Q&A: Market research
From Sarah Forgrave: - Do you have any market research tips (i.e., What are some of the ways you check to see if your story has been done before or what books might be similar to your idea)? Camy here : Great question! Before I do every proposal, I check to make sure my story hasn't been done before. Often, I check this even before I write the story. First I make a list about my story: (1) Genre (2) Character careers (3) Villain career/type (4) Overall theme/plot premise (5) Setting (6) Targeted publisher/line Then I go online to Amazon or Christianbook.com (since I write Christian fiction, Christianbook.com is a smaller, easier database to search) and search for books similar to mine. I will usually start with the publisher or line I'm targeting and search within that parameter for all the other things. For example, for my Steeple Hill novel, I searched within all the Love Inspired Suspense books on Amazon for any novels recently published in my chosen setting, Sonoma, Califor