SO MUCH more.) make your book as good as you are able. Don’t rely on people to do the heavy lifting. If you abuse them, they won’t turn up again next time you ask for help. Editing (hear me out once more - $0... sort of) My editing budget is, surprise, $0. But, I am a lucky one here—in many ways. I have found (through MUCH trial and error, many blink and you missed them beta swaps, unreciprocated reads, etc) an amazing group to work with, part of that was luck, and part of that is my newfound developmental editing skill. I had something to bring to the table, so this is my biggest barter chip. I can trade dev edits for line edits. Even before I labeled it as such I had another author I trade with (though we were both confused and called ourselves betas) to give her a dev edit for a line edit. It can be done. Figure out what you have an eye for and hone that skill, then use it for all it’s worth to get your book published. Beg, borrow and practice your way to new skills, always be open to refining what you are capable of, and ask questions. Be humble, take critique, and learn, learn, learn. Know what you can spend time on, and figure out what you can spend $$ on. Someday I hope to be at a place where I don’t have to do most of these things on my own, for now... I will because I have to. It also makes me that much more appreciative of those who do offer these services.  It’s easy to look at your book and think that once you type THE END, the writing is over. Even after several rounds of readers and editors, the process may not be finished. It may have been the best book you could write at the time, but you are always improving—even if you don't think so—and quite often, if you look away long enough when you do come back, it may be with shock.
That’s what happened to me. I wrote AtP about a year and a half ago, with critique partners, did the edits with awesome betas and revised the crap out of it. I queried it, sent out fulls, the works. I thought it was ready and when I decided to self-publish, all I needed to do was format it. So I started. And it is apparent now, that in that year and a half since finishing AtP (where I wrote/edited/published my romance series) I have learned a lot. I was just browsing AtP to check the formatting as I went and so much jumped out at me that I now know how to improve. So, it’s back to the editing floor as I glean this baby with a new level of polish. On the one hand, I’m thrilled to see how clearly I have improved, on the other—I really thought getting this one to publication day was going to be fairly easy since ‘all the hard work’ was supposedly behind me. Ugh. But also, yay? I haven’t officially set a release date, so I have no formal deadline, but I did imagine one in my head. Let’s see if I can push myself to keep it. Wish me luck! You can get your copy now -- CLICK HERE!  I have been working closely with one of my writing buddies on a developmental edit of her fantasy epic. It’s totally unlike the stories I write, both in genre and style. I tend toward a cozy cast of a few characters and fairly structured POV changes. She has a large, diverse cast and moves through POVs as needed for the story. In my reading, I have truly realized, and am now pointing out to her, how important POV character choice is in any scene. (Without giving anything away) Her story follows a magical traveler on a journey, when she has just picked up a companion. For much of the beginning, that companion is our POV character, and this is perfect! He doesn’t know much about her or her world, so it is easy for him to be the reader’s door into it. We learn as he does, and it’s wonderful. Later in the story, we get more scenes from other characters’ POVs, especially as the action gets more focused on the larger group—this is necessary. Our original character doesn’t have a lot to lose in some of these scenes and therefore the tension is not his to share with the reader. As we near the climax of the story, I’m finding more scenes stuck back in his POV. I love him as a character, but those scenes consequently feel distant as he mostly observes what is going on. Now I am flagging her MS up like a Christmas tree asking for POV changes so the reader can feel the tension of those most affected by the events in the scene. This is the big takeaway here: you are the author, and your world is yours, but the goal of writing is to share it with others, and to do that we need the best portal for that—the best character to relate what is happening, what they are feeling and doing to lead the reader into the action, the emotion, and the world overall. While this is a benefit of fantasy, the acceptance of more varied POV than some other genres, it is something we can all do in all our writing. Understand which characters have the most to gain (or lose) in a scene and frame it around them. If you can’t use their POV, choose your POV character that is closest to them, the one who knows what they are thinking and feeling, even when they are trying to hide it. It’s also an excellent exercise to write scenes in other characters’ POVs, even if you don’t keep it (or even ever mean for it to be) in the finished book. You can even use these scenes later as bonus material for readers.  Lately, I have been working with a group of authors on an anthology. They are all at different stages in their writing careers. I am on the developmental edit team, and working across the experience spectrum has been eye-opening. It has made me reflect on my writing journey, and how to help others with theirs. There’s so much I know now that I wished I knew back when I was working with my first editors and beta readers.
