A few months ago, I finished a novel. I hadn't intended to do anything with it, but since finishing, I've been thinking that maybe it couldn't hurt to query it. I'm looking for advice on a couple of points, though. 1. I don't have any comp titles. From what I've read, it sounds as if you're meant to find two to three books that: - Taken together, give a good idea of what your book is like - Were published in the last two to at most five years - Were successful but not too successful . . . which seems to me like an impossibly difficult logic problem. Now, I know that comp titles are not necessarily required in a query letter; however, some agents who accept submissions only through QueryManager do have a required field for "books similar to yours". What should I do here? Any comparisons I could make would be to books that are at least ten years old, and by authors more famous than are probably advisable. 2. Most advice I've read simply says that you should mention any previous writing credits. I assume this means any fiction credits? I'm an author on a number of scientific papers, and have published an article in a book on Tolkien studies, but I'm guessing I should not mention these? 3. Should education not be mentioned if it was not in a writing-related field? A friend has urged that I should mention my undergrad and grad school at Columbia and Yale, because these sound "impressive". I think that since my degrees are in physics, it's not relevant and it would come across as arrogant to mention them as if they mattered. Any thoughts or advice would be much appreciated. Thanks!
Hey there, I’m not the end all authority but here are my thoughts: For 1. Keep in mind that comp titles only need to be like your book in one specific way (You still probably want to be in the same genre and target audience age (mg vs ya vs adult) but presumably there are many novels that meet those two criteria) Maybe it’s the themes, or the tone, the style, or the setting, or something about the protagonist. Maybe you have a large colorful cast of characters whose lives intertwine, or focus on the ramifications of two cultures clashing, or have a ton of dark humor, or a non-european ancient history setting. Then when you add in the comp, say why you picked it. Think of it more like, ‘people who liked this book will like mine because mine also has x’ not ‘these two books combined are my book’. If you can’t think of any off the top of your head, search them out. For number two, I’m not certain but my gut says don’t include it. It’s not strictly fiction publications. If you had journalism or editing experience I would definitely include that. However, scientific papers are an entirely different world from fiction writing. For number three, does your degree or school experience show up in your novel in an appreciable manor? That might show you have passion for and knowledge of the subject matter. Otherwise, it doesn’t tell me anything about your writing skills. You can add in a touch of personal information unrelated to writing, but I would save it for something interesting, funny, or relevant to the contents of your book, not where you went to school years ago.
Thanks for your reply! It's quite helpful. I guess with the comparable titles, my issue is that I haven't really read enough very recent books to find comps. And I realize this is, to an extent, exactly why agents want comp titles - to weed out people like me who don't know the market! Which is fair, I suppose, but I'd still kind of like to give it my best shot. Should I go on a reading blitz of recent books in my genre? If I have trouble finding comps, how bad would it be to use titles from ten to twenty years ago, for agents who require comps as part of the query form?
Sorry it’s been a few weeks, didn’t see your response! One thing you can do is read the summaries and blurbs of a bunch of recent books (just look up best _____ books of 2021 or something similar and you’ll find some lists). Find some that you think are potential comps, and then use the look inside feature to read the first chapter. If you still think it’s a good potential comp after the first few chapters, read the whole thing to make sure it doesn’t take a hard left turn somewhere, and you should now have a comp without needing to read a huge number of new books all at once.
