Question 1

What is a comp title, and why do publishers ask for them?

Accepted Answer

A **comparable title** is a recently published book you name as similar to yours — and it is the single most misunderstood element of a submission, because writers treat it as a compliment to themselves rather than as a **commercial argument**.

**What it is actually for.** An agent or editor uses comps to answer practical questions: which shelf is this, who buys it, what did similar books sell, what advance is justified, and how would we market it. When an editor takes your book to an acquisitions meeting, **they present comps to colleagues in sales and marketing**, who will assess the proposal largely on that basis. You are supplying the argument they will make on your behalf.

**The rules that actually matter:**

**Recent.** Within the last three to five years. A book from 1998 tells the sales team nothing about the current market.

**Successful but not enormous.** This is the classic error. Comping to a global phenomenon reads as naive and sets an impossible benchmark — **it implies you expect those sales**. Aim for books that sold respectably.

**The same category and readership**, which is the whole point.

**Genuinely read by you**, since you may be asked about them.

**Two or three**, not a list.

**What you are actually claiming.** Not that your book is as good, but that it would appeal to **the same reader**. The useful formulation is often *X meets Y*, where the combination locates something specific — provided the two are not simply the biggest books in the genre.

**Non-book comps** — a television series, a film, a podcast — can work alongside book comps to convey tone, and do not replace them, because they carry no sales data.

**For non-fiction they matter more still**, since a proposal must demonstrate an existing readership and a gap within it: books that sold, plus an argument about what they left unaddressed.

**How to find them:** browse the category as it is shelved now, look at what agents represent, read publishing trade announcements, and check what appears alongside similar titles in retail recommendations.

Question 2

What is a non-fiction book proposal?

Accepted Answer

A document that sells a book before it is written — which is the fundamental difference from fiction, where a completed manuscript is required. Non-fiction is generally sold on a proposal, so the

Question 3

What makes a good title?

Accepted Answer

It has to do several jobs at once — identify, intrigue, and be findable — and the balance between them differs completely depending on where the title will be encountered. What a title must achieve:

Question 4

What goes in a query letter?

Accepted Answer

A one-page pitch to an agent containing three things: what the book is, who you are, and why you are writing to them specifically. It is a sales document, not a summary. The structure that works: A

Question 5

How do books reach libraries, and what is public lending right?

Accepted Answer

Through library supply chains rather than ordinary bookshops, and authors are compensated for borrowing through a separate scheme in many countries — one that most writers do not realise they must

Question 6

What is an ISBN, and do I need one?

Accepted Answer

An International Standard Book Number — a unique identifier for a specific edition of a book, used by the supply chain to distinguish one product from another. What it identifies. Not the book as a

Question 7

What is the difference between traditional, self and vanity publishing?

Accepted Answer

Which direction the money flows — and that single test separates the legitimate routes from the exploitative one. Traditional publishing. A publisher acquires rights to your book, pays you, and bears

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