Building a Book Fandom: How Studying Comparable Indie Authors Helped Me Build a Smarter Romance Publishing Strategy

Case Studies as Compass

One of the most useful ways to understand how to build a career as an indie romance author is by treating other authors as living case studies. This week, I’ve been diving into what the industry calls “author comps”—authors whose work is comparable to mine in genre, tone, or publishing strategy. It’s not just about studying the competition; it’s about mapping the terrain I hope to navigate myself.

Most of the authors I’ve found as comps so far are well-established, with sprawling backlists and clearly systematized marketing engines. You look at their catalogs and you see polish. You see neatly branded covers, carefully engineered blurbs, and books stacked ten, twenty deep. But how did they start? What did it look like before everything was running smoothly—before they became a name? That part is buried, lost in the layers of their evolution. The messy middle is invisible.

I recently came across one such author—someone who’s been publishing for just over a year and already has 12 books out, split across two series. That’s about a book a month, a release pace that’s often framed as a gold standard for indie success. I found them through a $0.99 promotional deal and bought what appears to be their most popular book. But even that one is sitting around the 200,000 mark in the Kindle store rankings—not a total flop, but far from viral.

What makes them an intriguing case study is that they’re clearly doing many of the “right” things: consistent releases, series designed for read-through, active promo participation. And yet—there’s no website, no visible newsletter funnel, and her Instagram (the only platform I could find her on) has just under 800 followers.

It’s both fascinating and sobering. If I’m in a similar position a year from now—12 books deep with that level of visibility—I’d be disappointed. But it also sharpens my thinking: what does “doing everything right” actually mean in this space? And what might be missing from the usual success formula?

Mapping the Terrain

My approach to studying comparable authors is part reader, part researcher. I’m pulling from both Amazon and social media to identify authors whose work resonates with my own—whether it’s their writing tone, the kind of romantic arcs they explore, or the marketing strategies they seem to favor. Some of these comps come from books I’ve read recently; others are names I stumble across in newsletters, promos, or genre-specific Facebook groups.

It was never about finding a perfect match. I was more interested in the process—how different authors assembled their careers, the choices they made about covers, tropes, pricing, or how they built a sense of community. I wanted to see how all those little decisions added up. I wanted to understand not just what worked, but why.

To keep track of it all, I started a system. It’s nothing fancy. Sometimes it’s just a quick note—an impression of an author’s voice, a thought about their branding, a scribbled observation about how their backlist is organized. Other times, I get more granular: number of books, pricing tiers, series names, estimated rankings. All of it goes into a table in my notebook. This is a place where I can see indie author strategies in motion and spot patterns.

(Fun tool! You can get an estimate for how much a book is making in the moment based on sales rank (beware, this ranking fluctuates multiple times per day so this is a very rough estimate) by using this tool: https://kindlepreneur.com/amazon-kdp-sales-rank-calculator/)

What the Genre Teaches You to See

I’ve spent a lot of time cataloging author comps, and what’s become impossible to ignore is how the “conventional wisdom” about indie romance publishing—especially in Kindle Unlimited—actually plays out, day after day, in the wild. The authors who seem to “make it,” or at least the ones who are visible, who have readers talking and sharing and coming back, are the ones with big backlists. It’s not just about looking professional. It’s about being everywhere at once. Every book is another door into your world. Every title is a new chance for someone to find you.

Series are the backbone of all of this. But not just any series. The ones that work are engineered for emotional continuity, but they still let you dip in and out. In romance, that means siblings, best friends, co-workers, roommates. The promise isn’t just a new love story—it’s a familiar one. It’s a return to a universe where you already know the rules, the people, the inside jokes. It’s comfort, but it’s also a little bit of longing for what comes next.

Pricing is its own kind of code. There’s an unspoken rule: $4.99 for a full-length ebook. That’s the sweet spot. Cheaper prices are reserved for the first book in a series, or for a special promo. Higher prices? Only if you’re a superstar, and even then, it’s rare. The logic is simple: make it easy to binge, to read through, to keep going. That’s what KU readers are trained to do.

But what really stands out to me is how coded everything is, down to the smallest detail. Book covers do so much work. They’re not just pretty—they’re signals. Small town, dark romance, billionaire, mafia: each one has its own language. Fonts, colors, poses, even the way the models look at the camera. If you know, you know. Readers can spot their subgenre in a split second. The blurbs are just as calculated. Every word, every trope, every hint is there for a reason. It’s not just marketing. It’s a kind of literacy. A way of saying: you belong here, if you want to.

Defining Success on My Own Terms

I have been working on this comparative project for a while now. I keep coming back to it, circling through more authors, digging into their backlists, their strategies, their aesthetic choices, and their social media presence. I know I’ll keep doing this. But there’s one thing I keep noticing, over and over, especially when I look at the author I mentioned earlier: goals matter.

It’s easy to look at someone who publishes a book a month and assume you know what they’re after. That they want commercial dominance. That they’re climbing the Amazon charts, building a newsletter empire, chasing the algorithm. But maybe that’s not it at all. Maybe they’re experimenting. Maybe they’re building slowly, or prioritizing creative flow over rankings, or just seeing what happens. Success, in the indie world, isn’t a single ladder. It’s a constellation. There are so many ways to measure it, and so many ways to get there.

So part of this work, for me, is also a mirror. I’m not just studying other people. I’m clarifying my own goals. I’m trying to be honest about what kind of career I want to build. Do I want chart-topping visibility? A deeply engaged niche audience? A sustainable creative pace? Each of those options requires different choices. Different metrics of success. And that, in turn, reshapes how I read other authors—not just as examples to follow, but as case studies in different forms of ambition.

This process has made one thing very clear: I don’t just want to do what works for “them.” I want to understand why it works, and whether it’s a fit for where I’m trying to go.

Studying the Field to Find My Place

Looking closely at other authors’ strategies—what they write, how they frame it, how they show up online—has been one of the most grounded and clarifying parts of building my own author path so far. It reminds me that indie publishing isn’t just a business or a craft—it’s also a field, rich with patterns, norms, and outliers. It’s something you can study with care.

At the same time, it’s a field full of gaps and hidden variables. Not everything that matters is visible from the outside. Which is why doing this kind of comparative work isn’t about copying formulas—it’s about learning to read the signs, ask better questions, and refine my own sense of direction.

I’ll keep building my archive of comps. I’ll keep mapping the small, invisible choices that go into constructing an indie author career. But I’ll also keep asking what my version of success looks like—and how I can design toward that, instead of someone else’s blueprint.