Author Comparison...to yourself??

What happens when you start to compare yourself to...yourself

What’s in this post

• Wish Upon a K-Star paperback release

• Am I in Competition with Past Me?

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Wish Upon a K-Star paperback release

Wish Upon a K-Star is now available in soft, floppy version! AKA paperback.

While I adore the hardcover (which comes with a beautiful reverse dust jacket design by the talented Velinxi), I also understand how heavy they can be. Especially for my fellow bookworms who might want to carry more than one book with them. So, if you need a lighter, more transportable version of my antagonists-to-lovers romcom with a fake-dating variety show format, then your time is now!

Moon Minseok—or Moonster, as the WDB fans know him—wasn’t born to lead. Even as part of the world’s most popular K-pop group, he found comfort in his role as the jokester, the sidekick, the unserious one (with the cutest smile). But now WDB is drowning in dating scandals, and it’s time for Moonster to take charge of his group’s image. Shin Hyeri has been dealing with some scandals of her own. An up-and-coming K-drama actress, she’s been labeled a “nepo baby” (with a famous idol as a big brother) and now a bully (which couldn’t be further from the truth). Desperate to show the world that she’s earned her spot, Hyeri is determined not to let her rising star crash and burn.

When these two childhood enemies get caught up in yet another scandal while cohosting a K-pop festival, there’s only one solution that will save both of their reputations: appear on one of Korea’s most popular variety shows, Our Celebrity Marriage, where celebrities pretend to get married and compete in “newlywed” challenges. The plan is simple—pretend to get along, win back the fans, then go their separate ways. But what happens when a fake marriage leads to real feelings? Will Moonster and Hyeri bow to the pressures of their fame, or will they decide their love is something worth fighting for?

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Am I in Competition with Past Me?

Comparison is a huge concern/issue in publishing. We often get compared to our peers (for better or worse), but what happens when you start to compare yourself to...yourself?

I just released my fifth published book (yay!), Gods & Comics. And I’ve had the good luck to be able to publish in a couple different genres and categories (which is so fun). But, I’m at the stage in my career where, despite best intentions, I’m starting to notice the differences in my releases.

Some books got a lot of early support from my publishers. Some got none, but readers seemed to love them. And some got mostly post-pub support. As a midlist author* it’s really a gamble what’s going to happen with each book. But, as time goes on, we do tend to see which books get what and wonder what it all might mean.

The books that don’t get an orange banner where the others did. The books that get starred reviews and the ones that don’t. Or the ones that get foreign rights deals while others don’t. It’s odd, this unlikely competition you might start to feel with past you. Does it mean you’ve become a better or worse writer? Does it mean this book is better or worse than your others? Or is it just that the unknowable variables in the world and in the industry have aligned in just the right (or wrong) way for this release—in all likelihood it’s this last one. But, in our bid to gain some semblance of understanding and control, it’s hard to accept that some things are just out of our hands. So we latch onto whatever we can to tell us if we’re doing well or not. And without a set protocol or formula provided to deem any book a “success” (outside of being a huge bestseller), we rely on anything we can grasp with our unsure, desperate hands.

“Well, my last three books were JLG selections and this one isn’t, does that mean librarians hate it?” we might ask ourselves. Or, we might whisper, “This is the first time I’ve surpassed 20K goodreads adds pre-pub, this book might be it!” But, no matter what we try to use to tell ourselves if we’re on the right path or not, my biggest lesson over 7 years and 5 books, is that there’s no way to know outright which book will be “it” for us. If you’d asked me before releasing Once Upon a K-Prom if I thought that would be my most successful book to date, I probably would have said “no.” It was “quieter” in my mind than Wicked Fox. I’d previous written fast-paced, mythology-infused angsty romantic fantasies. There were high stakes and magical world-building in them. And K-Prom was a quiet, sweet childhood-friends-to-lovers romcom during a time where everyone in the industry was shouting that contemporary was “dead” in YA. Of course, that wasn’t the case for K-Prom. But it also created Expectations (with a capital E) for Wish Upon a K-Star. And that was the first inkling of self-comparison I felt. What if it didn’t do as well? What if K-Prom was a fluke? What if it was all a fever dream I just made up and convinced myself was real?

And now, with Gods & Comics, my “return” to fantasy and mythology retellings. The comparisons to past-me have come up again. But is that fair? Wicked Fox was a debut, there were shiny debut things that I could never recreate. First one being, the innocent excitement I felt not knowing half the stuff I do now about publishing. I’m not saying I’m a sad, broken, jaded author or anything. But I do have a healthy dose of realistic expectations now (plus, the industry is way different than it was seven years ago).

And, I realized after the first few comparison moments that I needed to stop it. It wasn’t healthy. It was making me actually dread releasing this book. And, as a huge chunk of publishing is spent working alone or waiting on things, we really should be able to savor the moments of joy. I had to, for my own mental health, ignore the urge to compare this release to my past books. Even when Gods & Comics got great things, I had to remind myself to appreciate it in isolation, not in comparison. And, in a lot of ways, that helped me just enjoy this singular journey. It was like putting on noise cancelling headphones and drowning out all the static. And it was absolutely freeing. Of course, I’m not perfect, moments of realizing what this book did and didn’t get cropped up from time to time. But, I had my mission already, and I forced myself to push those thoughts aside. They couldn’t matter during this process. And, I’m happy to report, that the world did not end because I didn’t try to predict if this book would be a success or not. (Honestly, I still don’t know, but it’s only been a week)

Maybe we’ll never stop being able to compare ourselves, to others and to our past selves. But I do think that accepting that every book is different, every publishing season is different, and even we are different, all helps us to stop the spiraling and focus on what matters. Writing the next book.

*midlist are the vast majority of authors who don’t get large advances or huge publicity or marketing pushes that are often dedicated to “lead-titles” or established consistent bestsellers.

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Gods & Comics Launch Event with Swati Teerdhala and June CL Tan

WHEN: Friday, May 1, 2026

TIME: 6:00PM ET

WHERE: Greenlight Bookstore

686 Fulton St.

Brooklyn, NY 11217