Kind Of A Big Book Deal

Episode 25 - How and When To Choose Your Book's Categories and Comps

• Meghan Stevenson

Share episode

What if your book idea isn’t the problem, it’s your platform? In this episode of Kind of a Big Book Deal, publishing expert Meghan Stevenson breaks down why building your author platform matters more than obsessing over comps, subcategories, or bookstore placement. Using listener Mike C.’s question about his music and wellness book, Meghan reveals the truth behind prescriptive nonfiction (a.k.a. how-to or self-help books), why comparing yourself to bestselling authors can backfire, and how understanding your audience makes category and positioning decisions effortless.

If you’ve ever wondered what makes agents and publishers say yes, or how to stop wasting time on what doesn’t move the needle, this episode gives you the roadmap. Meghan’s no-fluff advice will help you focus on what really sells a book: proof of concept and a loyal audience.

Episode Highlights:
(0:00) Intro
(1:17) Listener question: What is prescriptive nonfiction?
(2:10) Defining prescriptive vs. narrative books
(3:35) Understanding genre, category, and positioning
(4:46) How to choose your comparative titles wisely
(6:15) Why huge author comps can hurt your pitch
(7:15) How tone and audience affect book positioning
(8:00) What publishers and agents really look for
(9:21) The #1 focus before writing your book
(11:19) Final advice: Build proof, not perfection
(12:01) Outro


Follow Meghan:

  • Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/megstevenson
  • Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/megstevenson
  • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/meghanstevenson/
  • TikTok: @meghan.stevenson.books
  • Website: https://www.meghanstevenson.com/


Have a great idea for a book but don't know where to start?MeghanStevenson.com/quiz


Traditional publishing expert Meghan Stevenson blasts open the gates of the “Big 5” – Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins, Hachette, and Macmillan – to share what every entrepreneur and expert needs to know about landing a book deal.

In episodes released every other Monday, Meghan shares wisdom and stories from 20+ years in publishing as well as interviews with authors, literary agents, and editors. She also answers questions from listeners like you.

Whether you are an experienced entrepreneur with an empire, or are just starting out – this podcast will help you understand what you need to do in order to turn your dream of being a bestselling author into real life.

Speaker:

