Market Research (Comparison titles)
Why do you need to research?
When you pitch a manuscript to a traditional publisher there are a lot of things you need to know. What is that publisher looking for? Why is market research important? What comparative title can you list (e.g. if you enjoyed reading this book, you'll like my book)?
Familiarise yourself with each publisher as much as you can so that you know which books they accept. While it's not absolutely certain that they will reject a different type of book, if they favour certain books like perhaps memoirs and biographies over fiction, that's a good thing to know before you submit. Also, always make sure you check submission guidelines and make sure you follow them to the letter.
Whether you submit to a traditional publisher or not, it's always best to do market research yourself. It helps you find gaps in your writing process. You'll see what's available and what's popular. Using Google AI or other AI may be helpful for research, but you will need to dig a lot deeper.
Reasons to research the market:
- So that you know your market
- To improve your writing by reading other books
- To support the book industry as a whole by reading and reviewing other titles in your genre and target market
We can do market research for you as a consulting service, but we recommend showing you some tricks on how to do this yourself. It's an essential skill if you're hoping to have a career as an author. Even if you're planning to publish only one book, it's important to know what other similar titles are out there.
Don't just look up the titles themselves and be satisfied with just reading the blurb (book description), read other books in your genre. Hopefully, if you're writing in a particular genre, you already enjoy reading similar books. If not, it's best to gain familiarity with your genre of choice. Authors who are traditionally published have an advantage when they truly know the market. They read a lot of other books and make sure they keep up to date with the latest trends in their genre.
If you need help with market research for teen or children's writing you could subscribe to Novel Insight, which is a review service for schools. Novel Insight reviews over 600 recent releases every year with a big focus on Australian and New Zealand titles, including smaller press titles. It will definitely show you what's in the market! Individual memberships are available here: https://novelinsightreviews.com/individual-membership/
You can also do a workshop with Rochelle on market research. These are run regularly and include membership for Novel Insight for 12 months. See the link below for more details: