How Taylor Swift's 'Clara Bow' teaches us about Comp Titles for Books | Book Comps for Authors
In @TaylorSwift 's Clara Bow, she opens each verse comparing an ingenue to a big star. So Clara Bow was the first movie star, it girl of silent movies. Then she is comparing someone to Stevie Nicks. Then she ends by comparing someone to herself. Taylor has said that this song was inspired by when she started out being told “oh you look like X female singer” or “You’ve got the sound of this person.” And now she is saying she knows people are coming up trying to be the next her.
What we as authors can take from this, is that entertainment is a business. Book Publishing is a business. As much as we all want to be unique unicorns, it can be tough for an agent, a traditional publisher, or even a reader to know what to expect from our books if it is comparable to nothing.
There is a maxim that I couldn’t find the original attribution for, many people have echoed the message so it is now a universal truth. But every story HAS already been told. At least the framework. It is the unique spin we put on it that makes it exciting.
So today let’s talk about comps or comparable titles. These can obviously be other books. But you can also compare movies, shows, songs, comics, and video games.
One word of caution is to not use canon. This was a big tip I heard over and over when I was querying. So the book my agent and I have been working on is near-future dystopian women’s fiction. In my mind, I wanted to compare it to The Handmaid’s Tale. Because that is the book you probably all thought of when I said near-future dystopian women’s fiction. But everyone who writes stories like that wants to compare themselves to The Handmaid’s Tale so doing that literally would have told my agent nothing, other than that I had a big ego to think to compare myself to such a huge story. So when I queried my book I compared it to The School for Good Mothers by Jessamin Chan and The Change by Kirsten Miller. Both are newer books and while The School for Good Mothers was a huge success, and still sells well, it isn’t considered canon yet.
Another example would be if you write ya fantasy romance and compare your book to Twilight. MMhhmmm. Every book in that genre written since could be compared to Twilight. Dig deeper. Same for high fantasy. Don’t compare to Lord of the Rings. Show that you’ve read a lot in your niche to be able to make these comparisons.
Let’s give it a try for some of my books:
Nailbiters and Architects: Stephen King’s The Stand meets The Last of Us.
AKA if you like apocalyptic tales where most of humanity has been wiped out and the remaining people have to survive in different challenging circumstances - you’re going to like this book or t this series.
The Infinite-Infinite and The Alpha-Nina: Dark Matter by Blake Crouch + NBC’s Timeless
Interview with a #Vanlifer: Satire of Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice with the Spoken history elements of Daisy Jones and the Six by TJR
Try this with your book. Leave a comment below on what two comps your books are.
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