Book comparisons in a query: How important are they?

Harlequin said:

There's also not much literary fantasy around atm, like you'd have a small pool of names to pick from, and what there is of it tends not to be a great seller. I suspect any comps would be akin to taping a sign to your forehead which reads "this ms will not make any money" >.>

Click to expand...

If you've heard of it, odds are it's selling well enough.

Patty said:

Maybe it would be helpful to know what makes a comp a bad comp.

Click to expand...

A book from a different genre.

Patty said:

There're some recent titles that share one or two elements but figuring how to prioritize those (style? theme? subject matter? narrative&perspective? genre? age range? how recent? current events/trends?)

I like the idea of using authors, too. I've considered comping one author as similar content and the second as similar style.

Click to expand...

I'm not sure you really need that much detail? "Would appeal to fans of <title> as well as <author>'s work" seems sufficient for a query letter.

Harlequin said:

Anyway this is all a lot of words to say, I don't do comps for a variety of reasons (incompetence, ignorance, fear of getting it wrong, and general incompatibility.)

Click to expand...

I haven’t queried a novel in so long I’ve forgotten who wants comparisons. It’s hard enough for me to get words on the page without obsessing over whether I’m somehow copying another person. As Anne Rice once said, “When editors open your book, they don’t want another Stephen King.” I’m a firm believer of writing the story you want to read, letting the work stand or fall on its own. And yet it makes sense from a business POV.

Terrible dilemma, but I guess if you want an agent to fight hard for your work the you need to at least try to give them something to work with.

it sounds like it might be the other way around--not that I know from any experience--that agents want to work with authors who know the market. But original work, yes, I think that too. Probably why some of us stress over it! heheh.

I read something interesting on an agent's blog once. I can't remember what agent it was, only that it was an American, in NYC. It said that one of the main reasons agents want comp titles is because they're hoping to know the editor at the publishing house who bought the comp.

For example, if you write a novel called "My Tummy Ache" and you compare it to "The Fault in Our Stars," the agent might know the acquisitions editor at the publisher who bought that very book. In that case, the agent would sub "My Tummy Ache" to that editor/publisher, hoping that if the editor liked "The Fault" that she would like "Tummy," too.

Comp titles tell the agent who to try to sell to. That's another reason they have to be recent books. They need to be recent SALES. An agent can't approach an editor who retired in 1993.

Harlequin said:

yeah but surely you're always one step behind? Because something published in the past three years was probably written 2-5 years before that so is already maybe 8 years "old" and trends will be changing? it feels like the more demonstrably "marketable" a novel is, the more likely it seems in danger of falling into the oversaturation camp.

I also feel like there's a genuine case for saying, you can't find anything similar. We had a devil of a time trying to find comps for my CP's epic fantasy because the subgenre has become increasingly restrictive, almost rigid at time. (Not every subgenre suffers from this but epic fantasy does seem to atm.) There just aren't a lot of metaphysical epic fantasies kicking around I guess.

Click to expand...

Comps can never be entirely current, exactly because of this. But they're useful, in terms of showing people where your book fits in the market; and so the best you can do is use books which have been published recently.

I'm also drawn to think of Ada Palmer who was asked what she'd comp her book to and she had no idea. Her SF is inspired by classics and 18th century literature. So it is "old" in feel and consequently different to anything else on the market.

Click to expand...

In which case you'd compare it to other books which are way out there and have no easy comparisons; or you'd compare it to books in more than one category.

AW Admin said:

Comps function like landmarks, to let editors/agents know where in the genre landscape your book lives.

Click to expand...

Exactly this.

Harlequin said:

I'd say for CP she was aiming for literary fantasy, in feel and content. But there seems a kind of unspoken assertion that you'd be punching above your weight to claim that in a query, in the same vein of people who throw out blockbuster names for comps.

Click to expand...

The issue here isn't that you're punching above your weight; it's that there's no such thing as literary when you're in a bookshop. Think of it: where is the shelf for "literary fiction"? There isn't one. Bookshop categories include SF, fantasy, crime, thrillers, all sorts--but not literary fiction. And comparisons are all about helping publishing people know where to shelve your books, and how to sell them.

Right, but I guess what I mean is, you want to comp to other literary fantasies to give an idea of how the story "feels" as well as what to expect. It's more common as a SUPER rough guide for lit fantasy to have no set antagonist, a less structured plot or unusually structured plot (a la Etched City), and various other traits. There's a kind of implied snobbery that's easy to fall into, because literary is sometimes interpreted as synonymous with "more merit" and that isn't really true. It just has specific aims, I guess, and a very different readership.

