By Bailey Potter, Senior Editor
Image courtesy of Unsplash
Comp titles (comparative titles) are helpful in so many ways to all corners of the publication of a book. From indie authors to agents and publishers to bookstores, their worth trickles down all the way to the consumer, though their design and purpose can vary for each.
Think about this consumer-facing elevator pitch for the book The Wolf King by Lauren Palphreyman: “Outlander meets A Court of Thorns and Roses in this wolf-shifter romance set in a realm inspired by the Scottish Highlands.” Immediately, you are clued into the genre, the subgenres, the style, the audience, and potential tropes and level of spiciness. By the reference of the compared books alone (if you’re familiar with them, of course), you know right away if you’re interested in reading The Wolf King. Agents and authors also benefit from using this type of comparison hook, whether they are submitting book proposals to publishers for consideration or crafting descriptive copy for their book.
Publishers, specifically the marketing and acquisitions departments, will search for comparative titles for their tipsheets, which are used to collect and share information about upcoming titles—like book specs and metadata, key selling points, the book description, keywords, and comp titles—with bookstores and distributors, who decide if they want to carry the book in their stores based on the provided material. The comp titles in tipsheets are books that have been published in the last five years (sometimes less than that) and are of the same or very similar genre (though the subgenres don’t need to be the same), book format, page count, and price of the manuscript at hand and have sale numbers that are close to or match the publisher’s projected sales numbers for the book. All the comp title information provides a framework for how the publisher sees the upcoming book fitting into the publishing market.
If you read the genre of your book often, then you as an author likely know of a couple of decent comp titles off the top of your head to use in your hook—newish is still best. There are a couple of ways that I usually like to search for comp titles. Though I try to avoid using Amazon for purchases, it’s an easy way to search for one similar book and then find others that are recommended on that page that are “frequently bought together,” that “customers also bought or read,” and other “products related to this item.” I also look at their “best sellers rank” genres that they have listed and click on those to see other similar comp titles in those subgenres. You can also use the filters options when searching for books to define a range of years for when a book was published, whether it’s hardcover or paperback, etc., which is helpful in narrowing down the field to the best matches for your comp titles. But remember that you don’t need to check all the boxes to find a good comp title.
Bookshop.org, Goodreads, and StoryGraph are great choices, too, to search online for comp titles. Bookshop.org also has genre lists that are built from the BISAC categories (book industry standards and communications) that are defined in those books’ metadata. You’ll find these BISAC codes under the “product details” on book pages. I like to use Goodreads for their customer-created book lists. StoryGraph is a newer alternative to Goodreads that tracks the books you’ve read but it isn’t owned by Amazon. It will recommend books that are similar to the one you’re looking at, so it’s easy to go down a rabbit hole of finding comp titles that way.
Then there’s the good ole fashioned way of finding book comps: Go to your local indie bookstore. This has the added benefit of the fact that local bookstores often uplift local authors, so if you’re an author, then you choose amongst these for at least one title that you can take note of that is similar enough to yours. And as a bonus, you can introduce yourself to the bookstore owner and begin networking. It may be a great place for a launch event down the road!
I hope this article has convinced you of the importance of identifying comp titles to your book as well as given you some good tips on how to search for them. It’s time to get out there and start reading and finding some comparable titles!
Bailey Potter got her master’s in publishing at Portland State University specializing in editing and design. Bailey has also had the pleasure of working as the associate acquisitions editor for Beyond Words where she reviewed manuscript submissions and developed tipsheets for each book they published. She has also been a project manager for Ooligan Press and, in addition to working with Indigo: Editing, Design, & More, has freelanced for New Harbinger Publications, Red Wheel/Weiser, Forest Avenue Press, and several others in addition to numerous authors.
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