How to use comp titles for querying

Comparison titles, often shortened to comp titles, are something a lot of writers stress about. When I do query package editing for authors, I’m almost always asked, ‘are my comp titles good enough?’ or ‘how do I choose the best ones?’

Hopefully this blog post will answer all the questions you might have about them and relieve a little of the panic that inevitably rears its head when you’re querying.

What are comp titles?

Comp titles are pretty much what they sound like – pieces of media that are comparative to the book you’re pitching to agents (or publishers). You would usually mention them in your query letter, in the housekeeping section along with your genre and word count, and at least one of them should, ideally, be from within the last three years.

I’ve specified ‘pieces of media’ here because comp titles don’t have to be published books. They could be a movie, a TV show, a comic book, or even a song/album. The aim, really, is to demonstrate the vibes of your book using existing works.

Your revenge murder mystery with a feminist slant, for instance, could be Poirot meets Promising Young Woman set to Paris Paloma’s Labour. Your romantasy could have a tarot-based magic system akin to One Dark Window by Rachel Gillig with the heist element of Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo.

How important are comp titles?

The first thing to understand when it comes to comp titles is that you really don’t need to overthink them. They’re important and useful for authors to use in a query letter so agents can get a sense of where your book fits in the market, but choosing ‘bad’ comp titles won’t lose you an offer. No agent you want to work with is going to think, ‘Well, I love the pitch for this book, the synopsis is giving me everything I want in the genre, and the opening pages look strong, but I didn’t like one of their comp titles so it’s a no.’

At querying stage, comp titles are really about distilling the essence of your book into a form the agent will be able to quickly recognise, and about showing that you’re familiar with the genre you’re writing in.

Comp titles become more important when your book is on submission to publishers, but by that stage you’ll have an agent by your side who is trained for this kind of thing and has access to resources you likely don’t (such as sales figures for similar titles). It’ll be their job to help you pitch your book with the best comps, and those might change depending on which editor they are submitting to.

But there are no books like my book!

If you think you’ve written a book that is so unique there is no other piece of media out there that you can compare it to then – and I mean this in the nicest, tough-love-est kind of way – you’re wrong. You might think saying this in your query letter will set you apart and show that your story is one of a kind, but what it actually says is that you haven’t engaged in enough media within your genre. You haven’t been reading the latest books published by your peers.

There will always be something you can compare your book to. For one, there are only seven basic plots in existence, and last I checked there are a few more than seven books that have been published – one of them will be similar to your book in some way.

If you’re really struggling to find suitable comp titles, it’s usually because you’re looking for the wrong comparisons. The aim isn’t to find another book or TV series that uses your exact plot. You can look for far broader connections than that, such as themes, tropes, narrative style, or structure.

How to find comp titles

The best place to start when looking for comp titles is your own bookshelf (or e-library!). Ideally, you’ll have already read at least two or three books in your genre that can be used as comparisons. If there’s nothing on your shelf that you feel quite fits the bill, it’s time to broaden your search.

Go to your local library or indie bookshop and talk to the staff there; tell them a summary of your book and ask for recommendations for similar titles – I guarantee they’ll be able to direct you to several books that would meet your criteria. Alternatively, put a call out on social media: ‘I’m looking for YA contemporary books with the found family trope and themes of mental health’. The people will deliver.

If you’ve found one good comp but you’re looking for one or two more, check out Goodreads or Amazon to see what books crop up in the ‘readers also enjoyed…’ section. Less than half an hour of digging should give you a list of dozens of books to choose from, and from there it’s just a matter of picking the couple that align the closest to your own.

They matter… but also kinda don’t

As I said above, comp titles do have value at the querying stage, and it’s worth taking the time to find some good ones, if only so you can immerse yourself in the genre you’re writing within. But they’re not the be-all and end-all and they’re not going to be what gets you rejected – unless, maybe, you use some really disconnected comps with no qualifiers, like ‘my story is Winnie the Pooh meets the Saw franchise’!

There are a lot of things to fret over when it comes to querying, but comp titles shouldn’t be one of them. Pick the best you can come up with and move on. You’ll be far better off putting more thought into your pitch, synopsis or opening pages than this aspect of the query letter.