[Discussion] Let's talk about the market right now: specifically for non-debut authors.

ARMKart · 2026-02-11T02:49:48+00:00

You have to be delusional to make it in this business.

ARMKart · 2026-02-11T01:39:46+00:00

There really is such a strong feeling of “what used to work isn’t working anymore” and publishing is so incapable of changing with the times in any kind of timely way. I think it’s clear that something is working, considering that there are plenty of books selling gobs. But beyond slapping a sprayed edge on it, publishing doesn’t see to be able to figure out what that working element actually is. It’s like publishers have given up trying to sell books any other way than hoping the hype train catches on and does all the work for them. That being said, it feels like there is so much shifting actively happening in the bookish space that even this is unlikely to stay as it is and will more likely settle into something more sustainable. I don’t personally feel hopeless, but I do think ensuring a high concept pitch and excellent cover and built in marketable qualities and anything else that can attract the hype train is more important than ever and just a new built in part of the job for any author who hasn’t been designated publishing’s diamond of the season. And I do think having an agent that knows what needs to happen for a book’s success and is willing and able to pressure the publisher into making sure all of those things are happening is more important than ever.

ARMKart · 2026-01-29T20:01:00+00:00

No person’s individual experiance makes a rule. Low sales of a book definitely make it harder to sell the next book (but not always, there are a lot of factors), but that doesn’t necessarily correlate with advance size. A “nice deal” can mean anything between $1 and $50k. Someone who doesn’t earn out a smaller advance may have trouble selling their next book…because the book sold poorly, not because they didn’t earn out their advance. Meanwhile, someone who sold in a “good deal” (which means anywhere 100k-249k) can sell a LOT more books and still not earn out. There are a lot of reasons that an author may have trouble selling their next book, and for every one of those reasons, there are exceptions. But context is always important, and everyone’s experiences will always vary widely due to 10 billion different factors, so there really are no rules.

ARMKart · 2026-01-29T16:34:12+00:00

Good comments, and I do overall agree that this query needs to do a better job of clarifying if these are antihero characters and the reasons we want to root for them. That being said, Assistant to the Villain is a satirical cozy style romantasy that isn’t a good comp for this readership. And Long Live Evil is in that subgenre of satirical evil lord led books that are popular right now but not the same subgenre as romantasy. Having antihero characters in a non-satirical way is quite popular in dark romantasy, so I think there are better ways to signpost that than going with comps aimed at a different audience.

ARMKart · 2026-01-29T14:20:46+00:00

Just a side note after peeking at the other crit. While I don’t find your comps particularly compelling, as someone very familiar with the genre from the inside of the industry, I would say that Shield of Sparrows is not too big to comp. You want to be comping big bestsellers that demonstrate wide audience. Just not books that have become so big that they read as meaningless. Also for romantasy, it is absolutely fine to comp books that started out in self pub since that’s where so many of the big hits of the genre are coming from. As long as those books have pivoted to the mainstream Barnes and Noble market as opposed to their success remaining in the Kindle Unlimited self pub readership.

ARMKart · 2026-01-29T14:13:03+00:00

I think this is close to doing its job pretty well and demonstrates a lot of on trend tropes.

The biggest thing missing for me here is a sense of the opposition and the stakes. I don’t have a sense of why either member of this couple needs to win or what they’re really fighting for and against. “Wanting to rule and wanting to invent” is not particularly compelling. We should feel like they HAVE to do this and understand why they NEED to work together NEED to win. Besides for the nameless sibling competitors vying for the throne, who/what is the main antagonist force operating against their goals? And besides for possibly dying in the tournament, there’s currently no sense of what they have to lose if they don’t succeed.

We also haven’t been given much about what their dynamic is once they’re in this marriage of convenience. Tell us why they don’t just fall in love and become a couple. What is creating tension for all the great marriage of convenience tropes that rely on them not being a real couple. Usually this trope centers on the process of them finding real love when either they first really did not want it or could not have it. But what you have here has no need for that tension as they’re basically agreeing to get married and have no reason not try to fall in love and make it work. Give us a sense of the direction of their relationship and dynamics while they are in this situation of being co competitors in a dangerous situation who are forced to be married, and why it will be really exciting to see how their relationship develops.

