Weekly Writers: "Comps"

The importance of "comparable works"

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Comps

Comps, or comparable works, are other books, series or authors that might be useful comparisons for your work. They are particularly valuable for targeted advertising and general marketing.

If you query agents or publishers, they will be interested in what comps you think exist for your book: ideally recent titles (the last few years), and ones that are at least fairly well known or sold well. This is because they want to assess the potential audience for the work.

One method I use to find them is to browse “also boughts” for my books: when vendor sites provide recommendations of similar authors based on what previous customers purchased. For example, on Amazon you can navigate to an author’s page and look for the “Customers Also Bought Items By” section in the sidebar. This is most useful for published authors (we can look at our own pages and books), but it can also be a way for new writers to broaden their list of possible comp authors to investigate.

Other comps come from reviews, where people will compare my book to some other title or author they’ve read. That’s only useful to already-published authors, but is one good reason to look at your reviews.

Drinky’s Digressions: When Comps Turn Bad

Comps are useful data for authors to record in their private metadata, but we sometimes see comparisons more overtly, such as in the blurb or tagline of a book. They often take the format “If you like Hunger Games then you will love this!”, “For fans of Harry Potter!” or “Welcome to the new Stephen King!” It’s a tactic used by big trade publishers, and independent authors. The underlying thought is that it’s a valuable marketing tool to help readers work out if a book might be for them.

But there’s a problem.