#Authorlifemonth Day 10 My Comp Titles

 As I said last week, I am doing #authorlifemonth or, as some call it, #authorlifemonth2021 on Twitter. Yesterday's prompt was "My Comp Titles." Since I'm using Saving the Planet & Stuff for any book references for this challenge, my comp titles will relate to it. 

Comp titles, in case anyone is wondering, are titles of books yours can be compared to, especially known, relatively successful books you can compare yours to. Initially, you are trying to show prospective agents and editors that there is an interest in your subject matter out in the buying public. Then you're trying to show buyers that if they liked Book A, they will certainly like yours, as well.

Comp titles are a struggle for me. I have a hard time coming up with any, and I've grown to suspect that that's because my interests, which is what I write about, of course, may not be generally shared. 

For Saving the Planet & Stuff, the comp title situation is particularly interesting. I was working with a editor and publisher at the time, and they didn't require comp titles from me, because we were just interested in the next Gail Gauthier book. Yes, once upon a time there was an interest in the next Gail Gauthier book. You'll have to trust me on that.

Additionally, Saving the Planet & Stuff deals with environmentalism. The plot, the setting, and even the secondary characters are all part of that subset of the American culture that cares about environmental living. I find environmental children's books predicatable and even boring. The middle grade books are very pedantic. Kids are fighting evil corporations. They're saving an endangered species. YA books, when you find them at all, are frequently clifi. Humans have done something to cause climate disaster. If you've read one of those, haven't you read them all?

But I Do Have A Couple Of Comp Titles For STPS! 

 

Over the years, I have come up with a couple of books I think could be compared to Saving the Planet & Stuff.

 

• 
  
  Right now, I'm reading Boys, Bears, and a Serious Pair of Hiking Boots by Abby McDonald in which a teenage environmentalist goes out into the Canadian "wild" for the summer where she finds that she's not welcome. (Aside--I can't find much information about Abby McDonald, though she appears to be one of the staff writers for the TV series Bridgerton. I know you want to know that, since I want to know it.)
• 
  Kissing Frogs by Alisha Sevigny in which a teenage borderline mean girl
  is thrown in for the summer with the school science crowd who are dealing with one of those endangered species I mentioned above.   

These two books, along with Saving the Planet & Stuff, are fish-out-of-water stories. In STP&S and Kissing Frogs, the fish are being thrown in with environmentalists, which they most definitely are not. In Boys, Bears, and a Serious Pair of Hiking Boots, the fish is the environmentalist who is thrown in with people who are not only non-environmentalists, they're a bit hostile to the idea. These books are examples of environmentalism providing the background or character development for the story. 

They are also all examples of mainstream stories integrating environmentalism instead of stories that are excuses for environmental lectures. I don't think environmentalism will be a serious part of our culture until we start seeing this kind of thing happening in books a lot more.

Time Management Tuesday: When To Take Advantage Of New Opportunities

I'm a big believer in staying on goal, particularly writing goals. Flitting from one random new task to another rarely results in completed projects. Dropping everything to create some new work for a publication we've just heard about that has requirements that don't quite fit what we have on hand or to develop a new workshop so we can respond to a conference's request for proposals rarely, in my experience, brings results.

But we've probably all heard that we should be open to, and take advantage of, new opportunities. And we've also heard stories about writers who did commit three days to conferences where they did meet  agents who did sell their first books and they did become wildly successful. My impression is that the number of writers that happens for is very low compared to the number of writers spending time at conferences instead of writing, hoping that the conference will be an opportunity for them.

How do we balance staying on writing goals with recognizing a new opportunity that really might benefit us and taking advantage of it? I'm going to suggest that we should recognize and take advantage of opportunities that support our goals.

Some Examples From The Life o' Gail

• A year or two ago, I was offered the opportunity to expand the Connecticut Children's Literature Calendar to all of New England. This would have brought me some more name recognition from the members of the organization that would sponsor the new calendar, and I think I would have received free access to a regional conference. It doesn't take much to stroke my ego, so I was interested. But a little research on my part indicated that this would have been an extremely time consuming task, and I'd be doing it every month. The time it would take from my own writing (goals) wouldn't have been worth it. I passed on this opportunity.
• Last summer I heard about a virtual six-week flash fiction writing workshop. I jumped on it. As it turns out, last year one of my goals was "work on short-form writing, essays and short stories." An objective for another goal was "be open to attending events for writers of adult literature." So this workshop supported two goals. As it turned out, I came away from it with a short piece that was published by a humor publication and more work I'll be able to submit elsewhere. I wasn't thinking in terms of taking that course because it supported my goals, but the reality that it did may have been a factor in coming away from it with usable material. 

The Inspiration For This Subject

This past Saturday, April 3, Michelle Cusolito posted on Facebook about #authorlifemonth, a social media challenge that authors can take part in on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook (maybe other ways) to promote themselves and/or or a book. There are daily prompts/topics, this year's being:

Now, if you look at those topics, you'll see that some of them can relate to a specific book "intro an MC," for instance, "meme your book," "swag/stationery," etc. As it turned out, just two days before, I had pinned a tweet to my Twitter profile:

April is #EarthDay month. Time for an eco-comedy in an ebook edition. #environmentalism #YA #adult https:/www.amazon.com/dp/B00BAFA0NQ/A

 

That pin was about all I was planning to do for new Saving the Planet & Stuff ebook promotion. But then the #authorlifemonth  opportunity came up. I could continue to tweet about STPS, off and on, without being hard sell. In addition, I already have promotional material for this book. This was an opportunity that wouldn't require a lot of work from me.

 

And, finally, I have a "community building/general marketing/branding" goal this year. What is happening here is that #authorlifemonth has become a new objective to support that goal.

 

Our Takeaway

 

Be open to new opportunities that support your goals and could even become objectives to help you meet them.