how do you approach finding comp titles?

flowerburgers

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I'm pitching a new book to my agent (not the one I queried him with, he's fine with this, it's a long story), and as part of the outline he wants me to complete, I have to find 5-10 comp titles written in the last five years. This feels so impossible! And I don't feel like I understand comp titles that well to begin with, what you're supposed to zero in on as far as similarities. I'm also not a fast reader and can't think of any super recent books that I'd compare to mine, so I'm like, how am I gonna read 5-10 books fast enough to find comps for the outline? Do you need to actually read every book you list as a comp, or can you just research them? I've heard that proffering unrealistic comps is a bad move, but I don't know how to tell what makes a book similar enough to warrant a comparison. For instance, I loved In the Dream House and could maybe compare it to my book since they both deal with dysfunctional lesbian relationships and would likely have similar audiences (queer people and readers of literary fiction/CNF), but beyond that, it's not much like In the Dream House at all. I would feel comfortable comparing it to Valencia by Michelle Tea, but that's a much older book.

Any advice is appreciated. How did y'all decide on your comp titles?
 

TulipMama

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I will preface this with the fact that I haven't had to find books similar to mine for this purpose.

There are dozens of search engines designed specifically to help readers find books similar to what they're looking for. Good reads, Books like this one and book browse are just some of the ones I use to find interesting novels I'd like to read. You can use this sort of function in reverse to find books similar to the one you made so long as you have at least one title (and it looks like you do) that you feel is applicable.

I'd personally suggest that you read the books in question though. If you go by the dust-jacket synopsis you may miss something that makes you heavily reconsider using the title as a comp. That sort of detail may either sour your agent's opinion of what you're presenting, mislead them, or make you look like you aren't aware of what your genre is. I've started reading books I've found through this method to discover I HATED them despite their 30 second elevator pitch being nearly identical to books I've adored.

Again, I'm sort of speaking from an outside perspective, but I hope this helps.

Tulip Mama <3
 

lizmonster

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That's...a lot of comp titles.

Having said that: IME, which may be genre-specific, comp titles aren't so much "this book is exactly like mine" as more fuzzy-edged RIYL kinds of books. I ended up with comps that shared the general atmosphere, that had a similar prose style, that covered some of the same themes, and that were similar types of stories. None of the books were like mine, really; but if someone told me "Hey, I really liked X" I'd be comfortable saying "You might like mine too."

Has he said what he's looking for from these comp titles?
 
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lizmonster

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(Trying this with the duplicate!)

I've been trying to add an edit, to no avail, so I'll add this here:

Of the three comps I used, I started all of them but only finished one. I read about half of one, and the first six chapters of the other - enough to get a sense of the prose style and the atmosphere. You can probably get a sense of whether or not something might be worth the time investment by looking at the sample chapters you can download from Amazon/Apple Books/your favorite e-retailer.
 
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Introversion

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5-10 would daunt me. I wonder what your agent hopes to achieve by that? Personally, I can think of one, maybe two novels I’ve read over the past five years that are decent comps for my WIP.