Comp titles, or comps, are recent published books similar to yours that you name in a query letter or book proposal. They tell an agent or editor where your book would sit on a bookstore shelf and which readers already buy books like it. "Comp" is short for comparable or comparative.
A comp is a claim about readers, not quality. Naming a book doesn't say yours is as good. It says the people who bought that one will buy yours. Agents use comps to judge whether they can sell your book, and the comparison tends to travel with it: to the sales team, to booksellers, sometimes onto the advance reader copy. Editors can check how a comp sold in BookScan, which tracks retail print sales, so you never need to quote figures.
Comp titles at a glance
| Query letter | Book proposal | |
|---|---|---|
| Used for | Query letterFiction and memoir | Book proposalNonfiction, and some memoir |
| How many | Query letterOne to three, usually two | Book proposalAbout five to ten, fewer for a niche subject |
| How recent | Query letterThe last two to five years | Book proposalUsually the last five years |
| What you give | Query letterTitle, author and what it shares with yours | Book proposalTitle, author, publisher, year, format, pages and price, plus a short paragraph |
| Where it goes | Query letterThe book details, beside title, category and word count | Book proposalA section of its own, often called competitive titles |
| Leave out | Query letterBlockbusters, classics, books you haven't read | Book proposalSales figures, Amazon rankings, star ratings |
Comp title examples
These are original, with invented manuscripts and invented comps. Real comps go stale within a couple of years, and yours should come from your own corner of the shelf. Copy the shape, not the titles.
THE LIGHTHOUSE ACCOUNTS (91,000 words) is The Fellmore Inquest meets Mrs. Pell Balances the Books: a closed-circle island mystery narrated by a bookkeeper who audits the suspects for fun.
One comp supplies the plot shape, the other the voice. Film pitches run on the same shorthand: the writers of Alien pitched it to studios as "Jaws in space." It fails when the two books are so far apart that nobody can picture the result.
LOW WATER is upmarket suspense (88,000 words) for readers of The Ferryman's Daughters, for its sisters who stopped speaking twenty years ago, and Salt Year, for a harbor town where everyone owes someone.
The clause after each title does the work. It tells the agent which overlap you mean: a relationship, a setting, a structure, a voice.
Like Hollins Lane, my novel follows three generations of one family through a single house, but it runs backward, from the house's sale in 2024 to the year it was built, 1952.
One good comp is enough. As agent Carly Watters puts it, "no comp is better than a poor comp." The "but" clause is where your book shows up.
GUESTS OF THE MARISOL (84,000 words) is a satirical novel for readers of Twelve Nights in Positano and viewers of The White Lotus.
A show, film or podcast carries tone quickly. Pair it with a book, though, because a TV series says nothing about which shelf you belong on.
The Quarter-Acre Kitchen Garden by Dana Whitlow (Fernhill Press, 2024). Paperback, 256 pages, $24.99.
Whitlow teaches suburban gardeners to grow vegetables in raised beds, with month-by-month planting charts. My readers already own it. My book starts where hers stops, at the harvest: a preserving plan for each crop and recipes scaled to what a small garden actually yields.
It credits the comp, says what its readers got from it, then names the gap. Proposals usually give each title 100 to 200 words. Never run a comp down: publishing is small, and its editor may be the one reading.
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.
If your novel retells Pride and Prejudice in a Houston law firm, Austen is your source, not your comp. A two-hundred-year-old classic tells an agent nothing about who buys books now. A recent retelling that sold does. Ilana DeBare, in a guest post on Jane Friedman's site, draws it as a family tree: influences are the grandparents, comps are recent cousins.
How to choose comp titles
Start with what you have read in the last few years. If you write in a genre, you should be reading in it, and a comp you haven't read is a risk because the agent may have. When your own shelf runs out:
- Ask a librarian. Describe your book in two sentences and ask what its readers borrow next. Many public libraries also give card holders NoveList, a database that matches books by theme, tone and character.
- Ask an independent bookseller, who knows what is selling and which customer it gets handed to.
- Follow the "readers also enjoyed" lists on Goodreads and Amazon outward from a book you know is close.
- Read debut and year's-best lists in your category. A debut that did well is often exactly the right size.
- Use AI chat tools for candidates only. They can hallucinate books that don't exist, so confirm every title, publisher and year in a library catalog or on the publisher's site.
When comps go wrong
Before: THE SALT ROAD is The Lord of the Rings meets Game of Thrones, and fans of Brandon Sanderson will love it.
After: THE SALT ROAD is a 105,000-word adult fantasy for readers of The Tithe Bridge, for its trade-war politics, and Ninefold, for a heist crew that can't trust its own map.
The first names two screen franchises and one of fantasy's biggest sellers, and says nothing about the book. The second gives the agent two books to look up and a reason for each. The usual failures:
- Too big. Agent Janet Reid's rule of thumb, as quoted on Jane Friedman's site: once a book has a movie, assume it is no longer a good comp. The same goes for an author with a long run of bestsellers.
- Too old. A book bought this year often reaches shelves about two years later, so a five-year-old comp will be seven by then. If an older book really fits best, Friedman suggests pairing it with a recent one.
- The wrong shelf. A young adult comp for an adult novel tells the agent you aren't sure where your book goes.
- A boast. "The next" anything reads as arrogance.
- "There are no comps." It suggests you don't read in your category, or that the book has no readers. If nothing fits, you are probably looking for a twin when a cousin would do.
- Too many. Five comps in a query blur a picture that two would make sharp.
Comps, competitive titles and influences
In a query, comps position the book. In a nonfiction proposal the same idea becomes a competitive title analysis: a longer list of books your reader already owns, each with publication details and a paragraph on what yours adds. Some writers split it into competitive titles, which a reader might buy instead of yours, and complementary ones, which they would buy alongside it. Influences are the books that shaped how you write. They can be any age, and they make good material for interviews later, but they stay out of the query.
Related terms: logline, blurb, manuscript. To see where comps sit in a full letter, read how to write a query letter. For nonfiction, the book proposal template has a comp titles table ready to fill in.
