Titles and Comp Titles — How To Find the Best Ones For Your Book

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From Anne R. Allen’s Blog… with Ruth Harris:

A Prince by any other name would still be a Prince. (I hope.)

Meghan by any other name would still be a princess

Ditto Diana.

Lord or Lady. Peasant or serf.

Professor or student.

Beginner or expert.

Titles orient us to where we are and what we should expect next.

Doesn’t just apply to people, either. Also applies to books, because time-pressed readers/editors/agents take only a few seconds to make their buy decision, and authors have the same few seconds to make their sale.

If you’re aiming for a traditional publishing deal including relevant comp titles in your query letter is a must, because comp titles help define the expectations and positioning of your book. If you’re self-pubbing, well-chosen comp titles are a guide for the readers you hope to reach. In both instances, comp titles provide a target in a crowded marketplace, and will affect your cover, blurb, sales pitch and marketing plan.

Agents and publishers ask for comp titles because they need a quick shorthand way to establish the basis for sales expectations and marketing. The agent/editor/potential reader needs a reference point, and, if your book will appeal to readers who enjoy legal thrillers, steamy romance or epic fantasy, you’re providing a valuable selling tool by providing appropriate comp titles that give a solid clue about which market you’re aiming at.

. . . .

According to John Medina of the University of Washington, the human brain requires meaning before details. When listeners don’t understand the basic concept right at the beginning, they have a hard time processing the rest of the information.

Bottom line for writers: The title and the cover—image plus title—have to work as a unit to explain the hook or basic concept first. Wrong image and/or misfit title confuse the would-be buyer and you lose the sale. On-target image plus genre-relevant title and the reader/agent/editor will look closer.

Link to the rest at Anne R. Allen’s Blog… with Ruth Harris

10 thoughts on “Titles and Comp Titles — How To Find the Best Ones For Your Book”

  1. According to John Medina of the University of Washington, the human brain requires meaning before details. When listeners don’t understand the basic concept right at the beginning, they have a hard time processing the rest of the information.

    Yep. This is why you’re advised to use the BLUF method when writing emails. As in, “Bottom Line Up Front.” The longer your email, the less likely people are to pay attention to what you’ve written if they don’t know why you’re writing in the first place. At the very least, pleaaaase use the subject line.

    Why are you writing to the recipient? What is the problem? What do you want them to do about it? IS there something they’re supposed to do with this information, or is the email merely an FYI? Never let the answers to these questions be a mystery. Especially on deadline. Oh, and bullet points are your friend.

    Applied to fiction, if you have beta readers, make sure to give them a logline or a “back of the book” summary of your story. They need to know up front what you’re going for, and where the story is headed. Who are the main characters, and what is the central conflict, what’s at stake, etc. Even if your opening pages are exciting, the story will seem to drag if the reader doesn’t have a clue what the story is about.

    I was thrown off by “comp” because I’m used to it in a design context, where I’ll have comp layers in Photoshop to show different options for a design. So, here the OP explains it for writing purposes:

    Comp titles are books that are similar to yours and attract the same reader. Comps help agents/editors/readers figure out who your book will appeal to and how big the potential audience might be. Comps give the Art Department or your cover artist a starting point and help them understand what is required.

    Further on, “comp” is used in terms of describing your story as “like Diehard, but on a ship during Fourth of July.” I’ve seen the types of comp titles she’s referring to in BookBub ads; and it does seem like a good idea to have a few ready for marketing purposes.

    • The PowerPoint ranger “school” of writing emphasizes a similar process: you tell the audience what you intent to discuss, then you tell them, then you sumarize at the end.
      It is effective for non-fiction writing, too.

      However…
      It can be tricky in fiction; a bit of discrete foreshadowing is a good thing but it is easy to undercut the narrative by telegraphing the big twist/reveal. The otherwise great BABYLON 5 did it repeatedly and it undercut some of what should have been truly awesome moments. A few times it worked to great effect, though.

