If you want to start at the beginning of this series, click through to Part One, where I covered why nonfiction books should start with a book proposal instead of writing the entire book—even if you intend to publish it yourself. I also gave you an idea of how long it might take to see your book on bookshelves through the traditional publishing process and introduced you to my proposal-in-progress1.
Today, we’re talking about one of the most important elements of your book proposal, COMP TITLES. Some think of “comp” as short for “competitive” and others prefer thinking of it as short for “comparative” but it’s really both. Finding books that “compete” with yours is a good thing. No, I’m not kidding; books help other books find readers.
If you think about your own shopping habits, this becomes clear. Let’s say you read a lot of parenting books, and one day you see a new one on the shelf beside others you’ve enjoyed—you will likely pick it up. You might even buy it. In a similar fashion, comps help agents position your book in a crowded marketplace. Comps also help publishers estimate sales, pricing, and the marketing techniques required to sell yours.
Caveat: You’ll shoot yourself in the foot by claiming there’s no book like yours. Saying so makes you sound self-important and uninformed. Every book is going to be a bit like another that’s been written in the last three to five years. If not, is that because the book you’re pitching doesn’t have an audience? I hope not.
As I continue to repeat, publishing is a business. Everyone on the project needs to make money. The right comp titles actually help you find an agent and a publisher.
Caveat: Your concept needs to hold its own against what’s already been said about the subject; if it can’t, you have work to do.
Here’s what a book publicist from Pine State Publicity has to say about comps:
No P&L sheet or editor can predict the news cycles, reading tastes, and camp mentality of social media memes and hot takes three years in advance (which is why we get a lot of books that are bet on by the success of what came before them—and why comp titles will never die their slow, unruly death—at least in today’s publishing arenas). ~Cassie Mannes Murray
Comp titles help you write your book
Comparing published books to your own broadens your understanding of both the book market and your topic. Good comps can also help you shape your book before you write it—covering less of what’s already been put through the mill, leaving room to expand your topic based on fresh developments. Both outcomes are excellent for your book project.
Here’s an example from my own comps research, Timothy Egan’s, A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan’s Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them. Egan’s book is narrative nonfiction solidly placed in the “History” section of the bookstore. What does it have to do with my essay collection, Back to Ohio?
As I travel the Ohio River from headwaters to mouth and examine how slavery and racial subjugation shaped history, culture, and institutions on both sides of the riverine border between slave and free states, I need to understand the rise and fall of the Northern Klan. Egan’s exhaustive research (over 30 pages of footnotes) provides me with a roadmap to finding additional resources. It also helps me show a market for my book—his hit the bookshelves on April 4, 2023 (less than a week before publishing this newsletter).
Bonus: Egan is a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and the author of a book that won a National Book Award for nonfiction (The Worst Hard Time). I am not comparing my authorial background to his—Heaven forfend—but I am hoping Back to Ohio will draft on the tailwind of A Fever in the Heartland.
How to find comp titles
Your goal is at least three books (no more than five) that will help you write and sell yours—first to the agent, then the publisher, then the public. Here are three steps to finding them:
If you walked into a store looking for your own book, in what ONE subject area would you want to find it? Self-Help? Business? Personal investing? Memoir? Travel? History? Obviously, you can do this exercise online, too (scroll down for one I found in my local library).
Stay in the section you identified in #1. Look for three books that have been published in the last three to five years that share something in common with yours.
Analyze the three books from #2 vis-à-vis yours:
How is your book the same as each of the three? This might include subject, the use of maps or illustrations, or how the book is arranged. You’ll need to explain these similarities in your proposal.
How is it different from theirs? You’ll need to discuss these differences in your proposal. Pro tip: never disparage another book when listing differences. Say something like, “While book X covers similar topics, it emphasizes (this subject) more than mine will.”
How are you the same and different? Compare your education, work history, achievements, awards, publications, and professional affiliations to those of the other authors. Again, never disparage another book or author in your comparison. If you prove that you have similar credentials to authors of other books that are selling, publishers will have faith that yours will sell too.
Hot tips:
Note the publishers of these comps; they might be interested in yours. Some will accept unagented submissions, and others will require an agent to inquire on your behalf.
Read the Acknowledgments section of each book for the names of the authors’ agents. They might be amenable to reading your proposal.
Here’s a comp I found while browsing my local public library’s catalog: In Pursuit of Jefferson: Traveling through Europe with the Most Perplexing Founding Father by Derek Baxter. This book is closer to mine in shape because Baxter takes the reader on a physical journey through Europe, while I take readers down the Ohio River. As Baxter researches Jefferson’s racism he wrestles with his own white privilege; I have a racial reckoning of my own in Back to Ohio, which is another reason our titles are comparable.
Baxter’s authorial background is closer to mine than Egan’s, and In Pursuit of Jefferson earned a starred review by Kirkus.
Yes, I’m still developing comps, but these two should give you a good idea of how to find and use them. If you want to discuss your project, just drop me a line here.
Here’s where my book proposal sits today
So far, my organizing concept is holding up to—and being enriched by—comp titles. I’ve also found some great bibliography sources and have built a towering stack of books to read (and listen to).
I am now researching archived newspapers, historical newsletters, and other ephemera on file with state and local libraries and archives. As a matter of fact, I came upon the fact that the KKK had been active in my home county through online archives. I also learned that the mayor of my county seat had been a member and that hooded and robed klansmen stood alongside sheriff’s deputies to direct traffic to the konclaves at Buckeye Lake.
I have a June deadline for finishing the proposal since I received a grant from the Arts & Science Council2 with that deadline. If I want to use the carrot-and-stick analogy, the grant deadline is my stick, while my carrot is the two publishers that have expressed an interest in reading it!
Educated in Ohio public schools, I was proud of our state’s history on the right side of the Underground Railroad and Civil War. The Ohio River marked the legal boundary between slave- and free states. Forty years after leaving Ohio to live in the South, I learned that the county where I grew up had hosted the two largest Ku Klux Klan Konclaves of the twentieth century. Did Klan history explain why I never shared a classroom with a Black student—even after desegregation?
Back to Ohio is an essay collection from an Ohio ex-pat who’s traveling the Ohio River from headwaters to mouth to discover how slavery and racial subjugation shaped history, culture, and institutions on both sides of the border. Working my way through cities, towns, and crossroads, I candidly share my racial reckoning.
I’m grateful to the Arts & Science Council for a 2022 grant that gave me the grant to pay for my time and travel to research this book.