SHALL I COMP THEE TO A SUMMER'S DAY?

Thinking about "comps" will help you answer vital questions about your book.

We call them “comps” – comparative titles - books that are something like the book we are selling.

Comps are used constantly in publishing. They’re almost an industry dialect.

Suppose we want to excite colleagues about a new manuscript. Or we’re trying to enthuse a bookseller. We don’t start telling them the book’s story – imagine trying to interest a fiction buyer at Waterstones with a spiel that starts: “so, it’s set in the 19^thcentury and there’s this woman and she meets…”

Conveying excitement through description gets old fast.

A tight synopsis could be intriguing. But it’s tough to catch a book’s essence. Plus, your listener might understand what you are saying, yet not be moved.  

My synopsis might say: “it’s an historical English family drama that’s character-driven with a strong romance thread that could overwhelm, but is balanced by astute social commentary and psychological insight into motive.”

Does that stay in your mind?

What if I say: “it’s a historical romance where the characters and their world are minutely created, like Pride and Prejudice”?

Finding comparative titles is a publishing insider’s game. They’re a short-cut.

Smart comps link to an element that will lure readers. Something about our book that can be linked to a title people already love. We compare with winners. We don’t ever comp with books that failed to make an impact.  

It’s still dangerous though.

Your book is claimed to be ‘as good as’ the reader’s favourite title. They read it against that impossible standard, their mind sneering, “this is not my beautiful book.”  

I have hated comps myself and as an agent resisted them for years.

When I found a talented new writer, I didn’t want to squeeze them into a box already labelled for another author. I rarely created comps. A publisher or a colleague might link my author’s book cleverly and I would adopt their comp. But these days? I concentrate hard to find good comps for the books I am selling and I emphasise them.

In these newsletters, I am pressing you to rethink how you look at publishing. Sometimes I’ve had to learn how to overcome my own instincts in order to do the best job for my writers.  

I do see that comparing your book with others can be very hard for an author. But comparisons can’t be avoided. They will be made. Best to invent ones you can accept.

If you are writing pure genre e.g., a contemporary romance or action thriller and the reader’s expectations are obvious, then you might look for a comp that is essentially doing the same thing as your book. You might say ‘my book is like this book.’ But usually, it’s best to avoid direct comps.

Instead pick one aspect of another work to compare with yours. It might be the genre. For example, imagine you’ve made a film in the horror comedy genre. But you’re looking for a comp to be more precise about why it’s funny.

Is it a horror comedy like Shaun of the Dead? Where much of the humour contrasts the pettiness of the characters’ concerns against the savagery of a zombie apocalypse?

Or is it a horror comedy more like Beau is Afraid? Where laughs come from the extreme and endless vicious forces rained on a hapless Joaquin Phoenix?

Smart comps highlight different qualities. It’s wise to avoid a general comparison with the other book. Unless you want to go big and be bold. In which case – give it a shot.

Authors don’t always feel so strong. Assessing your book can involve painful introspection. Is it possible to be objective about something that comes from within you? Try going beyond this resistance.

Can you get to a place where finding comps becomes an exercise in self-affirmation?  

This author is as fiery as me.

That author loves high-speed multi-character dialogue as much as I do.

You might feel small when you think about their success and reputation. Then you overcome it. You find yourself able to assert similarities with writers you admire.

Try it. In Bookland your book will be comp’d by people you don’t know. Best get involved now. After all, which is more painful: to think about how a publisher will summarise your book or watch it go unread? If you insist on seeing your book well published, let me help you to see your book as Bookland does.

In this series I am asking you to find Your Inner Agent.

How will readers evaluate your book when they see it on Amazon? There’s under two seconds before they scroll on. Did someone on a podcast recommend it? Did they compare it with another title? What genre? What mood will the book engender? Why will readers stop to pick it up in a book shop? What table will it be on? What titles will be next to it? What kind of book were they going to buy when they came across yours? Were they recommended your book? How was it described?

Thinking about comps helps answer these vital questions.

Try imagining you are putting your book on a dating app. It yearns to be conjoined with its perfect reader.

How will your book present itself? What is it looking for?

Respectful consideration – sure.  And then what? Lots of attention? A single authentic connection? Will it do best on Hinge, on Bumble or on Tinder? What does that say about it?

Those apps are chockful with hundreds of thousands of other books - all those authors around the world writing in English. Plus, there are yet more books appearing in translation – and some readers love their accent.

Some hugely appealing books have been around for over a hundred years - and they haven’t aged a day.

This book market isn’t easy or fair.

To win – overcome any dread of reducing your book to a product.

Own the scale of your dream. You have something that others should see. Something worth the months or the lifetime it took you to make it.

Creating your book needed mountainous self-belief.

So your publishing also needs that iron strength.

Look to your comps.

Sonnet 18 by WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer’s lease hath all too short a date;

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;

And every fair from fair sometime declines,

By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm'd;

But thy eternal summer shall not fade,

Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;

Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,

When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Shakespeare’s comp starts well for the lover. By the second line they’ve outclassed summer itself. Then the comp dissolves. Apparently only his poem matters and will last.

Shakespeare has a point.

Don’t be intimidated by comps. They don’t last and don’t really matter. They are merely the noise of your book’s arrival in the marketplace. They’re a lure to get people to look.  

In the end, after the hubbub, there are only readers. And their relationship with books.

Maybe your book. Maybe your readers.

[ENDS]