Research your publishers

Camy here, up to my eyeballs in Love Inspired Suspense novels.

Yeah, I know—such a hardship. But someone’s got to do it, and I’m more than willing to sacrifice. {grin}

I’ve actually been a Love Inspired Suspense book club subscriber for a while (I only recently stopped because of finances) so I’ve been an avid reader of the line for a few years. But in the past year or so, I’ve slacked off on reading romantic suspense novels because I’ve been reading every Christian chick lit I can get my hands on, since I was writing my Asian Christian chick lit novels.

Now, I’m putting together a proposal for a romantic suspense, so I’m doing research.

I’m not talking about historical research or police procedural research or occupation research for my characters. I’m talking about researching the line I’m targeting.

For example, I know Steeple Hill Love Inspired Suspense has recently published a chef heroine, a philanthropist/heiress heroine, and a large-animal veterinarian heroine. Guess what occupations my heroine is NOT going to be?

LI Suspense has also recently published stories about a college reunion, a cold case skeleton found during a renovation, a woman running from her ex-husband who wants to murder her, and a man seeking to clear the name of his father, who was imprisoned for a murder he didn’t commit. Those are plot elements I WON’T be using in my proposal.

However, I’m also looking for trends about things they DON’T publish. I’ve noticed that Love Inspired doesn’t often publish books set in foreign countries or Hawaii (there have only been handful of them). So, I probably will keep my story in the continental US.

Love Inspired also tends not to publish big-city settings like New York or Los Angeles. So I’ll be setting my story either in a small town or some place not quite so metropolitan.

And it’s not just category romance lines you can research. Do you have a dream publisher? Well look at what authors they have and what each author’s brand is. How would YOUR novel fit in that line?

Here’s the tricky part. You want to be different yet the same as what they already publish.

For example, my publisher, Zondervan, has suspense authors like Brandilyn Collins, Terri Blackstock, and James Scott Bell. If you write legal thrillers and want to be published by Zondervan, you’ve got to show an editor how you’re markedly different from what James Scott Bell writes.

Zondervan also has chick lit/romance authors Laura Jensen Walker and me. Laura’s next book to come out is Daring Chloe, the first book in a series about a book club who moves out of their comfort zones to do exciting things, including a fabulous trip to Paris. If you have a humorous women’s fiction about a group that travels together, you’ve got to show an editor how that’ll be markedly different from Laura’s series.

Zondervan also has women’s fiction authors like Karen Kingsbury and Mary DeMuth. If your women’s fiction is anything like the two of them, you have to show the editor how yours is different, too.

So spend some time doing the research. Borrow books from the library and read up on your targeted publisher (most libraries have an inter-library loan system if your town’s library doesn’t have the books you want). You’ll be glad you did—you’ll be able to craft a killer proposal and a terrific story premise that an editor will jump up and down over.