01 · Supply — what's already winning
Every Amazon bestseller in your subgenre. Their tropes, blurbs, cover language, review counts. The whole competitive landscape, read in full and structured for you.
We scrape the top of every relevant Amazon list monthly, then parse each blurb and cover for the tropes, archetypes, settings, and language patterns that are actually moving units right now. Then we cross-reference review counts, time-on-list, and price band so a hot trope on a $0.99 promo doesn't outrank a steady seller at $4.99.
02 · Demand — the tropes readers name
Reddit threads, Goodreads reviews, BookTok captions. The "I want a book that…" voice in the reader's own words. We mine it and score it.
Bestseller data tells you what worked; reader voice tells you which tropes readers name and praise. We track "looking for a book where…" threads across r/RomanceBooks and siblings, 4-and-5-star Goodreads reviews that articulate what the reader loved, and the BookTok captions where readers name what they want. Same readers, in their own words.
The Map's editorial pass sets the tropes readers name and praise beside what is already published.
03 · Vocabulary — the words readers use
The Goodreads shelves real readers create. Your blurb keywords, ad targeting, metadata. Words that find your readers, not words your editor invented.
If your blurb says "enemies-to-lovers" but readers are shelving the books they love as "I hated him then I didn't", your discovery is broken. We map the actual shelf-name and tag vocabulary readers use in your lane, then suggest the phrases to drop into your blurb, your Amazon keywords, and your ad targeting so the right people can find you.
04 · The verdict
Each signal gets its own pass. Then one editorial step compares them, looks for the agreements and the contradictions, and writes the Map — a structured document a developmental editor would recognise, not a wall of bullet points.
You get a complete pre-launch blueprint — thirty-nine sections covering a go/no-go opportunity score, the ranked trope stack with demand-vs-supply, FMC and MMC archetypes, the open market gap, comp titles three ways, cover direction, title and character-name ideas, the book-length sweet spot, reader vocabulary, the categories you can rank in, market economics, risk flags, and a step-by-step action plan. Same skeleton every time; the verdict changes.
Who it's for
- Indie romance authors deciding what to write next — or whether to shelve a half-drafted project.
- Series-planners working out the spin-off or the next lane.
- Writers coming back after a break who need to know what's moved in the last six months.
- Anyone who'd rather spend the week writing than scrolling Goodreads.
Who it's not for
- People looking for a ghost-writer or an AI to draft the manuscript. We don't do that.
- Authors who've already locked their next book — a Map is most useful before the outline.
- Anyone outside romance and its adjacent lanes. The model is tuned for this market specifically; we'd rather say no than ship something thin.
