Publishing tip: a fresh way to approach comps

Comparable titles help agents/sales teams/readers grok your book

I did not make this video for querying. I put it together for this post, but it speaks to a branding position: I boldly declared that my novel was the newest in a lineage of those about trauma and journeys. I did so because the industry wants books with an “evergreen” market — and surviving child sexual trauma flies under the radar with perhaps one exception per decade. That “once” comes about when a book blows the top off the charts.

In my genre, there was no way not to compare myself to a big book. So, I did.

Then, I saw that Anna Quinn’s excellent The Night Child was at the top of a Goodreads’ “Novels with Child Abuse as a Subject,” and Anna had blurbed mine — and I had my theme.

Backing up:

Shana Turner asks:

I am having the hardest time finding more than one comp for my book. The books I’ve read in the last few years don’t fit, and the ones I can think of were published too long ago. An old example would be The House on Mango Street.

I’ve gone down rabbit holes on Goodreads, etc. The one comp I have is Mia Mckenzie’s Skye Falling. The only other I can think of is Jesmyn Ward’s Sing Unburied Sing, but don’t think it’s a good idea to use a hugely successful, award-winning book as a comp lol. Any suggestions for how to find comps?

Alle sez:

Find two themes in your book and then do one of those:”It’s (title) meets (title).”

Let’s just pull an example out of thin air …. oh! How about MY novel, the travel adventure of a sexual trauma survivor who uses Tai chi as a way to heal. I highlighted the sexual trauma (The Lovely Bones, Bastard Out of Carolina), travel, (The Beach, Losing Gemma), and a survivor’s spiritual search (She’s Come Undone, Gods with a Little g).

Number of comps needed:

• Five is good.
• Seven seems too many.
• Six feels authentic.