Expectations in that sense are, I think, worth trying to manage. An agent who is into Brandon Sanderson would probably look at a lit fantasy book with eyebrows raised, and find it 'lacking' in lots of ways. Dong Won (as an example agent) has an overall unfavourable opinion of books which aim for literary in SFF; he believes they have a fundamental goal which doesn't involve trying to entertain (which in practice, actually just means he, specifically, doesn't find them enjoyable).

However, some agents are actively looking for that literary feel or crossover edge with sff submissions. But then that brings you full circle into suitable comps and the pool is much smaller than it would be for grimdark, for example, which has more titles to choose from.

I'm just waffling.

I didn't include any. I had a 25% request rate.

I didn't include any because they seem lose/lose to me: if the agent dislikes the comparison books, she's less inclined to request. If she loves the comparison books, her expectations might be off kilter.

I think it would be more useful to ask for mix comps. i.e., 'The romance and adventure Outlander, mixed with the setting of the Vikings, and a dash of the magical realism in The Lake House.' IMHO, this offers a refinement of the aspects which your own novel might reflect. That would make comps much more useful AND easier to discover, in my opinion.

Harlequin said:

yeah but surely you're always one step behind? Because something published in the past three years was probably written 2-5 years before that so is already maybe 8 years "old" and trends will be changing?

Click to expand...

It's not about trends or style, it's about marketability. Ideally, agents want to have a comparison with next year's blockbuster novel. Realistically they'll look at what's currently on the market. And agents aren't stupid (even though the ones that pass over me must be...). They can spot trends pretty well. Even over-saturated markets can have decent sales.

No agent or publisher is out there thinking "If a book compares to XYZ, then I'll sign the author immediately." There are still a ton of pretty bad authors and pretty bad stories out there. Even if the market would be the same people buying the latest trend, there's still no guarantee you'll sell. All anyone is looking for in comparable titles is an idea of what category the author believes their book would fall in.

Jeff

I guess I don't feel like marketability ever changes. Some things are always popular. Anything done well, can be. But a lot of bestsellers have a fair amount in common.

It may just be I can't wrap my head around the concept in the way that agents approach it.

John Jarrold has the following instructions on his site, and they are the reason I will never query him:


"If you want your novel to be considered by the agency, please e-mail one paragraph about your work as well as comparisons with two or three recently-successful authors in the same genre (not long-term bestsellers) – so I’m aware you know the genre well, as it stands today"

Well, I aim to raise awareness of certain issues ike Jemmison, and I try to write in the easy accessibility of Sanderson.

So those are comps ... recent ... in my genre ...

And I'm not comparable to either of them. I'm barely a fledgling writer. I'm a scientist, dammit. Ask me to titrate something. That I can do.

But I looked up Jarrod and his agency wouldn't be in my first set of batches anyway. Still, interesting exercise.

Pardon my ignorance...but isn't that the agents job?

Sure I haven't queried a single thing but I feel like that is not my responsibility. I'm writing a book. Send it to an agent to see if they're interested. I'm sending it to them specifically because they are the experts of what is or isn't popular and for what might sell or what it would compare to for marketing purposes. In that case why would I want to make comparisons that might contradict or influence their decision making. I'm not the expert. That's what I'm “hopefully" going to be paying them for.

On top of that, I don't really have time to be current in the field. I barely have enough time to write much less read enough to find comparable novels. I decided to write what I wanted to read but couldn't find.

If I ever submit a novel I can guarantee it won't have any comparisons as my time constraints won't change. So is that going to handicap me?

Harlequin said:

I guess I don't feel like marketability ever changes.

Click to expand...

Marketability changes all the time. Which genres are popular changes all the time (with the possible exception of romance, and there I suspect subgenres are constantly shifting their popularity). And with all of the changes in technology, how books are marketed changes all the time.

FWIW - yeah, I'd look sideways at an agent that absolutely required comps, or that tossed an otherwise promising query because it was comped with a book they don't like. I doubt they're 100% necessary, especially since they tend to go at the end of the query, and I suspect most agents have already decided by then if they're going to request or not.

But I can't endorse the idea that it's not necessary to know your market. When I was in software, I was absolutely expected to know which technologies were popular vs. cutting-edge vs. on their way out, even if I wasn't going to be working in any of those languages. I view comps in a similar way. As for expecting an agent to figure all that out for you? Apart from my earlier caveat (heaven help you if they get it wrong), they receive hundreds, often thousands of queries a week. If you don' t know your own market, you may very well be expending energy and time (not to mention hope) on agents that do not rep your kind of stuff.

I don't think anybody HAS to do any of this. But who's going to be in control of your career? You really want to cede all the knowledge and all the research to other people who don't have as much skin in the game?

right... but someone above said marketability is separate from trends. what you're describing there, sounds like trends to me.

