What are Comp Titles And How Do You Use Them?

You’ve done the work and finished your book. However, you still need to catch the attention of prospective literary agents and book publishers.

Authors use a lot of tricks to give their works a better chance of avoiding a permanent place in the slush pile. A comp title is one such method.

Why Comp Titles Matter

A comp title (short for comparison title) is a book or other media similar to yours. It provides literary agents, editors, or publishers a frame of reference for your work. 

It also gives them a sense of its tone, style, themes, and place in the market. You help them understand its potential and appeal by comparing it to an existing book. 

You typically include comp titles in your query letter, a written pitch that introduces you and your book. Since people in publishing receive numerous manuscripts, it’s hard for them to focus on each one. A well-crafted query letter helps you make a strong impression.

It has to be brief because these people won’t spare too much time on each submission. Comp titles help with that as they provide both immediate context and powerful comparison. For example, “teenagers battling to become military leaders in an ongoing war against a hostile alien species” can be easily condensed to “Hunger Games meets Ender’s Game”.

Do You Need Comp Titles?

No matter your niche, genre, or category, a comp title is something you should consider. Its use extends beyond catching the attention of the publishing industry but also your target audience.

Publishers use comps to figure out the value of your work. This includes how popular they are, their sales, audience size, and their use of current literary trends. It’s a way to create marketing and sales plans with a higher chance of success. 

The easier you can convey context, the faster you get your audience’s attention. This isn’t limited to literature. Think of how many times you’ve seen these phrases on different types of media:

• If X meets Y.
• For lovers of X.
• Y but with a twist.
• A modern-day X.
• In the style of Y.
• If X wrote Y.

These short sentences are a way to make your readers pause, fire up their imagination, and wonder about your work. However, comp titles also set expectations. They expect you to live up to the comparison since you’re comparing your work to a popular book.

Here’s an example of how you incorporate comp titles into your query letter:

Dear Mr. Jericho,

I’m writing to seek representation for my 135,000-word mystery novel, The Family is Silent. It begins with a peculiar death: the family matriarch is found frozen in the garden. A private detective is called in to investigate amidst family members struggling to take over the family’s considerable assets.

The premise follows Agatha Christie’s blend of mystery in And Then There Were None. However, I’ve also added bits of the familial isolation and codependency you can find in Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle. 

Choosing A Great Comp Title

There is a lot of thought to choosing an effective comp title. Here are a few things to keep in mind.

1. Don’t use titles that are too old or well-known. 

If you choose titles that are too old, there’s a huge risk the people you send a query letter to won’t know them. This increases the workload for them as they’ll need to research the titles, reducing the likelihood of your query letter sparking their interest.

Similarly, choosing overly popular titles will lead to heightened scrutiny. The more popular they are, the narrower the space for comparison will be. Your book has to hit all the things that made the comp title popular.

Popular works also tend to be overused as comp titles. When they’re used so often, people will forget to care and pay attention. 

2. Use classic titles with caution.

Books considered classics are like the mountains of literature. They loom in the distance, their influence felt on every succeeding book of their genre. That’s a lot of greatness to compare yourself to. 

These books get imitated so often that comparing your book to them runs the risk of people viewing it as just another copy. They’re also the originators of tropes, styles, and themes that have become so ubiquitous to literature that your comparison might not mean much. 

If you choose to go ahead with a classic, make sure you’re establishing why your book is also different and unique. Go with a combination that suggests an exciting twist, like so:

• If Edgar Allan Poe wrote Alice in Wonderland.
• Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea meets Starship Troopers.

3. Choose recent titles.

Publishers and agents consider manuscripts not only by their quality but also by their profitability. The latter usually means focusing on books that fit within the current market.

You can demonstrate this by choosing comp titles that were published only in recent years. This means your book fits current literary trends and catches the attention of existing and active readers. 

Also, think of how well your comp titles performed. By choosing them, you’re saying, “Hey, my book can be just as successful as these.”

Some questions you can ask yourself to determine whether a book is comp material are:

• What are the obvious similarities and differences between my book and this book?
• Do they share the same demographics? (age, gender, professional and cultural backgrounds, interests and hobbies)
• Is this work the same format as mine? (hardcover vs. paperback)
• Are these books within the same genre or category? (literary fiction vs genre fiction)
• How did these books perform in the market?

4. Ask your beta readers. 

If you’re at the point where others have read your work, ask them what books it reminds them of. Being outside the writing process, they can give you insights you might never think of by yourself.

5. Limit your comp titles.

Don’t go overboard with your comp titles. Two to three in each query letter is enough to demonstrate that you are an avid reader, have researched well, and know your book intimately. 

Adding more just makes things too confusing. Remember, you use comp titles to quickly tell people what your story is about. 

6. Don’t use works that are too similar.

If you’re going to use multiple comp titles, try to use books that are fairly different in themes, style, tropes, subject, or voice. Identical titles will only waste space because they communicate the same thing.

“The Lord of the Rings meets Chronicles of Narnia” just means your book is also fantasy. “Peter Pan meets A Song of Ice and Fire” elicits more curiosity because they are on opposite sides of fantasy. From that combination alone, you can guess the story has fairy tale elements but is dark and gritty in tone.

Challenges of Choosing Your Comp Titles

Sometimes, it’s easy to choose your comp titles. You might have written a book that’s inspired by your favorite works or is in your favorite genre. However, it can also be a nightmare, especially the more niche your book is.

It’s not just about the story elements. You also need to think about a title’s market performance, trendiness, and audience. 

All of these tips boil down to one thing: read. Read widely in your genre to familiarize yourself with the current trends, potential readers, and popular works. It’s an essential step to learning how to effectively position your story in an existing market.

How do you choose your comp titles? Share it in the comments below!

If you enjoyed this post, then you might also like:

• What Is the Slush Pile and How Can Authors Avoid It?
• How to Write a Query Letter: The 6-Step Formula for Nonfiction and Novels
• Why Publishers Reject Manuscripts: Tips for Nonfiction
• How to Write a Book Proposal: Template, Samples, and Instructions