Comparable titles: how to find comps and use them

What comps are for

Comps answer three questions at once.

• Is there a market? Recent books with real readers show that people pay to solve this problem with a book.
• Where does my book belong? A guest post on Jane Friedman's site describes comps as a way to show where your book would be shelved in a store and who its likely readers are (How to Find Compelling Comps for Your Book, by Star Wuerdemann, updated February 2025).
• What is my difference? The Scribe Method's chapter on writing a book proposal frames the competitive analysis around three questions: which successful books are similar to yours, how yours differs, and what gap it fills.

That third question is the one that matters most while you are still shaping the idea. If you cannot say how your book is different from the best comp, you are not ready to write it.

How many and how recent

There is no official rule, and published advice varies. Here is what the sources we checked say.

For shaping your idea, three comps are a sensible start: enough to see a pattern, few enough to read properly. The book idea starter asks for three and treats the set as strong when at least two were published in the last five years and you have written how yours differs from each. For a proposal to a traditional publisher, follow the 5 to 7 guidance and the format the agent asks for.

Why recency? A book that sold well ten years ago and has not been followed by anything similar may be a sign that readers have moved on, a point the Writer's Digest guide makes directly. Recent comps show the demand is current.

Which books make poor comps

• Megabestsellers. The Friedman post quotes agent Carly Watters: a book that has become ubiquitous is too popular to be a comp. Its sales say more about its author's fame than about demand for your kind of book.
• Books you have not read. The same post is blunt about this. You cannot explain how you differ from a book you only know by its cover.
• Books that are almost identical to yours. If a comp does exactly what you plan to do, for the same reader, that is a problem with your idea, not a great comp.
• Old classics alone. A respected older book can sit alongside recent ones, but it cannot be your only evidence of a market.
• Books with almost no readers. In comments on her site, Jane Friedman suggests looking for dozens of Amazon reviews or ratings, preferably in the three figures, for a book out more than a year. The Writer's Digest guide also asks for good ratings and a substantial number of reviews.

The same post quotes Watters again: "no comp is better than a poor comp." That is true for a proposal. For your own planning, a poor comp is still worth noting, as long as you know why it is poor.

Where to find them

1. Ask your reader. In your test conversations, ask what they have read about the problem. Those books are your truest comps, because your reader actually bought them.
2. Search the online stores the way your reader would. Type the problem in their words, not your professional terms, and look at what comes up and what the "also bought" rows suggest.
3. Browse the category. Look up the subject heading your book would sit under (see below) and browse the recent releases there.
4. Ask a librarian or an independent bookseller. The Friedman post lists both, along with recent "best of" lists and library tools such as NoveList.
5. Check the Library of Congress catalog. The Library of Congress online catalog is free to search by subject and keyword, and is useful for finding books on a niche topic that do not surface in stores.

For each candidate, note the title, author, publisher, year, a one-line summary and roughly how many ratings it has. The Writer's Digest guide suggests listing comps in the form "Title by Author (Publisher, Date)" with a line or two on how your book is different. The printable comparable titles worksheet has room for five.

How to use comps to sharpen your idea

Comps are most valuable as research, not decoration.

• Read the two- and three-star reviews. One-star reviews are often about shipping or politics. Middling reviews say what the reader wanted and did not get: "Great stories but no practical steps", "Assumes you already manage a large team". That is your gap, in the reader's words.
• Compare tables of contents. Amazon's KDP help says the "Read sample" preview is automatically enabled when a book is published (KDP help), so you can usually see a comp's contents page before you buy. Where do they all start? What do none of them cover?
• Compare subtitles. Three comps with near-identical subtitles tell you which promise is crowded and which might be open.
• Write one line on how yours differs from each. Different reader, different method, more practical, more current, from a different kind of experience. If the line is "mine is better", keep going.

One practical note: comps belong in your research and your proposal, not on your cover. Amazon's KDP metadata guidelines prohibit unauthorized references to other titles or authors in a book's title field, and the subtitle must follow the same rules.

Your shelf: BISAC subject codes

In the US book trade, subject categories come from the BISAC Subject Headings List maintained by the Book Industry Study Group (BISG). BISG's complete list (2025 edition when we checked) is free to browse and to use for categorizing a book. A few headings nonfiction authors often land in:

Choosing a likely heading now does two things. It gives you a shelf to browse for comps, and it tests your idea: if you cannot decide between Leadership and Memoirs, the book may be trying to be two books. See choosing the kind of book.

Once you have three comps with clear differences, add them to the book idea starter to see them alongside the rest of your brief. If you want a book coach to help position your book against its comps, Scribe Media, which makes this site, sells that as Scribe Compass ($5,000, scribemedia.com/pricing).