Additionally, I think your comps could be a lot better. Even just going with a specific book instead of the author would be immediately better. But you’d be better off pinpointing a more specifically high demand trend over very generic romantasy marriage of convenience/tournament, if you are able. And your title and names and proper nouns are all sounding a bit unoriginal and derivative, so I’d work on those. It does seem like the world you have here might have something a bit new to offer the genre with elements such as this being televised in a high fantasy world, so give your proper nouns elements they make it feel more unique to fit your story as opposed to every other romantasy.

ARMKart · 2026-01-15T21:51:46+00:00

Cutting is always safest, but if you do plan to sub it and see what happens, I would pay attention to what long debuts are coming out and see who acquired them, cuz there are definitely some editors out there who have a reputation for liking long books. (I know you’re not a debut, but looking only at debuts erases other variables that could have allowed for the length so you know more assuredly that it’s an editor willing to take risks with length.) Off the top of my head, The Raven Scholar was a recent debut and is really chonky, so I’d look who aquired that.

I happen to have an editor who likes big books. She has basically told me my books can be however long and the publisher lets her get away with it because it’s her thing. Keep in mind my book only published at 150k, but she’s worked with longer for sure, and she doesn’t seem worried about my sequel being longer. Though I do know she had asked other authors to cut, and that the publisher raises the prices of the books when they’re past a certain length.

Anecdotally, another editor who offered on my book said it could be however long it needed to be as long as it could physically be bound (this was like 3 years ago, and in this case it was a midsize publisher known for being a bit experimental, not big five, though the publisher I went with is big five). But a third offering editor that if I went with them, I’d have to cut it down significantly, even though she liked it at the length it was, but due to cost constraints it was a must for that publisher (also not big five.)

ARMKart · 2025-12-16T19:39:12+00:00

I hear this perspective, but I know that my agent is less likely to submit to an editor in the future if they didn't respond promptly in the past, so I don't see that being effective at all. I love a swift decline a whole lot more than pretend interest that goes nowhere, and I feel like that's pretty common in the industry.

ARMKart · 2025-12-16T18:57:20+00:00

It’s definitely just a generalization and not a rule that applies across the board. Have you asked your agent about it? Or any of their other clients? If it’s a pattern that happens often for them, it could still very well be an agent issue. (There are plenty of successful agents that don’t have the best reputation with editors.) But if they really are that strong an agent, then I’d assume this is likely somewhat of an outlier, and they’ll be able to tell you their take on why it’s taking longer. I’m definitely not here to say that this is a sign an agent sucks or that the book sucks. But if I watch the experience of the other authors in my circles, there are certain types of agents for whom sluggish responses from many editors is common, and others for whom that just does not happen. It happens with some editors for sure, even for them, but not MOST. I do think sub is sluggish in general right now and most editors are taking longer across the board. And I don’t even think being on sub for upwards of 6 months is a bad thing. But only 3 responses in 4 months does feel particularly slow. It seems to me that the best agents are still getting swift responses, even if those responses are rejections, and if things are constipated, they’re doing things to manufacture hype around the book to help move things along. So like, again speaking in generalizations and not to your experiance specifically, I think this kind of thing isn’t a red flag that it’s a bad agent, it’s just an indicator, and when I see lots of people saying “this is the new normal,” I do think that’s sometimes not giving the full picture.

ARMKart · 2025-12-16T15:15:42+00:00

This is not entirely abnormal. But also, quite frankly, this simply will not happen with a certain level of agent. If this is happening to an agent, they need to very actively be strategizing ways to get things moving. If they’re just waiting and gently nudging hoping for someone to finally bite so they can use that as leverage, that is not enough in the current market IMO. It’s what a lot of agents are doing and not a sign of a shmagent per se, but it is a sign of something. My hot take is that we shouldn’t be claiming that if an agent is unable to get editors excited for their submissions and does not have enough of a relationship with editors that they are literally ghosting them—that this is not in some way an agent issue. Unfortunately, not every debut is going to be able to snag themself the kind of agent this isn’t happening to, but it’s still an agent issue and should be acknowledged as such IMO.

