As a well-informed writer, you know what a comp title is, and how important it is for your query to an agent or publisher. But where do you start your search for the perfect one? The same advice is often given over and over to querying authors: talk to librarians and independent booksellers, and leverage recommendations from Goodreads and Amazon.
There’s nothing wrong with that advice, especially consulting your local literary experts! But as a publishing professional who spent years researching comp titles for a dozen titles every season (yes publishers also have to use comps to pitch your book to sales reps, retailers, and wholesalers), I can suggest some tools to make the process faster and easier. And no, you won’t need to make an account or spend a dime.
The process of finding comp titles has three main steps, and you can accomplish them using a range of free-access tools:
- Find titles that target the same audience as your book and have a subject, theme, or writing approach in common with it.
- Use those titles to find further ones published in the last few years.
- Refine your results by identifying which ones are most likely to impress gatekeepers.
When I worked in house, I of course had access to some information that you won’t, particularly sales data that could tell me, to a point, which books performed the best in the sales channels I was targeting. In spite of that, I still depended on all of these tools to help me find the most meaningful and effective comps that would make those I was pitching to sit up and pay attention.
One quick note: I’m writing as someone who has spent her career selling books into both the Canadian and US markets, so you’ll find some tools here that were built for one country or the other. Fortunately, since most North American books get sold into both markets, they’re still comprehensive research tools for both countries.
Phase 1: Find Titles.
Bookmanager
Bookmanager is an inventory program for independent bookstores. It populates their websites with metadata about each book (the cover image, description, trim size, reviews, etc.) and keeps track of sales made. Like the websites of retail giants like Amazon, it receives metadata for more than 20 million books directly from publishers or their distributors.
I prefer using catalogue platforms over Amazon for the first stage of comp research, because their search results aren’t muddied by second-hand copies, foreign editions, or other search results that make it hard to know exactly when a book was first published. In Bookmanager you can filter your results by subject, format, and age range, as you can on most retail sites. But you can also further narrow things down by choosing “exclude kids and teens” (if relevant), and you can select recent releases only, and/or eliminate all future releases.
A bonus feature on this platform is a sales ranking for each published book; just be aware that this ranking only shows how well the book stacks up against others sold by independent retailers who use Bookmanager.
CataList
This site serves the same purposes as Bookmanager, but it has a few differences in functionality for comp research. In its Advanced Search section, you can filter your results by Thema or BISAC codes; the latter are what publishers employ to choose comps themselves.
Authors can often get hung up on the belief that they need to find books that perfectly match the subject of their own, but that isn’t the case. If you choose the top five BISAC codes that describe the content of your book, then you can find viable comps by searching for books that have just one of those codes in common. The Book Industry Study Group has great information on how BISAC codes are chosen.
If you know which publishers serve the audience you’re writing for (a good thing to know!), you can also use CataList to browse their most recent catalogues for comps.
Review Journals
Most serious review journals have at least some of their content behind a paywall, but you don’t have to subscribe to benefit from the ones who review books in your genre. Follow them on social media and sign up for some of their newsletters (they often have curated newsletters for different genres/audiences) in order to see their free content as it comes up. You’ll also see paid promotions from publishers, which will show you which books they are putting the most marketing money behind. For a more active hunt, you can search many journals’ websites by keyword and view the basic details about the titles that come up, even if you can’t click through to read the reviews for free.
Compilation Blog Posts
If your book falls into a category that people make compilation posts about (e.g., “Ten Books for Overworked Parents,” “This Year’s Best Counting Books,” etc.), those can be a useful place to find comps. Be aware, though, that casual bloggers will likely draw on books from decades past in their posts, so you’ll be best served by finding blogs associated with libraries and review journals. The people writing those have access to a huge pool of new releases—and getting to know them well is part of their job.
When you enter your search into your browser, set parameters to see posts only from the last two years. On Google, this is under Tools, then Advanced Search. You can also try adding “of [year]” to your search query.
ChatGPT
I have used ChatGPT to find titles that compare to mine, but mostly at the market-research stage, begore I begin writing. Its advantage is that you can use more complex ideas to refine your search results, for example, “Find me 32-page picture books about hiking and growth mindset for ages 4-7.” But it has two glaring disadvantages: First, it doesn’t have access to the most recent information on the internet. Second, it is prone to making things up. ChatGPT once presented me with a picture book title it claimed was written by Jane Whittingham and illustrated by Noel Tuazon. Those two creators have collaborated in the past—I worked on those books myself—but this title was a complete invention. Double-check every suggestion it gives you with a secondary search.
Phase 2: Use the titles you’ve found to locate more recent ones.
Edelweiss+
Like Bookmanager and CataList, Edelweiss+ is a platform that publishers use to share their catalogues with sales reps, wholesalers, and retailers. Unlike the previous two, it displays the publishers’ own comp titles to all users, even when you choose the free “browse with limited access” option. Even better, those comps are provided as hyperlinks, so you can navigate directly to them and check out their comp titles. It’s a great way to see which books are being chosen as comps by publishers.
Do note that publishers are encouraged to comp their own titles where suitable, because that gives the bookseller the best sense of what kind of final product they’ll be getting. That means that if you’re looking at a series title, you might end up in an endless loop of books in that series. If that happens, try again with a standalone title.
Phase 3: Refine your list to the most successful titles
A good comp title should be immediately recognizable to the agent or publisher you’re submitting to, and should have a reasonably large audience. By naming it, you are a) giving a shorthand description of your book’s content, and b) arguing that your book will appeal to the same audience as your comps. The unspoken claim is that it has the potential to be just as successful as they are. For that reason, it’s in your best interest to narrow your list down to books that have done well—as long as their popularity isn’t so widespread that it would be absurd to claim you can replicate it, as with Harry Potter or The Hunger Games.
Award Lists
Not all accolades and awards guarantee good sales, but the attention at least means that the book has been in the eye of publishers and agents who work in the same genre. For the biggest literary award lists in the United States, check out the Booklist website. For Canada, browse the Award Winner catalogues on CataList. If you’re writing in a more commercial genre, do a search for awards that serve it, making sure they’re serious enough that traditional publishers publicly celebrate a win.
Amazon
Phase 3 is where Amazon is a handy research tool, because it displays major editorial reviews from top journals. Most publishers will also update their books’ descriptions with other literary reviews, accolades, and award wins or nominations. Search each of the potential comp titles you’ve found and pay attention to the following features (if you aren’t seeing them on your country’s version of Amazon, try Amazon.com):
- Editorial reviews (That’s a section near the book description that you’ll probably need to click to open on mobile or scroll down to find on desktop.)
- More than a few customer reviews
- Further reviews and accolades above or below the book description (This is something publishers have to add manually to their metadata, but it’s a good sign if they do it.)
While book sales are sometime successful without these things (and are sometimes unremarkable in spite of them), their presence is a good sign that a book has had all the support it needs to set it up for success.
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Erin Alladin 
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