I don't want to cede all knowledge, no, but if an agent expects me to know as much as them about the industry (and yes, I realise they don't ALL, but some specific ones DO seem to expect that) then I'd be inclined to ask what the heck they even exist for. Like, I've once encountered an agent who wants potential clients to submit a marketing plan(!) Are you fcking serious, mate? (That's to the agent, not you )


I guess I don't think comps reflect knowledge or ambition particularly. It's up to subjective interpretation and even if you've read a book and genuinely think it's a fit, an agent could disagree. I agree with another poster that they seem lose-lose.

As an aside (@Liz) you mentioned that if a book has sold, it's done well enough to be worth comping, but I've been told by two authors who write secondary world literary fantasy that a book in that category probably can't be a debut novel. Agents don't know what to do with it and few publishers like it well enough. In other words, it only gets sales if you're established and have a readership, otherwise it'll be a flop. That's maybe an argument for not querying lit fantasy at all, though, rather than not comping other lit fantasy books--hence I've switched genre atm. Although not everyone has that luxury!

Harlequin said:

right... but someone above said marketability is separate from trends. what you're describing there, sounds like trends to me.

Click to expand...

One of the lovely things about ebooks is that I'm able to easily find copies of books I read and loved as a child. Most of them would be unmarketable now: they're too slow, or too derivative. Moreover, books are getting longer: a lot of the books I read were 60K-ish, and slow-paced at that. The SFF market has completely changed since then (and you could argue there's an overlap in trends and marketability, which is true).

Harlequin said:

I don't want to cede all knowledge, no, but if an agent expects me to know as much as them about the industry (and yes, I realise they don't ALL, but some specific ones DO seem to expect that) then I'd be inclined to ask what the heck they even exist for.

Click to expand...

Here's where I'll defend agents by saying you can't tell everything about a person by reading one instruction on a web site or a set of tweets. If an agent truly does expect you to know the industry the same way they do, then yes, they're being unreasonable, but I strongly suspect such agents are exceedingly rare and you're reading into their statements.

Harlequin said:

Like, I've once encountered an agent who wants potential clients to submit a marketing plan(!) Are you fcking serious, mate? (That's to the agent, not you )

Click to expand...

For non-fiction, my understanding is this is standard. For fiction, yes, I'd consider it a major red flag and cross the agent off my list.

Harlequin said:

I guess I don't think comps reflect knowledge or ambition particularly. It's up to subjective interpretation and even if you've read a book and genuinely think it's a fit, an agent could disagree. I agree with another poster that they seem lose-lose.

Click to expand...

Whereas I tend to think they show a familiarity with your genre, and an interest in the industry in general. As to whether they're a lose-lose: I would also look sideways at an agent that tossed a query they otherwise liked because they didn't care for the comp.

Harlequin said:

As an aside (@Liz) you mentioned that if a book has sold, it's done well enough to be worth comping, but I've been told by two authors who write secondary world literary fantasy that a book in that category probably can't be a debut novel.

Click to expand...

But theirs were? Or not? How do they know this?

Part of the problem with listening to writers (including me ) about this stuff is that we're working with a very small, very specific set of data points. We know what happened to us; we draw some possibly spurious conclusions about cause and effect. Everything about publishing is complicated and intertwined, and everything you do can be trumped by a shift in public tastes.

Every novel has a low chance of being a debut novel. Most novels don't find rep, and don't sell to anyone. This industry has horrible odds and a huge rate of attrition. Oh, well.

Yes, it was a fiction agent! Litfic, I think. Someone in my critique group was asked to provide that along with the MS as part of a full request. My eyebrows were climbing off my face.

I may be reading into it or not, but for better or for worse I'm gonna leave comps out this time. I'll just feel dishonest otherwise, because my for-real comps are 18+ years old. There's a lot of other reasons bound up in there but those are the big ones.

Writers in question sold years ago, when there were agents (eg Simon Kavanagh) who did look at litfa without prejudice; as you say, the market was a bit different. No doubt it will swing around eventually. I think they also published other things first--you can get away with lit sci fi much more easily.

I'm not sure every novel has the same poor chance. It looks like that in stats but realistically, some novels will have zero chance (ie a mad hermit's incomprehensible scribblings written on tinfoil with crayon are probably 0.) Some have more and some have better, though I guess that's no use to us since, from the writer's perspective, it's tough to gauge what will sell and what won't.

Vhb_Rocketman said:

Pardon my ignorance...but isn't that the agents job?

Sure I haven't queried a single thing but I feel like that is not my responsibility. I'm writing a book. Send it to an agent to see if they're interested. I'm sending it to them specifically because they are the experts of what is or isn't popular and for what might sell or what it would compare to for marketing purposes. In that case why would I want to make comparisons that might contradict or influence their decision making. I'm not the expert. That's what I'm “hopefully" going to be paying them for.