      It’s tricky. Easy to underestimate the audience and sledgehammer the foreshadowing. Do it repeatedly and it can get annoying.

      • I’ve never heard of PowerPoint ranger, but it sounds similar to Aristotle’s rules of essay writing. I remember kids in my class shaking their heads over the idea of writing essays the same way for thousands of years. But if it’s not broke…

        To clarify with fiction, I don’t mean not to foreshadow, or telegraphing the twists. When I mentioned loglines and summaries, I was thinking in terms of the intro Babylon 5 uses: you’re told the point of the space station, what it’s like (dangerous in some places), what sort of people can be found there (wanderers), and so forth.

        The intro to me is sufficient to settle the audience into a frame of mind to appreciate the story, the characters, and the setting. If you know that there were other Babylons that were lost or destroyed, you understand why B5 is the last hope for peace, and why it matters if Sinclair / Sheridan can forge peaceful relations with the aliens. You’ve got stakes, so the interactions are inherently interesting.

        But a channel surfer coming 10 minutes into an episode, without that intro, just sees strange people randomly doing stuff. It’s harder to get invested. Writers can do themselves and their beta readers a huge favor simply by giving a quick clue like the B5 intro.

        • Powerpoint ranger is a term that came out of DOD, initially referring to politically focused officers during the Clinton era who never saw actual military action and whose entire careers were spent doing paperwork.
          Since then it has spread to civilian circles and its usage is not always despective.

          Here:

          https://powerpointranger.com

          And yes, the B5 intro was effective and reminiscent of classic STAR TREK voiceovers. They were needed in the old days of self-contained episodes, watchable in any order.

          TV shows have in recent decades phased out not just voiceovers but often even the canned intro. (Those 30 seconds can be used for ads, in broadcast.) What we most often see in today’s serialized seasons is the recap intro. “Previously on…”
          Streaming is bringing its own changes.

          Essay techniques are suitable for blurbs, as they are non-fiction, but as I said, dragging it inside the story needs care.

            • Oh, that was fun; I recognized the names of all the players. I didn’t get to read the one for the Economist, since I don’t have a subscription. But I am getting flashes of “the map is not the territory” for the Power Point Rangers.

              Agreed “Zoom Paratroopers” will be coming soon to living rooms everywhere, very soon. Don’t know what will replace power point, unless maybe holographic simulations get better, cheaper, and part of the Microsoft Office Suite.

              • The Economist has a free account level.
                It’s not as fun as the NYT piece, though. Just conmiserating with consultants.

                As for MS OFFICE, Microsoft has been working on their remote work solution since before buying SKYPE in 2011. They introduced the OFFICE telework tool tool, TEAMS, in 2016 and while it hasn’t received the media attention of ZOOM it is doing extremely well, expecially in the corporate and educational markets, mostly because unlike ZOOM, security and privacy were baked in from day one.

                As for what comes next, I expect HOLOLENS and augmented reality will supplement PowerPoint but I wouldn’t expect it to go away any decade soon. It is like word processing, too useful a communication tool, abuses not withstanding.

        • Alas, one of the elements of the day job was advocacy.
          (Some would say the most critical.)
          The fate of a new tech or project, and millions in funding, would regularly hinge of upper management’s reaction to a presentation summarizing months of technical analysis.
          Among our dozens of engineers, our operation had two inhouse graphic artists handling reports, documentation for our tool development, and presentations. Once I was called out of my deathbed (or something like it ) to order up an advanced, $15K dye diffusion color printer. State of the art. First time out the boss, who was a big believer in tools, came back with a $3M program and proclaimed the printer had just paid for itself. (And most of our salaries.)

          Senior executives are impressionable folks.

          FWIW, I learned the value of snappy presentations my senior year in college. We had to research an advanced tech and survive a presentation/grilling. Quite a few dozed off or made embarrassing questions. My solution was 35 slides in 9 minutes. A few minor cases of whiplash but no snoring.

          The modern world runs on PowerPoint.

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