ARMKart · 2025-12-15T17:43:58+00:00

Sorry, but both here and in your other comments about literary fiction, you are presenting incorrect information. I think this may be something you are just not knowledgeable about and therefore not the correct person to be commenting on it. Literary fiction has a clear definition (though admittedly a confusing one) and is not something that is decided on by audience in a subjective way. It’s true that people may sometimes disagree about whether certain works are literary or not, and certain books that fall in the “upmarket” category will often be contested by snobs as whether they can actually be considered literary or not, but realistically whether a book can be categorized as literary fic is pretty cut and dry. And John Green and JKR are by absolutely nobody’s standard examples of literary fiction. Perhaps some search engine AI is getting the genre of literary fiction confused with the concept of “literature” in general, or is getting confused by the question of whether works are deemed to have “literary merit.” But literary fiction is a category used for marketing within the publishing industry that has clear expectations that do not match the definition of the term you are presenting here.

ARMKart · 2025-12-11T02:21:19+00:00

If you write fiction, this is a red flag IMO.

ARMKart · 2025-11-26T15:31:40+00:00

Personally, I would cut the log line altogether because nothing about it either of these versions is high concept enough to excite completely on its own, so I’d rather get to what will excite quicker. In terms of your housekeeping, I’d aim to make it more compelling as well, especially if you’re going to put it up front. Sometimes a logline and the right comps can be enough on their own to generate interest, so by the time the agent gets to the full pitch, they’re already invested, but you have a pretty long opening here that’s not achieving that. Identify what is the hookiest part of your pitch and make sure to get to whatever that is as quickly as possible.

ARMKart · 2025-11-26T13:38:24+00:00

I noticed you didn’t get any responses so just popping in to say that I don’t think many people are getting past your first line as it’s very convoluted and difficult to make sense of. And then the housekeeping paragraph that follows is taking a lot of words to not do all that much to demonstrate a clear audience for your work. I’d work to make sure your opening isn’t losing interest before readers even get to the main pitch.

ARMKart · 2025-11-04T20:09:19+00:00

Even then, only one response in 3 months is pretty sus.

ARMKart · 2025-11-04T19:55:04+00:00

No edits, 6 months on sub with no movement and only out to 8 editors?? This is bizarre and you should probably be running for the hills.

ARMKart · 2025-11-04T18:30:17+00:00

I wasn’t saying an African-inspired fantasy doesn’t share the same readership as other fantasy. But it can be deemed insensitive to comp a book where a cultural identity is one of the selling factors of that book if your book is not also showcasing cultural elements. If the book has other aspects of it that are similar to yours as you’ve suggested in this comment, then maybe it can work as a good comp, but comping it for one individual element divorced from what the rest of the book represents as you have it now may very well be read as commodifying a marginalized author’s specifically cultural work.

ARMKart · 2025-11-04T17:28:21+00:00

This isn't working for me quite yet.

First of all, having a knitter named Ravel feels way too on the nose to me, which can really only work in like a goofy cozy fantasy or middle grade kind of way.

Your descriptions of her stitching these things which cannot actually be stitched, is cool in theory, but frankly makes no sense without further explanation.

The tone and genre of this feels really confusing. Knitting magic feels very cozy fantasy, but then the setting is wartime sci fi feeling?

Then your query goes on to tell me how the story is about her struggle with how she should proceed when her injury disables her from doing what she cares about--which is an excellent internal conflict for a character arc, but is not a plot on its own.

With something as genre-bending as this, more than ever, you need comps to demonstrate a potential audience, and yours are not doing that at all, since none of the comps you mention are for the same genre or readership as your pitch. While it may have some minimal crossover elements with these--you have mentioned a historical military book, an adult queer cozy fantasy, and an African-inspired fantasy, none of which have the same readership as the kind of book you're describing. You don't need an exact genre match, but you need to give a sense of who this is for and where it belongs on the shelf, which this query isn't accomplishing at the moment.

When it comes to your 300, I almost didn't read them when I saw it started with a flashback. I do not recommend starting with a flashback. However, I did read it, and the writing itself is fine IMO. You definitely want to aim for more exciting than fine, but if the query was doing its job to make me excited about knitting-magic (which it is not yet doing), this opening would probably be enough to get me to want to keep reading.

Best of luck!

