Sell your book without giving readers the wrong idea.
by Margaret Pinard, historical fiction & fantasy author
Pitching your book to readers, whether at a holiday party or a book convention, can be hard excruciating. Trust me, I know. Having to explain what has taken you years to bring to fruition in a 10-second elevator speech may certainly make your soul die a little. That’s why comp titles are our golden shortcut, authors. Here are a few ideas as to how you can slice and dice this marketing tactic to reach your best audience.
Comp titles, or “comparison titles,” are other books you can cite as examples that share characteristics with your book. Depending on the person you’re pitching to, you can tweak the comp title to highlight different aspects of your book. (Warning, LOTS of examples to follow.)
Comp titles are helpful because people’s attention spans these days really do not extend to a near-stranger explaining the backstory, the world-building, the plot, the characters… YOU may be excited about all those elements, but you want something that packs all of that into a symbol that communicates it more effectively. To get that emotional engagement, comp titles are your best bet.
Also, you want to attract the right audience. It does you no good to work at a great pitch that attracts the wrong audience for your book, because they will just read it and rip it to shreds because it wasn’t what they were looking for. So there is our goal: communicate what your book is about in the most efficient way possible to attract the people who want what you’re offering.
What aspects of your novel will readers be looking for?
The most common one I see on BookTok today is vibes. As in: style + setting + world building = vibes.
- Is it high-stakes fae suspense? ACOTAR by Sarah J. Maass.
- Is it questioning, Gen Z, character-based + urban malaise? Normal People by Sally Rooney.
- Is it cozy cottagecore with low-stakes? The Tea Dragon Society by K. O’Neill.
Sometimes the line between a vibe and a trope can get fuzzy, as with “touch her and die” used as a hook. Is it a vibe? A trope? Some readers don’t know and don’t care, but that language will perk their ears right up. You’ll want to see what is getting the most views and engagement to take notes on any that you also used.
Sometimes setting is what readers are yearning for:
- Jacobite Scotland (Outlander by Diana Gabaldon)
- modern-day gritty Australia (The Dry by Jane Harper)
- the desert of the Dust Bowl (The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah).
Choosing books that are set in the same place and/or time might help a reader achieve the particular mood they are looking for, or deliver the historical detail they are looking to learn about.
Of course, the MC might be the main draw. Recent popular asks, including for people looking to diversify their reading list:
- strong female characters
- older women
- disabled characters
- BIPOC (Black or Indigenous People of Color)
Readers often want to step off the mainstream POV to hear from different voices, and this can be where you highlight that your MC has a particular perspective to share.
One of the simplest ways to comp your book is its pacing. Oftentimes people want either a fast-paced book to keep them engaged, or a slow, meandering story they can appreciate slowly: it is best to know right away if they are looking for one and your story is the other.
One of the more subtle aspects to use for a comp title is a theme, for example, grief, sacrifice, solidarity, or justice. This is a very astute reader who asks for this, and probably less common than the previous aspects, but could be helpful in finding your niche audience. Someone who reads for the justice theme in sci-fi may be totally up for your justice theme in historical fiction, but you’ve got to pair it with something else then to make the new genre not as scary or weird. For example, I just read the sci-fi novella Countess by Suzan Palumbo, which has strong justice and decolonization themes. I don’t normally pick up sci-fi, but she billed it as a decolonization fight IN SPACE and I couldn’t resist seeing how that would translate!
Style is the squishiest, probably because style is so subjective that we often don’t even have common language to describe a certain style. “Purple prose” is a fun one to ask people about, as some think it means over-the-top, exasperatingly dense description, while others think it means flowery, metaphorical descriptions, and they like it like that (just see this Reddit post)! Given that this is the case, it’s safer to name-check authors, so that whatever one person perceives when they read Virginia Woolf or Victor Hugo gets translated into their own internal reactions rather than your opinions of what they’re like.
Tips
Don’t promise something that is not in your book (to hop on the trope train). Is it really a love triangle? Is it really enemies to lovers? If it’s merely adjacent, you may rile up readers who are disappointed because you raised their expectations in a certain way and didn’t deliver, so be careful that you are promising something you will actually deliver.
Do choose a well-known book, either a prize winner or a bestseller or a book with an adaptation. Remember, you’re trying to shortcut from a long explanation of plot to an emotional memory of a book read or a movie watched, so the likelihood that they’ve read or watched it goes up with how mainstream or popular it is; using a lesser-known book may not help, however much you love it. Harsh, but true!
But Don’t use the most popular book of the year. Don’t swing too far in the other direction! Claiming your book is “the next ACOTAR” won’t help because that book is so popular that many people will be claiming that. Giving it a twist may help, e.g. ACOTAR with Vikings! Or ACOTAR but drawing from Central Asian history! Etc. This is also where it might be helpful to use the format X meets Y to communicate two contrasting concepts, e.g. Anne of Green Gables meets Dracula.
Do explain which aspect it is similar to for a given title. Again, to make sure you’re giving people accurate information on which to base their reading decisions, you should tell them which aspect makes a book like yours.
- the grittiness of James Lee Burke (STYLE) meets the Regency ballrooms of Courtney Milan (SETTING)
- the lush world building of Strange the Dreamer (VIBE) plus the gutsy verve of Katniss Everdeen (Main Character).
You starting to see how you can mix and match different aspects to give readers an accurate view of what they will find in your story?
Final Example: mine!
My latest novel is a quiet story of a mature woman in 1830s Glasgow learning how to pull the levers of power to find her agency, along with a network of allies and friends that help her survive the process. How to express that in Comp Titles?
VIBES: The Women of the Copper Country by Maria Doria Russell
THEME: Golden Hill by Francis Spufford
SETTING: Babel by R.F. Kuang
MC: Miss Eliza’s English Kitchen by Annabel Abbs
PACING: Welcome to the Hyunam Dong Bookshop by Hwang Bo-reum
STYLE: Portrait of a Scotsman by Evie Dunsmore
Read Margaret Pinard’s latest release
Orla Rafferty may be unaware of the sweeping changes about to upend her world, but she’s on the brink of discovering them.
In 1833, the United Kingdom is anything but united. Political reforms are beginning to crack the foundations of a deeply unequal society, but true progress is still far off. When the income bequeathed from Orla’s dead husband is threatened, she’ll seize any chance to steady herself amid the upheaval—whether it’s educating herself, seeking advice from friends, or eavesdropping on dangerous conversations.
However, when her actions land her in unexpected trouble, Orla must lean on both strangers and allies to forge a new path for herself.
A historical novel of quiet resilience and awakening independence, Orla Rafferty Seeks Her Fortune is a story of forged friendships, mended relationships, and the power of perseverance in the face of adversity.
Other books by Margaret Pinard
