Market Intel
Every marketing decision in Ishvana traces back to a smaller set of underlying questions. Who is your book actually for? What other books is it like? What shelf does it sit on? What do the readers of that shelf already love, and what are they tired of? Most authors try to answer these questions in their head and end up with vague, self-flattering answers — “my book is for people who like thoughtful fantasy with strong characters” — that don’t tell you anything specific enough to make a marketing decision with. The Market Intel subtab is the place where you force those questions to have real answers and you write those answers down. Comp titles with actual author names. Genre positioning with actual subgenre tags. Reader personas with actual demographics and motivations. Positioning statements with actual differentiators.
This is the foundation layer of the Marketing module. Every other subtab — Copywriting, KDP, Social Media, Queries, Ad Keywords, Creative Studio — pulls from Market Intel as context. If the Market Intel is vague, everything downstream is vague. If the Market Intel is sharp, the downstream copy and decisions are sharp too.
The four kinds of intel
Section titled “The four kinds of intel”The subtab stores four distinct kinds of research, each in its own section.
Comp titles
Section titled “Comp titles”Other books that are similar to yours. Good comp titles share at least one meaningful dimension with your book — same subgenre, same tone, same target reader, same structural shape, similar commercial tier. Bad comp titles are too big (“my book is the next Game of Thrones”), too old (“my book is like Lord of the Rings”), too niche (comped to a book nobody has heard of), or only superficially similar (same subgenre but wildly different tone).
Each comp title is stored with:
- Title and author. The book itself.
- Year published. For relevance and freshness checks.
- Sales tier. Bestseller, mid-list, long-tail — a rough sense of its commercial scale.
- Why it’s a comp. A short note explaining the dimension of similarity. “Shares dark academia vibe and female protagonist.” “Similar progression-fantasy structure and gritty tone.” “Same subgenre, same word count, same target reader age.”
- Dimension tags. Genre, tone, structure, voice, audience — which dimensions the comp shares.
Most authors should have 5-10 active comp titles. Fewer than 3 is too thin to generate useful downstream data. More than 15 is diluting — you’re including comps that aren’t really similar.
Genre positioning
Section titled “Genre positioning”Your book’s place in the genre landscape. This includes:
- Primary subgenre. The one specific shelf your book sits on (“dark academia,” “progression fantasy,” “cozy mystery,” “enemies-to-lovers romance”).
- Secondary subgenres. Other shelves your book touches. Most books sit on more than one.
- Category preferences. Which Amazon categories you’d want to be in (your primary picks, plus stretch categories you’d request through Amazon Support).
- Trope list. Which tropes your book hits. Especially important for romance, where tropes are the primary search axis.
- Reader promise. The core contract — what readers expect when they start the book. “A slow-burn romance with a morally gray love interest and a fantasy political subplot.” “A creature-feature horror with a small-town setting and body horror.”
The trope list is the part most authors avoid because it feels reductive, and the feeling is wrong — tropes are how readers search for books and how ads target them. Lean into the tropes. If your book hits enemies-to-lovers, fake dating, and found family, write it down. Don’t hide it because it feels too commercial.
Reader persona
Section titled “Reader persona”A specific imagined reader who would love your book. Not a demographic abstraction (“women 25-45 who like fantasy”) but a specific person with specific tastes: “She’s in her thirties, reads 2-3 romance novels a month, follows BookTok for romance trope recommendations, has Sarah Maas on her shelf and prefers books where the love interest has actual flaws, doesn’t have time for 600-page fantasy epics anymore.”
A good reader persona has:
- Age range and demographics. Rough bracket, not a point estimate.
- Reading habits. Volume, format (ebook/print/audio), discovery channels (BookTok, Goodreads, email lists, friends).
- Taste signals. Specific books and authors they already love.
- Turn-offs. Things they’ll put a book down for. Explicit violence, explicit romance, too-slow pacing, info-dumpy prologues.
- Purchase behavior. Price sensitivity, series commitment, KU versus purchase.
