In mid May, I was one of the 300 indie authors who entered the 2023 Self-Publishing Fantasy Blog Off (SPFBO9) within 41 minutes of submission opening. If you aren’t familiar with SPFBO, I hope that statistic convinces you of its popularity and visibility within the indie SFF community!
I’m excited to see how The Doctrines of Fire does in the competition. Obviously, it’s my debut, 18th century historical fantasy is a niche interest, and I lack the platform other entrants enjoy…but SPFBO is one of the best opportunities to get my book in front of a wider readership and help it find its audience.
Between June and October the 10 reviewer blogs will be reviewing, cutting and shortlisting their batches of 30 books. You can’t predict when your book will go under the microscope and rise to glory/burn out of the competition – judging teams and individual reviewers all have their own workflow – which adds to the excitement, I suppose.
Anyway, here is some Doctrines of Fire coverage from reviewers (not necessarily assigned to judge my book), other authors and readers. Check the links out and see who else catches your eye in the competition:
- Katherine D Graham has provided stellar coverage of the competition through her YouTube channel. I joined two other entrants in the Fantasy Faction slush pile to discuss the competition, our books, and indie author life in general
- The Doctrines of Fire was one of Fantasy Book Critics’ ~50 “Interesting Titles” highlighted at the start of the competition
- I was interviewed by Rune Nielsen for his ongoing series of SPFBO author interviews
- Dom of Dominish Books considered Doctrines‘ opening sentence one of the most intriguing among the contenders. He also rated its title as note-worthy
- Doctrines appeared on a few SPFBO9 TBR lists (one of my goals of the comp is to build a reader profile “readers who like X will like Doctrines” so I’m interested in seeing who is on TBR lists with me)
CL Jarvis 