Comps
When you’re trying to figure out how to sell something, one of the best ways (but certainly not the only one) is to do mostly what everyone else is doing, that is, to be 80% like everyone else and 20% different. This applies to the types of books you write, the covers you design, your website, what social media you’re on, your book description, and so on.
Again, you don’t have to follow the crowd. That’s not the only way to sell books, and it can be difficult to stay true to your muse if you’re constantly putting what you think your readers need ahead of your creative drives! But it certainly is the easiest way to get things started. I think a good rule of thumb is to know your market whether or not you intend to copy it or not. If your work meets a strong reader need that isn’t being otherwise met by the current market, readers will probably love your work when they find it. But you’re going to need marketing that clearly reflects that need, from cover to book description to social media to every other aspect of your marketing and promotional tools, while still making as much use of current trends as possible–or readers won’t find the book.
In order to do that, you need to know your market.
I’m going to assume that you’ve figured out what your categories are, that is, not the subgenre you’re in but the specific categories where you’re going to sell your books. Your categories and subgenres might be the same; then again, they might not. Again, it’s helpful to stick with Amazon here, but you don’t need to!
To pick out comparable titles:
- Go to the category that you think best suits your book and that you can sell books profitably in (i.e., the one you just picked out).
- Go through the top 50 or 100 books and make a note of all the books that seem a bit like your book.
- Look further at each of those books: look at the cover and read the description, sample, and the top reviews.
- Cross off your list all but the ones that look like they meet the same kinds of emotional needs that your book meets (which you should have figured out earlier).
- You should have at least 3-5 books that seem like your book. If you don’t, you’re in the wrong category; start over at finding a good category.
Personally, I find that picking a good category and comps to be one of the hardest parts of the writing process, bar none. It’s not that it’s difficult; it’s just that there are so many books that are sitting at the top of what feels like the “wrong” category that I get frustrated!
But this is the reality of selling anything: the systems will never be perfect because tastes are always changing, there are always emerging trends that don’t have their own categories yet, and there will always be people who try to get into categories they don’t belong in because it temporarily helps them game the system.
(I call these the “it couldn’t hurt to ask” people—who are somehow different than the “you won’t get it if you don’t ask” people. But I digress.)
You have to deal with the market you have, though, not the market you wish you have. If you’re not coming up with good comps in the category you picked, look for another category. One handy way to do this is to find the closest book to yours in the current category you’re researching, open that up, and pick one of the other books that Amazon recommends. This is sometimes called the “also bought” section; at the time of this writing, Amazon calls it Products related to this item. In the new book, scroll down to the rankings and see whether any of the other categories sound appropriate.
Your goal here isn’t to find books that 100% match yours, only 80%. Give yourself some wiggle room, and plan for the process to take some time. I’m not the only writer I know who finds this process extremely frustrating!
If you talk yourself into buying one of the comps or adding one to a TBR list, that’s an extremely good sign; prioritize the marketing elements of that book when you’re looking for elements to copy, particularly if you read books in the same category.
(Next, we’ll talk about keywords, from a sustainable, non-OMG OBSESSED WITH NUMBER CRUNCHING standpoint. No matter how much I’m tempted to make it about that!)