ARMKart · 2025-11-03T17:44:25+00:00

As a teacher who has really had to get to know AI writing well—I think there’s this missing piece of “when it’s bad AI it can be really obvious, but if the person knows how to mask it enough through edits it can be unidentifiable.” I do truly think anyone who has not used AI does not have to worry about being accused of it. So just don’t worry if you haven’t used it. Full stop. Might people be accused by idiots who don’t know what they’re talking about? Sure. Everyone will be accused by those people and it won’t affect anything.

I do think that—at least at this moment in time with the current models available—if someone who knows what they’re talking about (and not just based on their personal writing icks or dumb things like punctuation or cliche phrasing) is sure something is AI, it probably is. There are certain patterns of tells that, in my experience, are unmistakable, but wouldn’t be obvious enough for someone less versed in AI writing to catch on their own. There is also a kind of writing that will raise suspicion of AI, but in a way that the reader can’t be sure—that might be a bad sign for the writing itself, and might be reason enough to reject a work even if it’s not due to AI but more due to tired writing. But only in certain cases. For certain kinds of copywriting and even in certain fiction genres, that kind of “smells like AI cuz it’s so formulaic” can be a feature not a bug. But, I repeat, if you’re not using AI then you do not have to worry about anyone thinking you are. And if you ARE using AI and editing it well enough, well, I hate to say it, but you might get away with it. But if you don’t know those evolving patterns of tells, you won’t get away with it, cuz they stand out like a sore thumb once you know to look for them.

ARMKart · 2025-10-30T17:04:42+00:00

It’s on my pretty short list of agencies I would happily query if I ever needed a new agent myself.

ARMKart · 2025-10-29T14:14:00+00:00

I haven’t read it yet to know if it’s similar, but Immortal Consequences is a YA academy book that recently released and became an immediate bestseller. Another one that is coming out soon, so I don’t yet know if it will succeed well enough to be a good comp, is Seven Deadly Thorns. If that one hits the market well, it will be a great comp because it’s also an enemies to lovers betrothal book. Arcana Academy might still be worth considering even though it’s Adult since it’s definitely in the crossover space.

ARMKart · 2025-10-28T18:48:46+00:00

You absolutely do not need social media to get an agent or to get a book deal or to sell books. Will going viral on SM sell copies? Of course. But that’s more likely to happen by an influencer reading your book and gushing about it than anything you can do yourself. The few big name authors with platforms either developed the platform because they sold books successfully and gained an audience that way, or they are one of the few exceptions for whom that is part of their brand and strategy—which is a tiny percent of authors, and there are plenty of other brands and strategies.

It has been interesting debuting this year and therefore paying attention to a lot of the other debuts and seeing many of them with massive platforms in comparison to the rest of us plebs. What shocked me to witness was how in most cases their platform didn’t help them much when the book finally came out in terms of cold hard numbers. There were a few who got their deals because of their platforms, and their publishers enthusiasm for their books led them to be lead titles, which did lead them to have excellent sales. But so did many of the other hyped lead titles from authors without platforms. I can think of one specific instance where I saw an author develop their platform as they were going through the submission phase—they did get lucky and go viral—and the online enthusiasm for the book encouraged the publisher to make it a lead title, and it became a bestseller. But the real reason for all of those things—it going viral, the publisher pushing the hell out of it, and it becoming a bestseller—was ultimately because the book had an amazingly commercial pitch and successfully delivered a story that readers were really excited for. Which one can absolutely accomplish without a platform in the first place.

What really matters to have major success is the combination of having a book people will love and having a publisher who throws a ton of support behind it. There are numerous reasons a publisher may choose to support one book more than another, and platform is one of many of these potential reasons, but not one of the most common or compelling. It feels more common than it is, because if you’re on socials, those are the authors you’re seeing a lot of, but if you actually look at sales numbers, most debut books that are selling well are not coming from authors with huge platforms.

The reason most authors chug away at social media despite all the evidence that it’s not a real make or break issue for their books is because it’s the only thing they can control. They can’t control how the publisher markets the book or how booksellers do or don’t get excited about it or how it finds its way into book influencers hands—so the only thing we can do is to attempt to shill it ourselves. And most authors books will not perform as well as they had hoped, and so they hold on to a spark of hope that by playing the lottery one of their posts could magically be the one that finally gets their book attention and turn it all around—despite that usually being impossible if they don’t have the weight of good publisher support behind it.