On top of that, I don't really have time to be current in the field. I barely have enough time to write much less read enough to find comparable novels. I decided to write what I wanted to read but couldn't find.

If I ever submit a novel I can guarantee it won't have any comparisons as my time constraints won't change. So is that going to handicap me?

Click to expand...

It's an agent's job to figure out how to pitch to editors, but it's your job to figure out how to pitch to an agent (which can help them figure out how to pitch to editors). If you don't know the market, you may have written something that's been done to death, or you may be writing stuff that'll have a hard time selling for a whole variety of reasons.

Some people do pitch without comps, as above, and it can work, but some agents require comps, and your 'I wrote what I ... couldn't find,' is a red flag that suggests you may have something that'd be a hard sell, either because people don't want it or it's not correct for the genre currently, which is a thing you might know if you were reading in it.

As for the 'that's an agent's job,' well, why do you think they're going to bother and not just move on to the next query? There's no shortage.

lizmonster said:

Marketability changes all the time. Which genres are popular changes all the time (with the possible exception of romance, and there I suspect subgenres are constantly shifting their popularity). And with all of the changes in technology, how books are marketed changes all the time.

FWIW - yeah, I'd look sideways at an agent that absolutely required comps, or that tossed an otherwise promising query because it was comped with a book they don't like. I doubt they're 100% necessary, especially since they tend to go at the end of the query, and I suspect most agents have already decided by then if they're going to request or not.

But I can't endorse the idea that it's not necessary to know your market. When I was in software, I was absolutely expected to know which technologies were popular vs. cutting-edge vs. on their way out, even if I wasn't going to be working in any of those languages. I view comps in a similar way. As for expecting an agent to figure all that out for you? Apart from my earlier caveat (heaven help you if they get it wrong), they receive hundreds, often thousands of queries a week. If you don' t know your own market, you may very well be expending energy and time (not to mention hope) on agents that do not rep your kind of stuff.

I don't think anybody HAS to do any of this. But who's going to be in control of your career? You really want to cede all the knowledge and all the research to other people who don't have as much skin in the game?

Click to expand...

All of this.

Harlequin said:

I'm not sure every novel has the same poor chance. It looks like that in stats but realistically, some novels will have zero chance (ie a mad hermit's incomprehensible scribblings written on tinfoil with crayon are probably 0.)

Click to expand...

Well, yes. Perhaps I should phrase it as every decently-written novel has the same poor chance.

Harlequin said:

Some have more and some have better, though I guess that's no use to us since, from the writer's perspective, it's tough to gauge what will sell and what won't.

Click to expand...

The thing is, it's tough for agents and editors, too. They may have more of a sense of it all than we do (I'd actually hope they do), but they've backed many a "sure thing" that's gone nowhere, and seen out-of-nowhere breakouts from self-publishers and small houses. The biggest difference between them and us is that they can spread their risk across multiple authors.

Vhb_Rocketman said:

Pardon my ignorance...but isn't that the agents job?

Click to expand...

In my perkier moments I see comps as a way to add another element to the query, like depth.Like a defining point, like how a specific detail added to a character's action makes it more powerful. I see comps as a possible win. (In my chirpy moments.)

He pushed against his thigh vs He pushed the knuckles of his right hand into his thigh.

When I feel good, I feel like comps can add that same kind of definition. But man, I am not sure of any of mine.

Provide them if you can, especially if they add something to your query or the agent you're submitting your work to prefers them. But don't tie yourself up in knots over this: the last time I queried I didn't include any comparisons, and I got lots of full requests, and a couple of offers.

Old Hack said:

Provide them if you can, especially if they add something to your query or the agent you're submitting your work to prefers them. But don't tie yourself up in knots over this: the last time I queried I didn't include any comparisons, and I got lots of full requests, and a couple of offers.

Click to expand...

This has more or less been my approach. I've been doing a lot of agent research lately, as one does, and was a bit surprised that relatively few agents I found had specific opinions about comps. They get so much discussion around these parts that I'd expected agents to be more particular, but I kind of wonder if this is one of those things that writers tend to worry about far more than agents do?

Perhaps it's just the agents I've looked at in particular. There are a handful that say they want comps, and these agents often include quite detailed info, like John Jarrold's mentioned above. That's relatively easy: find a recent title that matches some element of your MS and mention it in the query. Good excuse for a trip to the library.

The vast majority I've looked at either don't mention comps at all or expressly say they don't particularly like them--writers usually get them wrong, too old to be useful, agent likely to know better, etc. I usually look at what an agent reps, and any books they've said they like more broadly, and if there's a possible comparison I use that.

Follow the submission guidelines, basically. They're usually pretty thorough. And a lot of the agent interview series routinely ask each agent how they feel about comp titles.