#comparison titles

[georgiamoorewriter]

👇🏻 𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗶𝘀 𝗮 𝗖𝗢𝗠𝗣𝗔𝗥𝗜𝗦𝗢𝗡 𝗧𝗜𝗧𝗟𝗘? 👇🏻

𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗻 𝘆𝗼𝘂'𝗿𝗲 𝘀𝘂𝗯𝗺𝗶𝘁𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮 𝗺𝗮𝗻𝘂𝘀𝗰𝗿𝗶𝗽𝘁 𝘁𝗼 𝗽𝘂𝗯𝗹𝗶𝘀𝗵𝗲𝗿𝘀, they'll ask for books that are similar to yours so they can get a sense of where it fits in the market. They're often referred to as 'comp titles' or 'comps'.

𝗔 𝗿𝘂𝗹𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝘂𝗺𝗯 with these is that they should be relatively recent releases. List specific books if you can, but you can also include authors whose work is similar to yours. 𝗢𝗻𝗲 𝘂𝘀𝗲𝗳𝘂𝗹 𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗰𝗸: you can highlight specific elements in your submission, like "the sizzle of a Tessa Bailey with the humour of a Sally Thorne". 𝗜𝗳 𝘆𝗼𝘂'𝗿𝗲 𝘀𝘁𝗿𝘂𝗴𝗴𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗼 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝗯𝗼𝗼𝗸𝘀 you can also use movies and TV shows in a pinch.

𝗛𝗲𝗿𝗲'𝘀 𝗮 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗹 𝗹𝗶𝗳𝗲 𝗲𝘅𝗮𝗺𝗽𝗹𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗽𝘀 𝗜 𝘂𝘀𝗲𝗱 𝘄𝗵𝗲𝗻 𝗾𝘂𝗲𝗿𝘆𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗺𝘆 𝗱𝗲𝗯𝘂𝘁 𝗻𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗹, 𝗙𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗡𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗻𝗱.

FOUR NIGHT STAND is a 90,000-word standalone contemporary romance, perfect for fans of Sally Thorne’s The Hating Game, that would appeal to readers of Amy Andrews, Denise Williams and Tessa Bailey.

[rozmorris]

Your first pages - 4 more book openings critiqued at @Litopia by literary agent @agentpete author @anniesummerlee and me!

I’ve just guested again at Litopia, the online writers’ colony and community. Each week they have a YouTube show, Pop-Up Submissions, where four manuscripts are read and critiqued live on air by literary agent Peter Cox @agentpete and a guest, or sometimes two. This time the other guest was longtime Litopian Annie Summerlee @anniesummerlee , who has published short stories in a range of online…

[clarislam]

Comp Titles for “Engagement To Die For:”

Books:

“Murder On The Orient Express” by Agatha Christie

TV Shows/Movies:

“Only Murders In The Building”

Video Games:

“The Murder of Sonic The Hedgehog” 

[reunitedinterlude]

like grandfather like grandson

[wyauwu]

in which even after his detainment, kristoph has left his mark.

[youssefguedira]

saw a list on lyricstranslate earlier so my question to you all today is. what's the longest song title you can think of? fall out boy answers will be discarded i already know

[secretsimpleness]

hi, new follower here for the exquisite ME fanart, have you played supergiant games' hades? pretty sure that's something i'd love to see in your style

Thank you for the kindness! Regarding Hades, I have some good news and some bad news. The bad news is that it's not my type of game, gameplay-wise. I usually don't enjoy combat for its own sake. The good news is that I did some research, because in this instance I'm perfectly fine with watching someone else suffer with combat. So, at the very least, I did some scribbles for you based on my findings :)

[novasillies]

consider my brain sufficiently rotted (close-ups after the break)

[staghunters]

There was a promise in our stride

But we changed courses, headfirst into the unknown

[abybweisse]

Ch204 vs ch120, Spoiler

The cover art for ch204 actually harkens back to what Finny and Snake wear to the Halloween party in ch120.

In both cases, Snake dresses as a witch/wizard, while Finny dresses as a vampire.

It's just that this time, Snake's outfit looks like he attends Hogwarts, while Finny looks like an Anne Rice character with a martyr complex. 😏 And neither one looks happy at all. 😢 They look exhausted and close to tears.

Well, Finny can remove that crown of thorns as soon as he tells Snake the truth about how his other circus friends died (at least the ones that came to Phantomhive Manor). He can get that burden off his chest and feel some relief.

And Snake can remove those glasses as soon as he realizes that Doll isn't there to help any of those orphans. Faced with reality, he should see that Doll and the others needed to be stopped, at just about any cost.

[tayfabe75]

Similarities between the visuals for Taylor's 'Mastermind' at the Eras tour, and The 1975's Self-Titled and Notes on a Conditional Form album art. (source 1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

[jesncin]

Hi! I discovered this blog through your Superman comics (love em, they’re great, A+, wonderful work) and I was looking into buying your graphic novel bc I love your art style and the premise seems cool!