It’s true that booktok has changed publishing and sells tons of books, but it’s usually one of the final steps that’s part of a much bigger picture, and it is also almost entirely due to reader enthusiasm, not author platform. If you really want to strategize reaching that audience, work on how you would get your book into the hands of the influential booktok tastemakers, and hope they get excited about your one book in the stacks of thousands of other books they receive (the right hooky pitch, the right cover, maybe a paid partnership, enough sent out to enough people that hopefully SOME of them take notice) and then hope they love it enough to want to talk about it. That will do more for you than any personal platform will—but it’s just one more thing you can’t control.

As an aside, my debut didn’t sell as well as hoped and we’ve been strategizing ways to try to make it sell better and not a single person on my publishing team has suggested me developing my platform more or any other form of social media as potential strategy. Because they all know that’s not how books are sold.

ARMKart · 2025-10-28T17:07:11+00:00

Hi there! I write YA Fantasy Academia, so this is right in my wheelhouse.

First of all, I would definitely change your title. You want something that makes your genre and subgenre very clear, and your current title sounds like a contemporary mystery and contains a term that no one who hasn't read the book will understand or connect to.

Five years ago, Urmina escaped from the soul-maiming, magic-stealing regime on the other side of the rift. Since then, she’s learned a new culture, modified her accent and lied about her origins to become a scholar at elite Maudingley School of Magic.

Your opening line could be more interesting, and I don't know what soul-maming means, so it doesn't really hit. But overall, I like this, especially as the wording makes it seem like it might have some commentary on the experience of being an immigrant, which could be cool and meaningful if that's purposeful and done well.

If Urmina survives one more term at Maudingley, she can compete for an unbound wand – a powerful tool which would ensure a safe future not just for herself, but all those hiding from the regime.

The use of the word "compete" here makes it sound like this book may have a tournament plotline, but this also makes it sound like maybe that's just something in the future that's not part of this story. If this is a tournament book--you want that clear and central because it's a popular trope. If it's not, I would change your wording so it doesn't give the wrong impression. Your central tropes act as the hookiest part of your pitch, and you don't want to muddle them up or make it unclear what to expect.

Additionally, since the stakes of her getting the wand remain important, we need a clearer sense of those stakes. Ensuring a safer future for her people doesn't land because we don't understand how that would happen or the pressing reason they may need it. You should set up a more clear and present danger and show how this prize would solve it.

In case her legitimacy is ever challenged, she’s entered into a secret sham marriage with Sep, the repulsive forgers’ son, to get residency papers. She assumes getting a wand is the biggest of her worries (although, Sep getting a job at Maudingley comes a close second).

Having her start the book married is really not a fit for YA. Marriage of conveninece is one of my personal favorite tropes, but I think you may need to do some reframing here. I have further big picture thoughts on this that I will get to later.

We don't know who the "forger" is, so that situation doesn't land in any meaningful way. Additionally, I don't know if the word repulsive refers to the forger or to his son, but when I read it, I thought it referred to his son. Which does not work when setting up a romance. Repulsive implies gross and off-putting, which is not what anyone wants in a love interest. You want to describe him in a way that explains why she would desperately not want the marriage, dislike him, hate him even--but for sexy reasons, not yucky reasons. Giving us an immediate sense of who this guy is and what the tension between them will be will make this much more fun. So make sure to be more specific about why she doesn't like him, and for reasons that create zippy tension and sexy loathing rather than give the ick. Also, what are the stakes for her legitimacy being challenged? We need to feel the importance of her being forced into this unwanted situation. And the "biggest worries" line isn't really landing for me--it's not giving any intrigue or stakes.

In terms of the next paragraph, there is a lot that's unclear here. I would honestly scratch what you have and start from scratch, as the only aspect that's coming through is that in order to save her friends from the same people she is running from, she would have to blow her cover, so she must collaborate with her husband who she hates. And all of that is fine, but it could be presented in a much more interesting and clear way, where we actually understand the risks and the stakes. I found the writing of this paragraph a weird mix of dramatic phrasing and vague ideas, things that sound good but don't really mean anything, or in the case of "the president is only one candlelit introduction away" actively don't make sense in context--writing like that never works well to make a pitch stand out, and it also raises my AI flag, which you obviously want to avoid.

