How to Choose Strong Comparable Titles for Your Query Letter
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Mentioning comparable titles in your query letter when you are looking to find a literary agent can be a great way to make your query stand out. But there is a lot of confusion surrounding comparable titles, so in this video I outline everything you need to know about this important query letter element and offer advice on how to query literary agents successfully.
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GUIDE TO COMPARABLE TITLES:
01:22 - What is a comparable title?
02:24 - Why are comparable titles important?
04:17 - Qualities of a strong comparable title
08:00 - Where to look for comparable titles
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My name is Alyssa Matesic, and I’m a professional book editor with 7+ years of book publishing and editorial experience. Throughout my career, I’ve held editorial roles across both sides of the publishing industry: Big Five publishing houses and literary agencies. The goal of this channel is to help writers throughout the book writing journey-whether you're working on your manuscript or you're looking for publishing advice.
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This is really helpful. I was going to use an author who was fairly successful in the 1990's, as my work was inspired by his particular style. Your advice here will help me avoid what could have been be a costly mistake when I do finally put together my query letter. Thanks again for more great advice.
My book is pandemic based and as a similar book I wrote in The Stand XD this is going to be a long long learning curve for me I suspect
@@ds8249 I know what you mean. Alyssa does a great job of putting us right where we might make silly mistakes so I'm glad I subscribed, to soften that learning curve.
Excellent, thank you! The section about how to look for comparable books was particularly useful for me ❤
Some really good tips there. Thank you. Will consider it for the next one.
This is so helpful, thanks!
This was very helpful. Thank you!
I love your videos. You're helping us all get better, thanks for sharing.
Great video. Practical and insightful. Thanks for sharing
I will check the Goodreads list. I just think it is impossible for a writer to have read "all the books" especially when they want to be writing.
Thank you, this is exactly what I am wondering about now. Very informative and useful channel.
Glad to hear it!
My series of books was inspired by Alistair MacLean and Desmond Bagley. I need to broaden the net. Thanks!
Hi Alyssa, I’ve been watching you for some time now and wondering if you could talk more about how you got into your editing career? I hope to one day become an editor but don’t know where to start? Thank you for the awesome content! Can’t wait to see ur next vid! ❤️
I have never seen anyone else say you can have a comp title that's 10-years-old. I've always been told that too old.
Hi Alyssa, thank you so much for this advice. It's very helpful. The one thing I would ask is, how would one go about placing it in the query letter? Should comparable titles be mentioned casually, near the beginning? Or should it have a paragraph dedicated to itself? Sorry if this is so specific, but it would be great to know!
I wonder what comp titles JK Rowlings included in her query letters she sent out (and resulted in rejections).
Can you use a comp title from a series that was published a decade or more ago if the specific title you mention was published within the last few years?
I have so much trouble with this because I don't like many of the recent novels being published in the fantasy genre. So naturally my stories are nothing like them. As you can guess this doesn't go down well with agents. And though on several occasions I've had full manuscript requests over the years with various novels it's always ended in a no because they don't think it will sell, mainly due to this no comparable titles. It's a hard pill to swallow when you get made homeless for the second time.
Is this just a list? Or, should you specify why it is a good comp? If it is not quite the same, similarities that place them together? Thank you ❤️
Well that sucks, I put alot of effort into trying to create something original, so no similar story has ever been written, and certainly not in the last 10 years. I've even asked others for suggestions and none had heard of anything even close.
Hi Alyssa, can a comparable title be a TV series
What an excellent topic. I was just struggling with this and continue to struggle with it.
Personally, and not saying this is ideal or right, I tried to write my query/synopsis in a way where my comparable titles are pretty obvious as to how they relate.
I never remotely considered the business and marketing aspect of it 😬 I feel like this has made me panic a little bit because I just submitted to a dozen agents this past week
With regards to the ‘time limit’ on comp titles: is it acceptable to link to books that are part of a long-lasting, still selling series? I.E, when the first book in a longer series sold over a decade ago, but newer ones are still being published today?
Thank you so much for this! I was wondering if you could recommend when a writer can "quit his/her day job" and become a full-time author? Something like that must have many variables to it, but just curious if you have any insight on that subject.
Probably when you're confident you can sustain yourself for at least a couple years. Might depend if you write short books vs long books too since actually publishing the next book may take more or less time. I doubt you need a million dollars in the bank or something, but enough that you can give it a real good go for a while.
@@tl566 wouldn’t it be great if you could get a grant to do just that?
Hello, Alyssa
The comp titles I've gathered so far have mainly 4-star reviews. Is that good enough for the agent?
Also, is it true that it doesn't matter which genre the comp titles are from? Can I use a mystery novel to compare with my fantasy novel?
Thank you♡
The quality of reviews matter, but make sure there are a good number of reviews as well--the comp title is supposed to show how well your book could sell. Additionally, unless you have a very strong reason as to why a mystery novel is comparable to a fantasy manuscript, I would actually recommend keeping comp titles in the same genre as your book. There's no guarantee that a mystery fan will pick up your fantasy book, but there is a high chance that a fantasy fan will pick up your fantasy book. Best of luck! :)
I'm so confused as I don't know any books that are comparable to mine.