My question, though, is that the description for Moon Boy starts off “for fans of The Witch Boy and Squished”, and I don’t know what either of those are— do I need to know those stories, or have read them, before I can read Moon Boy?

My word, thank you so much! It means the world to me that a handful of Superman fans migrate over to my graphic novel. If you liked how my Superman comics talk about diaspora and immigrant identity as an alien, then Lunar Boy is that to a queer, third-culture kid, culture-shocked degree.

Oh you don't have to read the Witch Boy or Squished to understand Lunar Boy. Those are what's called "comparison titles"- it gives readers an idea of the vibe of my book. Lunar Boy is often compared to the Witch Boy because it's a magical queer story about family, and Squished because that book is about a big family going through change from a big move. All those are their own stories with different authors and artists :)

[call-me-pup2]

I have such mixed feeling about the term 'daddy', part of me thinks its weird to say out load or refer to someone as that at all (just for me to i don't think that about other people using it 🖤)

But then the other part of me feels ridiculously subby about it like the thought of someone that has true 'daddy' energy and orders me to call them that makes any wisp on my dom side vanish into thin air

Maybe its a case of if I met the right person it wouldn't feel weird at all

[silent-partner-412]

i love gba fire emblem so much it’s so great aesthetically the animations are great and i love the pixel art also the gameplay is snappy and easy to understand without too many bells and whistles literally anybody interested in picking up a classic fire emblem game could start here and it’ll ease them into the early games great (aka i love sacred stones a lot and it’s doing all the heavy lifting for that era)

[ashlynniis-bracketeers]

A Totally Normal Murphy {LoP/GG}

Happy Halloween! 8D Been playing a lot of Lies of P lately. Good game, though it kicks my Sekiro-playing ass lmao.

Have a Totally Normal Scrapped Watchman 8}. Don't mind the colors or the missing right hand and eye, he's completely normal, no need to worry.

I hope you like it!

[bloody-wonder]

starting new series

in order to balance my reading i like to track the progress i'm making with old series vs how many new series i'm starting. my loose goal is usually to finish/catch up on at least five and start at least ten new series in a year - which turns out isn't as difficult as it sounds bc we're not even halfway through the year yet and i already hit the latter mark! here's an overview of what i read and my opinions :)

series that were so good i immediately read all the books available:

doctrine of labyrinths by sarah monette (book one: mélusine). okay so this was life-changing. not sarah monette inventing dark aroace romantasy in 2005! they hated her for her slay so much she had to start writing cozy fantasy under a pen name! this story is so weird and unique i honestly have no idea how to pitch it except to say that fans of books like the locked tomb, mdzs and captive prince will very likely enjoy it too. the fact that it's not a depraved booklr cult classic by now is a travesty. but we can still make it happen so if you fall into this particular reader category (and wouldn't be put off by the fact that someone may or may not want to fuck his brother a little bit) please do yourself a favor and read this series! check the trigger warnings first tho

the cemeteries of amalo by katherine addison (book one: the witness for the dead). i liked the goblin emperor, didn't love it, but after binging doctrine of labyrinths in less than a week i sorely needed a cure for my book hangover so i decided to pick up this spinoff series and wouldn't you know it - i binged it too lol. ig february was my monette/addison era. amalo felt like course correction after the goblin emperor and, while it's set in the same world and written in the same tone as that book, many of its aspects reminded me more of doctrine of labyrinths which is probably why i ended up liking it more - and was surprised by that too since i typically don't like this slow meditative writing style in fantasy but ig sarah monette just brings a certain je ne sais quoi to her books (emotional whump). the third book is coming out next march and i'm very excited to see what the saddest gay priest detective will do next👀

the stolen heir duology by holly black. to be completely honest i don't think these books are necessary. ig it was cool to return to elfhame several years post tfota and see some of my favorite ya fantasy characters from outsider pov but i found the main couple quite bland, especially in the second book where they are predictably overshadowed by jude & cardan in every respect. jude & cardan are simply The Power Couple, i love them and i appreciated the opportunity to revisit them in their 20s. madoc, everyone's favorite worst dad, has some nice scenes too but apart from that this installment was neither adventurous nor action-packed nor particularly romantic. it's clear now that holly black plans to continue writing in the elfhame universe and i sincerely hope she will try to shake things up by going full adult and/or changing the genre (i have this galaxybrain idea of a wwdits style mockumentary about madoc's exile in the human world which i'm trying to telepathically plant in holly black's brain as we speak)

evander mills by lev a. c. rosen (book one: lavender house). lavender house was the first book i read this year - i picked it up on a whim, honestly not expecting much, but ended up liking it a lot. in many respects it's a pretty basic closed circle murder mystery but with an all queer cast, whereas the second book has our gay detective investigating blackmail. the fact that the story takes place in the (homophobic) 50s and the queer victims are not protected by the law whatsoever adds an interesting spin to the whole idea of seeking and serving justice. i never thought i'm a serialized detective story type of person but ig if you make it queer enough i'll read anything lol so now i'm eagerly awaiting the next andy mills mystery which will come out in fall.