You can have multiple personas — most books sell to more than one reader type, and it’s useful to write up two or three personas for different segments of your audience.
Positioning statement
Section titled “Positioning statement”The single-paragraph summary of how your book differs from its comps. Not what makes it similar — what makes it different. Every book has one or two differentiators, and the positioning statement names them explicitly.
Structure: “Unlike [comp title], which [thing comp does], [your book] [what your book does instead]. Unlike [other comp], which [thing other comp does], [your book] [what your book does instead].” Two or three of these clauses strung together is usually enough.
The positioning statement is the hardest kind of intel to write because it requires genuine honesty about your book. Authors who write self-flattering positioning statements produce marketing that never lands. Authors who write honest positioning statements — including acknowledging what their book isn’t — produce marketing that speaks directly to the readers who’ll love it.
Where intel comes from
Section titled “Where intel comes from”Three sources, in roughly this order of importance:
Manual research
Section titled “Manual research”You reading other books, browsing Amazon, scrolling Goodreads, lurking BookTok. This is most of where good intel comes from, and there’s no substitute for doing it. The subtab isn’t going to read 15 romance novels for you to figure out your comps — you have to do the reading. What the subtab does is give you a structured place to capture what you learned so you can use it later.
Lagan research pipeline
Section titled “Lagan research pipeline”For the parts of the research that can be automated — “what are the top 20 books in this subgenre right now,” “what tropes are trending in this category,” “what do Goodreads reviews for this comp title say readers liked most” — you can send a research query to Lagan and have her run it against web sources. Lagan’s output lands in Market Intel as a research note, which you then review and distill into structured comp titles, tropes, and personas.
Lagan is a tool in this workflow, not the whole workflow. She can gather facts fast. She can’t tell you which facts actually matter for your book’s positioning — that’s still you.
Creative Studio debates
Section titled “Creative Studio debates”When you need to make a positioning decision, you can launch a Creative Studio debate. The debate’s inputs include your current Market Intel, and its output can be a revised positioning statement that the three specialists have argued through. This is most useful when you’re stuck between two positioning options and want to stress-test each one before committing.
How intel feeds the rest of Marketing
Section titled “How intel feeds the rest of Marketing”- Copywriting reads Market Intel to shape blurb voice, pull positioning language, and pick which hook to lead with.
- KDP reads Market Intel to suggest categories and metadata keywords based on your subgenre and comp titles.
- Social Media reads Market Intel to decide which platforms matter (romance audiences are on BookTok, progression fantasy is on Reddit) and which trope posts to draft.
- Queries reads Market Intel to generate comp title lists for query letters and to flag when your comps are too old or too big.
- Ad Keywords reads Market Intel to pull comp titles as starting keyword candidates.
- Creative Studio reads Market Intel as the baseline context for every strategy debate.
Change the Market Intel and everything downstream is affected. Update your comp titles and the next blurb generation uses the new comps. Rewrite your positioning statement and the next query letter draft reflects the updated framing.
Freshness and drift
Section titled “Freshness and drift”Market Intel goes stale. Comp titles published five years ago stop being relevant. Subgenres evolve. Reader preferences shift. The subtab doesn’t automatically expire intel, but it does tag the age of each piece of data, and intel older than 12 months gets a “review suggested” badge.
The right cadence for refreshing Market Intel is roughly once per major project milestone — before querying, before launch, after launch (if sales data reveals the comps were wrong), and before your next book’s marketing cycle. Not constantly, because constant review turns into busywork. Once per cycle is enough.
What the subtab isn’t
Section titled “What the subtab isn’t”- It isn’t a real-time Amazon data feed. The subtab doesn’t track live sales ranks or live category positions. For that, use Publisher Rocket or dedicated Amazon research tools.
- It isn’t a market research report generator. It’s a structured place to store your research. You still have to do the research — the subtab makes it reusable once it’s done.
- It isn’t predictive. Market Intel tells you what your book’s position is now, not what it’ll be in six months. Trends change and the subtab doesn’t forecast them.