That's the number one thing to ask. It's not to go all the way down this weird rabbit hole of comps or to understand the book, you know, how the book he's writing fits into the bookstore. He actually needs to build his platform first. Because then the answers to those questions are gonna be easy, they're gonna be obvious, and he won't be wasting his time on shit that doesn't matter. Welcome to the kind of a big book deal podcast where entrepreneurs come to learn about traditional publishing. I'm your host, Meghan Stevenson. After working as an editor for two of the biggest traditional publishers, I started my own business helping entrepreneurs become authors. To date, my clients have earned over $5 million from publishers like Penguin Random House, Simon Schuster, and Harper Collins. In these podcast episodes, I blast open the well-kept gates to traditional publishing. I'll explain what every entrepreneur needs to know about landing a book deal without losing your mind. I'm going to share stories, answer your questions, interview the successful authors I've worked with, and probably say platform more than a tech pro. So if you dream of landing on a bestseller list but have no idea how, this is the podcast for you, and I am so, so glad you're here. Howdy y'all! Today's question comes from Mike C, who posted this comment on my LinkedIn. I'm writing a nonfiction book about the benefits of music and health and wellness that is a cross between three books. The Creative Act by Rick Rubin, The Practice by Seth Godin, I Heard There Was a Secret Chord by Daniel Leviton. Does that sound like a prescriptive book? I'm still trying to figure out the subcategory. Is it wellness? This is a great question, Mike. So kudos to you. First, I want to pause and define prescriptive for y'all. In traditional publishing, when we say prescriptive, we mean how to or self-help. If your book directly tells people what to do or how to do something, it is likely prescriptive nonfiction. However, if your advice is indirect, say you're using your own story as an example for people through a memoir, then it's likely not. The book What My Bones Know by Stephanie Fu, which I absolutely love, is a great example of this. While Stephanie's book has a lot of takeaways for readers, it's narrative and not prescriptive, because she shares her own story and research rather than telling readers directly what to do. Prescriptive nonfiction is a genre within publishing because there are categories within it. For example, business, personal finance, health and wellness. While most of the time we focus on category, it is really helpful to understand the genre you're writing in as well, because the rules are different between genres. Just like the rules of romance don't apply to sci-fi, how memoir and narrative nonfiction are written and presented within publishing is very different. I've said this multiple times across multiple episodes of this pod, but it's worth repeating. I am an expert in traditional publishing and specifically prescriptive nonfiction written by experts and entrepreneurs. If you're not those things, an expert or an entrepreneur who wants to traditionally publish a how-to book, the advice I'm about to give does not apply to you. So if you're writing fiction or memoir or children's or narrative, you would be much better off finding an expert in those areas because I simply cannot and will not help you. So now that I've done my disclaimer and we know what we're talking about, we can go back and dig into Mike's question. The books he has listed are what's known as comps or comparative and competitive titles. I'm gonna pause and break this down for you. Comparative titles are books that a reader could presumably buy in addition to your book. For example, I'm really into spirituality, psychology, and human design. So I have bought multiple books in those categories to read, often in a single purchase, versus a competitive title, which is exactly what it sounds like. As a reader, I'm not likely to buy two books on diet, for instance, or maybe even two books on productivity. Instead, I want a singular solution. This distinction is important because of how you will want to position your book among these other books and authors. This is part of the work I do on a book proposal for our clients, so I'm not going to give away everything I get paid for. However, to help both you and Mike out, I'm gonna pose a question. What about the books he mentioned is similar to the book he wants to write, and what is different? So this question, when you ask it to yourself, gives big clues. That's worth going back to. So when you think about your book, what about the books you think of as similar? Why are they similar and why are they different? So going back to Mike, for example, if he thinks that his work is more similar to Rick Rubin, then we can check out the categories listed on Amazon to see where that book is shelved digitally. So the creative act is shelved in creativity, in popular psychology, creativity, and genius, and in personal transformation, self-help. These categories give us an idea of where that book might fit in, right? If you're comparing yourself there, then you'd be like, okay, my book is self-help. It is about transformation, it is about creativity, it is psychology. Wonderful, right? What you might notice though, like I have, is that some of the categories listed on Amazon are super niche and not really accurate to how a book would be shelved in a bookstore. So the actual categories to a publisher that the creative act might exist in are likely psychology and self-help, which are pretty similar and tend to be shelved together, especially in smaller independent neighborhood bookstores. So next, let's look at the other books that Mike mentioned: The Practice by Seth Godin, and I heard there was a secret cord by Daniel Leviton. So for Seth Godin, he's also listed in creativity for the practice, but likely because of his history writing business books, this particular book of Godin' is also shelved in business motivation and self-improvement and motivational management and leadership. Now, while this doesn't mean Mike should necessarily exclude the practice, especially in a quick this meets that comp in like a query letter or something, he may only want to refer to it. Mostly this is because it is important to avoid comparing yourself to a best-selling author with a huge platform in your comps, unless you also have a huge platform. Which Mike does not. I'm going to address that later on in the pod. Lastly, let's look at I Heard There Was a Secret Cord by Daniel Leviton. I have some insider knowledge here because I was working at Penguin when his first book, This Is Your Brain on Music, was published. I literally sat in the launch meeting and got to hear the positioning. And while I won't give anything away, his work is definitely perceived as more serious academic science than self-help. That is reflected in the categories listed for this book as well. I heard there was a secret chord as listed in musical philosophy, physics of acoustic and sound, and music appreciation. This brings up the question of voice and tone. If Mike is an academic, this might be a good comp. But if he's not, if he's trying to be more general and commercial, offering more of an MPR level or smart cocktail party level conversation, comparing himself to Daniel Leviton might not be the best fit. Okay, so now that we've gone through the titles Mike mentioned, we can take a broader view. Most of the time, authors like yourself do not and should not do a deep dive into comparative and competitive titles. Most of the time, you simply need a really broad, this meets that comparison. That's because an expert in books like your literary agent, like someone like me, will be able to do this work more quickly and more effectively than you can. Instead, what I want you to focus on learning is what your readers want to know from you. So often I find that experts and entrepreneurs who want a book deal are focused on what the industry wants and their own goals. Instead, what I would focus on learning is what your readers want to know from you. Because here's the thing category is really, really easy when you've done the work to understand exactly what your audience wants from you and where your audience is going to go looking for help in a bookstore. What I've seen among my clients who are, you know, experts and entrepreneurs with huge audiences and substantial author platforms is that figuring out the category of your book is super simple when you've done the work to understand how what you want to write about intersects with what people need to know about that topic in order to overcome a particular struggle or tackle a specific problem. That's very similar to answering the question that Mike posed about whether you're writing a prescriptive book or not. Are you giving a prescription for readers to follow? Are you offering actionable advice? Do you have a plan? Do you have guidance that will get a result? Can readers help themselves and solve their own problems when they buy and read your book? If the answer is yes to those questions, then congrats, you've got a prescriptive book in the works. I want to circle back honestly to this because what I realized when I Googled Mike, because I Googled you when you send in a question. I want to know as much as I can. I want to be able to help you. I want to make sure this is a good use of your time and my time to feature you on the pod. And I could not literally find Mike, even though I knew his first and last name because he commented on a platform that uses that. I could literally not find him, which means he does not have a platform, right? Which means that's the number one thing to ask. It's not to go all the way down this weird rabbit hole of comps or to understand the book, you know, how the book he's writing fits into the bookstore. He actually needs to build his platform first because then the answers to those questions are gonna be easy, they're gonna be obvious, and he won't be wasting his time on shit that doesn't matter. That's just basically what it is. Uh that is a very straight and no nonsense answer to that question. And if you're thinking, oh my gosh, everything comes back to platform, you are not wrong, y'all. The biggest thing is that your idea and your platform walk together. They are the two things that go into your book proposal. They are the two things that make your book successful. And if you're wasting time doing anything else, like other than getting proof of content for your idea and growing your audience, then you're not moving in any real way towards your book proposal or a book deal or a successful book. So that is the straight no nonsense. I'm tired of y'all's BS, even though you haven't really shown up with BS answer. All right. So if you have a burning question yourself, please submit them. There is a link in the show notes. You can comment on my socials. We're always looking for questions to answer in upcoming episodes. So check out those show notes. You can leave a voicemail, you can comment on the socials, you can send me an email, whatever way works for you. And as long as it hasn't been asked before, I'm willing to go over it. So I hope you learned something today about comps and basically what you need to do as an author to understand where your book fits in is to actually like build out your platform. And yes, look at other books in the category, yes, read your competitors, yes, go to the bookstore, do all that research, but really nothing is as important as getting proof of concept for your idea and building an audience so that you can prove to me, to a literary agent, to a publisher that you know your ish and that you can sell books because that is ultimately what traditional publishing wants from you. So I hope you go do that. I hope you are learning from this podcast. And as always, always, always, cheers to your success. Thanks for tuning in to the Kind of Big Book Deal podcast. Want to see where you're at on your book journey? Check out my free quiz at MeghanStevenson.com forward slash quiz. That's M-E-G H A N S T E V E N S O N dot com forward slash quiz. See you next time.