series i'm maybe going to continue reading later:

aubrey & maturin by patrick o'brian (book one: master and commander). seeing all the old man yaoi on a boat memes on tumblr rapidly propelled this series to the top of my tbr. now i have finally read the first book and,, liked it? lol idk the prose was very good, aubrey & maturin's friendship was sweet and the reading experience was cozy, with funny moments here and there, but overall i wasn't gripped by the plot nor did i particularly connect to the characters. i'm glad i read it but rn i'm not planning to continue this (extremely long) series any time soon. the book did have a delightful nautical atmosphere tho so there's a chance i might return to aubrey & maturin's adventures one day, if the mood strikes

page & sommers by cat sebastian (book one: hither, page). this one i didn't like at all tbh. i think cat sebastian just isn't the author for me and i should quit trying to read her books. however, i am both blessed and plagued by completionism and this series only has two books so i might read the second one this year just to appease my demons lol

series i'm not going to continue:

adam binder by david r. slayton (book one: white trash warlock). someone on tumblr recced this book to me ages ago and i wanted to read it ever since - purely bc of the title tbh😅 something i failed to consider tho is that urban fantasy is probably my least favorite subgenre of fantasy. and this book unfortunately didn't feature any memorable character moments or mind-blowing plot bits that could have broken through my unimpressedness with the urban fantasy setting🤷‍♀️

rook & rose by m. a. carrick (book one: the mask of mirrors). okay now we're entering the Dislike & Disappoint territory. i got interested in this series bc i heard it being compared to gentleman bastard but the similarities end at the renaissance venice setting and a conperson protagonist. the mask of mirrors completely lacks the rizz and swagger of scott lynch's writing and its characters just don't have the oomph of locke lamora and his team. so that was disappointing. on top of that the book is extremely long and convoluted with a worldbuilding that bothered me a lot and i couldn't put my finger on why until i read the themes section on its wiki page - ah yes, the us politics, again, using a foreign setting as a window dressing, again. listen, ik the us politics are important for the us authors to write about but when i pick up a book inspired by the italian renaissance what i want to get is themes and motifs representative of that time and place, even if we modernize them by (honestly lackluster) queernormativity and gender equality. i was mildly curious about the identity of the rook but now that it's been revealed i see no reason to continue this series.

the masquerade by seth dickinson (book one: the traitor baru cormorant). i intended to finish this book last year and leave it there but it was so unbelievably boring it put me into a reading slump for like two whole weeks and i ended up finishing it in january. i noticed that books about colonialism often try so hard to strike this solemn literary tone and say something profound that characters and plot just get bulldozed over by that dedication to conveying this very serious theme. admittedly, baru isn't as bad as that - i'm just biased bc she was pitched to me as a character in the same category as lymond and tyrion lannister so i was disappointed on that account seeing as it was the only reason i decided to give this book a try. i will say the general concept of the story and the plot twist at the end were indeed good but the overall reading experience was so aggressively meh that they just weren't worth it for me and so when the Big Thing happened i was still underwhelmed.

emily wilde by heather fawcett (book one: emily wilde’s encyclopaedia of faeries). i wrote a long ass goodreads review about why i disliked this book so much but let's see if i can be concise for once (ha, as if). i'm a big fan of olivia atwater's books so based on all the buzz around emily wilde i thought i was picking up a similar faerie story. turns out this was more like an "elevated" cozy fantasy version of ali hazelwood's books featuring howl in leather pants (tweed pants?). where atwater uses faerie tale tropes and fae lore to explore classism, neurodivergence and nuanced romantic and platonic connections, fawcett seems to write from a perspective that is decidedly normative. just like emily wilde, half a soul has a heroine who reads as neurodivergent but the narrative is always firmly on her side, whereas the moral in emily wilde seems to be that she has to smile and socialize more or smth. just like emily wilde, a thousand stitches features a faerie as a love interest but in this case he indeed reads like a whimsical magical being, so similar to humans and yet so different at the same time, whereas mr cheap howl knockoff reads like a quirky human man who is an asshole sometimes and can do magic. atwater's books are fairly popular but emily wilde is the book that has mass appeal and ig i shouldn't really be surprised bc when have the stories that question the status quo ever have been more popular than the ones that reinforce it? so i'm not really surprised but i am bitter. this book left a sour taste in my mouth and made me feel really bad about myself which was something i hadn't reckoned with when i picked up this cozy fantasy. tbh i initially was going to masochistically read the sequel out of morbid curiosity but then i remembered that i can read literally anything else instead lol the hater gods spared me just for once😅

2024 reading updates | goodreads