DEALBREAKERS: 5 Reasons Your Book Won’t Sell
From Career Authors — write. sell. repeat.
1. Your Protagonist
- Is not Smart and/or Brave and/or Relatable
- Is not unique in some way
- Doesn’t drive the action from beginning to end
(Not all heroes wear capes.)
2. Your Premise is not high-concept enough.
3. Your Pacing is too slow or too fast or too one-note.
4. Your Tropes are tired, i.e., same-old, same-old dragons….
5. Your Opening
- Is full of backstory and info dumps
- Is derivative, we’ve seen it a million times before
- Is a non-starter because nothing really happens.
Copyright 2026 Paula Munier
This post originally appeared on Career Authors