Published books you reference when pitching yours to show agents and editors exactly where your book fits in the current market.
Comp titles (short for comparable or comparative titles) are published books you cite in your query letter, book proposal, or pitch to position your work in the marketplace. Good comps tell an agent 'readers who loved Book X will love mine because of Y.' They signal that you understand your genre, your audience, and where your book sits on a bookstore shelf. Typically you'll use two comp titles, sometimes combined as 'X meets Y' to highlight a unique intersection of appeal.
Comp titles prove to agents and editors that you're not writing in a vacuum. Publishing is a business, and agents need to know they can sell your book. When you say 'my novel is The Night Circus meets Piranesi,' you're telling the agent exactly which readers will buy it, which editors will want it, and how to position it. Choosing comps well shows industry savvy. Choosing them poorly, or skipping them entirely, signals that you haven't done your homework.
Could be comped as 'The Time Traveler's Wife meets The Picture of Dorian Gray' - capturing both the impossible love story and the deal-with-the-devil immortality premise.
A comp like 'Rebecca meets Get Out set in 1950s Mexico' would have perfectly captured the gothic atmosphere, social horror, and cultural specificity that made this book stand out.
Could be comped as 'The Martian meets Arrival' - combining the problem-solving survival narrative with a first-contact story. Effective comps don't just describe the plot; they promise a specific reading experience.
Saying your book is 'the next Harry Potter' or 'like Stephen King' makes you look naive. Every debut author thinks their book is the next phenomenon. Choose successful but not stratospheric titles, ideally books that sold well in the last 3-5 years.
Comps should generally be from the last 3-5 years to show you know the current market. A comp from 1985 tells the agent nothing about today's readership. The exception is a true classic used alongside a recent title.
Comp titles can match on tone, voice, setting, audience, structure, or theme. 'The pacing of Blake Crouch with the family dynamics of Celeste Ng' is more useful than 'another book about a haunted house.'
If you're writing a cozy mystery, don't comp to literary fiction. Your comps should share a target audience with your book. An agent needs to see that your book fits a real, active market category.
Go to a bookstore (physical or online) and find five books published in the last three years that share something with your project: tone, audience, theme, setting, or structure. Pick the two that best capture different aspects of your book. Write a sentence explaining why each is a good comp. Now combine them into 'Book A meets Book B.' Does that combination make someone curious about your story?