It’s easy to be in awe of your own work. However, the beta-reader/commenter/editor is flagging things for a reason. The story lives in our head; we know 100% of it, but we’re lucky if 60% makes it to the page in the first draft. Those comments are showing us what isn’t making it, highlighting what the reader doesn’t understand (literally or stylistically). The comments don’t mean something is bad or wrong; they mean something is lost in the story's translation from your brain to the page. When we see comments, we get upset and want to defend our story-baby on each one. We have the justification, and maybe it’s right. But if you find yourself justifying the same idea over and over—pause. That is where you need to work. If it’s a matter of the reader not understanding what’s going on, you need to do a better job of explaining/describing. If it has to do with missing info/facts, that’s usually a quick fix - just move things around or expand a little, give us that tidbit that will help us make sense of what’s going on. If the issue seems to be confusion about the world or character, you need to add details, a better description of setting, body language, etc. Use action tags in-between dialogue not only to add interest but to place your characters relative to each other, so the reader is able to set the scene in their mind. If the reader is not engaged with your characters, you need to work on your character development. POV needs to be tight, well defined, and consistent. You need to get into your MC’s head and know their motivation and internal conflict/inner struggles and how this relates to how they present the story. If the character is going to tell the story in a particular way, you need to make sure the reader understands why the character is like this, or else that added layer of story you’ve worked so hard on will be lost. You must set the tone for the reader. Revising is a huge part of writing. Writing is easy; words flow, drafts build... but revising is how you make sure that your vision, and story, is clear to a reader. This is hard, and impossible to do on your own Understanding how to use editor comments is probably the most important skill for a writer to develop. Just as you shouldn’t blindly follow every suggestion, you also have to shut down that part of your brain that wants to shout, ‘No, I love this! Let me tell you why it works!’ Don’t tell them why it works in the comments. Show them in the story! To make the most of the comments that your editors/betas leave on your manuscript, you need to understand how you are reacting to those comments. I’d wager that everyone has that defensive gut reaction, whether they are newbies just starting out or established writers with a string of books to their name. I sure did when I first started out. I was working as a ghostwriter and the client connected me with the editor. When I tried to explain things, I was told that wasn’t my job; to stop, read the notes, and make it better. No ifs, ands, or buts. While that was a direct hit, it was also easier because it wasn’t my story-baby on the line (well, it was, I was too close, but I digress). It was his story and his editor. I had to learn quickly to get at the root meaning of those comments and make the fixes. In the end, I got some really nice compliments from that editor. It helped me push forward in my own stories, and in my acceptance of revision comments. No editor is highlighting things to tell you the story is bad—they are there because they want to help (however blunt some comments may seem). For me, if I write some crazy comment manifestos to someone, that’s a good sign. The more I rattle on, the more I am invested in the piece. Dig deep, writers! Put your ego aside and take a moment to breathe. As writers, we know our stories all too well. We see everything in our mind’s eye, forgetting that the reader is not privy to any of this. Translating this highly-detailed picture in our heads into words is difficult. It is impossible to do on without feedback. This is why editors’ and beta-readers’ comments are so valuable. They are basically your short-cut to a better story. P.S. Dear writers, even this blog post has gone through my best editor! We cannot, and should not do it alone! he other day I was helping a fellow writer with their story and they mentioned being stuck on having to use a line over and over since the action was the same and kept repeating in the story. There was nothing wrong with the line, except that they felt like they were repeating it ad infinitum. And that was true, so I played a little game and told them to do the same. How many ways can you convey the same thing? What other aspects of the action can you look at and draw from? What other senses can you call upon? I think, for the meat of our stories, these questions come naturally. Explaining your magic system, or describing your villain in the most solicitous way, is fun. The hum-drum lines that bring us from scene to scene sometimes get overlooked though, putting us in this mess that my author friend is in now. So let’s look at their example: The issue: Every motorcycle turn is taken at speed and threatens to run off the road. The line: She took the corner at such a speed the bike threatened to go off the road. OK, it’s fine if you do it once or twice, but it will definitely get boring, eventually. So, we play our game!  What does our MC feel—internally and externally?
The bike’s wheel trembled as she took the turn. Maybe she ought to slow down—but there was no time for that. What does the MC do? Stella struggled to keep her grip on the handlebars as the bike screeched around the corner. What does the MC see? Stella could just catch the glares of pedestrians out of the corner of her eye as she flew around the corner. What does the MC hear? Gravel skittered, pining against the brick building on the corner as Stella failed, yet again, to slow enough for the turn. What does the MC taste? Stella bit her tongue with the effort to keep the bike upright as the force of the turn threatened to send her skidding sideways. What does the MC smell? Burning rubber told Stella that she had once more taken the curve too quickly. If she didn’t let up, the bike was going to fall to pieces beneath her. Are they all good? No, but are they different? Do they paint a picture? And most importantly, have they gotten you writing and thinking outside the box? YES! |
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