Support for Indie Authors discussion

Are there any fantasy/alternative history readers/writers who'd be interested in the following swap?

1. We exchange book summaries, a paragraph or two about the book's style/characteristics, & 2-3 authors we've already identified as having a potentially similar audience ("if a reader likes John Smith, then he'll like my book" kind of thing)

2. We each come up with 10 authors whose readers we think would be a good target audience for the other author's book.

I'm looking for a 2nd opinion. My books are epic fantasy set in the modern world & I'm in the process of rebranding as "alternative history." I'm familiar with most subgenres of fantasy & soft sci-fi & would be able to swap with someone in those genres.

Please PM me if you're interested.

Just a clarification. It sounds like the second opinion should come before the reader swap? I'm not sure, so maybe I'm not understanding the request correctly, but mentioning it in case there are other questions about how it works.

Hi ML, Thanks for responding & sorry for not being clear.

I was proposing a brainstorm session of sorts. My idea was to find an author who also wanted to better identify their target audience for marketing purposes. Fantasy is a fairly glutted marketplace; I haven't read anywhere close to everything that might be similar. While I've pegged a few authors as having stylistically similar books, most of those authors' books were published 5+ years ago. I'm sure another reader of fantasy would have ideas about contemporary authors whose style/stories might be similar to mine.

Let me know if that helps to clarify. I'm not proposing we read each others' full novels (though if you want to do that, let's discuss) -- more of a marketing brainstorm to come up with a better list of similar books/authors.

Best,
Laura