I was going to ask, Alyssa, if you thought “Catcher in the Rye,” or anything by Salinger would be good, but I doubt you’ve ever heard of him. THAT’S why I don’t put that particular comp in my query letter….
Of course she's heard of Salinger lol
Probably too late to get a reply here, but what if I don't like/read recent novels? I have written in a style that resembles older novels, as these are what I have read. Writing to resemble, for example, The Long Ships comes naturally to me than, for example, Game of Thrones, which seems far less artful. Can I mention this in the letter on top of whatever comparable titles I can find?
Not to sound pretentious, I'm sure there are plenty of great recent novels, I just can't seem to find them in my genre.
I know this comment was like a year ago, but I’m in the same damn boat right now and it literally sucks like shit 🥴 I’m so frustrated
@@kaitlyn419 Well, as an update, I've seriously begun to consider the advantages of self publishing, so that's what I'll be doing.
FWIW, if you simply can not find comps that fit as nicely as you would want...just do the best you can. If your book is worthwhile, it really won't matter all that much. Poor comps are not what will stop your book from getting published. Besides, as far as I'm concerned, finding the dang comps should be the agent's job, not the writers.
You've lost me with Goodreads. Trying to find comps that involve war, desertion and heroism. Nothing. Yet some time ago I came across, by chance, two titles, Charles Frazier's 'Cold Mountain' (1997), and Scott Turow's "Ordinary Heroes' (2006). Any suggestions, anyone?
What if your book is unique with many unusual twists and plots that you can't really compare it to any others?😳
I'm struggling with this because nothing like my book has been published in the last five years. I've got a Gothic cyberpunk fusion, and the most similar book is The Fledgling, because that book is a sci-fi story about vampires except the vampires are ancient aliens and magic doesn't exist whatsoever. I've been buying every cyberpunk and neo Gothic book released in the last few decades, but nothing is quite the same
What if there just isn't any comp titles out there like it, that the manuscript I'm working on is entirely different to the climate of what people expect to read today? How do you work with a title that is completely original to the genres that it is trying to bring together but follows its own way of telling the story? Does that make it difficult to sell, or will publishers and literary agents take the risk if the writing is just that good and engaging?
I am not sure how to pitch this in a short form. It is a monumental story changing history.
On July 17, 1996 at 11:15 p.m., I was working in overnight security dozing when my wife telephoned and asked if I had heard about the plane crash over Long Island. Immediately, I envisioned an enormous fiery explosion and told her all the people are dead. What happened can only be described as a psychic phenomena that was channeled to me that lasted on and off for three weeks.
My book proves that a bomb blew the plane up. The government did not want an international conflict. Khobar Towers had just occurred and turmoil raged in the Middle East so no way the government wanted to report that a bomb blew up the plane. Clinton was far ahead in the polling for the Presidential Election only months away and wanted no Mid-Eastern confrontation to affect his popularity.
The CIA made a documentary supporting the government's findings that a spark in the Center Wing Tank caused the plane to blow up which was totally fallacious which is disproved in my book.
Harry Potter is not some out-of-reach masterpiece. These are ordinary books that received a crazy promotion and that's it. It always irritates me when someone tells me that my books are like Harry Potter. When I croak at their enthusiastic comment, I usually hear a response like: "Hey, I loved Harry Potter as a kid! Your book is like Harry Potter for adults!" So when my alpha and beta readers themselves say that my books are like Harry Potter, why shouldn't I include that title? Just because someone thought the books were the ninth wonder of the world?
My problem with HP is that I've read a lot of excellent fantasy since I was a kid. I grew up on really good books. HP came out when I was an adult and a very well-read reader, and it always annoyed me that this series was being credited with qualities it didn't have. A school for wizards is something new? Dragons, the philosopher's stone, an overlord who makes no sense except that he wants to kill the stupid main character? Meanwhile, the really good classics are forgotten because they don't get good promotion or were unlucky and got terrible screen adaptations. HP's popularity is about promotion and movies, not the quality of the books.
But if I were sending out my publishing proposal, I would put Harry Potter because that's how readers associate with it, and if an agent crosses out my book because "it's impossible for someone to write better than" then he's not a real literary agent, he's an idiot. Because maybe my book is not bestseller material, who knows, but another author may be rejected, even though he writes something brilliant. Rejected only because the agent lacked imagination.
Sounds like someone’s a bit grumpy to me….
Its not a masterpiece, but its a massive hit. The first book was not marketed like crazy. For whatever reason, it broke out, *then* the publishers started pushing it. Some books are total plants, but this wasn't one of them
Comps aren't intended to reflect all the attributes you list. Initially, they are simple markers to allow someone (an agent) to quickly know your genre, similar books your target market might have read and enjoyed. Later, perhaps they may be used for forecasting sales. But that is done by the agent and/or publisher.