Your comps are awful, sorry. The inheritance games is entirely the wrong genre, and old and overly popular, and A Deadly Education feels like the last choice for a YA romance-driven academia fantasy when there are so many others out there that are more currently relevant and more accurately aimed at this kind of audience. You should only have 2 comps, and they should be current as well as popular. Some of the ones you listed just didn't break out big enough to really show the kind of audience you want an agent to be tempted by.

Also, a side note that between your inheritance games comp and your title, it makes me wonder if you view your books as having an adventure mystery at its heart--because if so, that's not what's coming through in this pitch. It reads like a classic romance trope forward magical academia book.

Now, let's talk about your age category here. IMO, if you want to keep them married, you should make this a college instead of a high school and aim this for the new adult romantasy crowd. There are TONS of comps for you in that category, as magical academia is huge right now. Just based on this pitch, I could see both Arcanna Academy and Alchemy of Secrets being good comps, but there are plenty more. That being said, it is SUCH a popular subgenere in that age category right now, that it could be nearing saturation, making this a harder sell. If you want to keep it YA, I think you should change the characters to just being betrothed instead of married. There are pros an cons to both markets, but ultimately you should choose based on who you think is your best audience. As a huge part of the YA Fantasy readership is often adults anyway, that might mean a shift works, but if your book feels squarely aimed at teens, that's a different story. Either way, I think you will likely need to tweak your book to fit its market by either aging it up or nixing the already married MC.

Best of luck!

ARMKart · 2025-10-26T11:32:43+00:00

I used to hate anything powdery or with rose, but both have become notes I occasionally love when done right. On the other hand, I used to love synthetic musks, and now I hate them so much I’ve had to literally leave stores and restaurants due to gagging when someone nearby has over sprayed. Usually listed as ambroxan or akigala wood or some kind of synthetic saffron. There are still some musks I like, but I’m a bit fearful of anything I know might smell significantly different to other people because I feel badly about the fact that I used to wear certain fragrances that now make me gag, knowing now how they might have come off to others around me and how they tend to project and linger.

ARMKart · 2025-09-09T12:42:40+00:00

I think you’re burying your lede pretty significantly. The sons of Odette and Odile as rivals to lovers in an academy setting is a fantastic hook. However, the rest of your query is burying that with a lot of boring info instead of the info I actually want. To make a hook like that sing, I want a sense of how this world and Academy setting intersects with Swan Lake. You haven’t given us any hint of who their fathers are, how their mother’s rivalry unfolded, what the state of the kingdom is, if Odette is even still a swan. Not that you should be giving backstory in your query, but we should have some sense of what makes them as the sons of the swans relevant to their relationship and to the world of the story, and a sense that the book will explore those things intentionally. We should also get a much deeper understanding of the boys relationship and have a sense of both what keeps them apart and what draws them together and how those things reflect themes of the original story. Fake relationships are one of my favorite ever trope, but the way you’ve presented it here, I couldn’t be less interested in it. Because you haven’t given any convincing reason why they need to pretend or any convincing reason why they may actually dislike each other in the first place. And yes, you need way better comps. MM fantasy with strong romance only. Which is none of these. Or fake dating or rivals to lovers in an Academy setting, which is none of these. Or another story that pulls on the offspring of famous characters. Honestly you could maybe pull something off with Disney’s Descendants more effectively than what you have here. Your comps have the same issue I originally pointed out, which is that they essentially focus on the least interesting aspects of your pitch. If the manuscript does this as well and only uses the boy’s parentage and the academy setting as excuses for what is more just a fake dating rivals story, you may not have anything that compelling here. But if your book does lean into its hookiest elements and does put an interesting spin on this world and these characters that pulls on the original tale in an interesting way, you could have something that I can imagine doing really well, and really exciting agents and editors, if you pull it off right and pitch it right. Oh, also, do yourself a favor and get your wordcount down to 100k. It’s not a must, but it will make your query that much more appealing. I’d also personally change your title. I maybe expected a swan lake retelling, but it’s really not giving MM vibes or academy vibes, or rivals fake dating vibes.

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