Common Questions about Comp Titles

You’ve heard that you need to include comp titles in your query or book proposal, and you have questions. After a decade of polishing my comp-title skills as a publishing professional, I have answers.

Why do I have to choose comp titles?

A comp title serves two purposes.

1. It lets the editor or agent reading your query quickly wrap their head around what kind of book you’ve written or are proposing.
2. It tells them what kind of market your book will have.

No agent or publishing imprint represents every kind of book. In order to excel, they need to specialize. That works out in your favour as an author, because you wouldn’t want to be represented by someone who doesn’t know anything about your market and has none of the right connections to get your book to its audience. You also wouldn’t want them to sit on your query for months thinking it might be a good fit for them when it isn’t. Your comps are an efficient way for the agent or editor to assess whether your work falls into their wheelhouse.

The market angle is just as important. The person receiving your query needs to know who will be interested in reading your book. Is it an audience they have a good track record at reaching? Is it a large enough audience to justify the financial investment of making a book? Publishing is a business, and print runs cost tens of thousands of dollars. Your goal when choosing comps is to communicate that your book is a sound investment.

Why do comp titles have to be from the last few years?

Submission guidelines might state that a comp title has to be from the last three years or the last five years. This is another factor in proving that your manuscript has an audience who will buy the finished book. If you compare your text to The Chronicles of Narnia, you’re essentially arguing that readers in the 1950s would have bought them. On the other hand, if you say it will appeal to readers of the Keeper of the Lost Cities series, you’re asserting that middle-grade readers who are buying fantasy books right now will want this one as well.

Naming recent comps has a secondary benefit: you’re indicating to the person reading your query that you are up to date on what’s working well in the market you’re writing for. If you only name books from years ago, they have no reason to think you’ve done much reading since then. If that’s the case, they can assume there’s a good chance you simply don’t know what kind of writing and themes appeal to a present-day audience.

What if I really, really want to compare my book to something from longer ago?

First, share two or three recent comp titles that follow all the rules we’ve discussed and/or any rules stated in the submission guidelines you’re following.

Then, in your pitch, you can tuck in a sentence that mentions the older book without suggesting it’s a market comp. Sentences like “in the tradition of x” or “a contemporary answer to y” are useful here. You might also use an older classic with a more recent book to paint a picture: “Dracula meets Crazy Rich Asians in a madcap modern gothic satire.”

What if there aren’t any comp titles like my book?

If you’re struggling to find comp titles, your approach is probably too specific. Your book about giraffe researchers falling in love does not need to be compared to other books about giraffe researchers. Instead, think about your genre, audience, themes, and tone/voice.  

Genre

If you can stick within your genre, that makes life simple: readers of that romance book will also love this romance book. You don’t always have to stick closely to sub-genre, but if there is a recent successful book with other similar elements to yours, such as a vet-office romance with an animal-rescue subplot, do narrow in on that.

Audience

Your first concern with a comp is to choose a book your audience already loves. If you have to leave your immediate genre to find comps, keep your audience foremost in your mind. A nonfiction book on giraffe biology is not a good choice, because it targets a different readership. But a contemporary novel about a woman’s trip to the Serengeti might work if it hits similar notes in theme or tone.

Theme and Subject

When you think about the themes of your book, you can consider them in terms of what the audience takes away from it and what the emotional payoff of the reading experience is. If your giraffe book has a Hallmark-worthy ending, you wouldn’t want to choose a comp that leaves readers with the message that all workplace romances are doomed to fail. The two stories simply wouldn’t satisfy the same readership. Tropes can also be a useful concept to think about here. Does your book appeal to fans of the enemies-to-lovers or found family tropes? Look for comp titles that also strike those chords.

If the subject matter of your book is more relevant than story themes, you can take a cue from the guidelines publishing professionals use for their comps: make sure both books have at least one BISAC code in common. North American publishers assign each of their books three to five codes from the Book Industry Standard Group’s list of BISAC subject headings (although a transition to THEMA codes is in the wind). You can view the list here and instructions for choosing them here. This will just be an exercise for your personal benefit, but it’s a useful one. Choose the best three codes for your book and then search for comps using those categories as keywords. Remember to still keep in mind that your book and your comp should share the same audience.

Tone/Voice

If your book has a distinct voice, that is a selling point that you can draw attention to with a well-selected comp title: “The satisfying snark of The Ruthless Lady’s Guide to Wizardry.” Just be sure that your other comps relate to the actual substance of the book so the editor or agent gets a well-rounded image of it.

Is it “Comparative title” or “Competitive title”?

You’ll see “comparative”, “comparison”,  “competing”, and “competitive” used for the comp titles you need to provide in your query or proposal, but “comparative” is the most common. It accurately describes what you’re doing: comparing your book to others that your target audience already likes. You aren’t competing with these books, since they’re already out in the market paving the way for your work to capture the same readership.  

Some confusion about these terms arises from the fact that publishers do use both comparative and competitive titles in their behind-the-scenes work. They need to quickly convey to overburdened book buyers (the people who decide what books to order for their retailer or library system) how well they can expect a new book to perform with their patrons. To do that, they share comparative titles (books they’ve published, which will be especially similar in format, author, marketing support, etc.) and competitive titles (books published elsewhere that share similar themes or subjects and target the same readership).  To make life even more complicated, some companies use the terms in yet other ways. Fortunately, as a writer, you don’t have to worry about any of that. For your purposes, a comp is a comp is a comp.

How can I find good comp titles faster?

I have a whole post about using publicly available publishing-industry tools to do that! Check it out here.

Got more questions?

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