How to think about competing books (“comps”)

It is wasteful and ill-considered to write a nonfiction book without considering the competitive landscape. The people who read your book or are considering publishing it have likely already encountered competing books with a similar message for the same audience. You need to know how your book will fit in and how it will stand out.

This is a required exercise if you’re writing a book proposal to pitch traditional publishers; you need to include a “competing books” section (typically called “comps”) to educate publishers about where you fit in the market. But it’s a good idea even if you’re using a hybrid publisher or self-publishing. Why? Because duplicating an existing successful book is futile (and duplicating an existing unsuccessful book is foolish).

The three criteria for selecting comps

Your objective in evaluating comps is to accomplish two somewhat contradictory goals. First, you need to show there is a large market for your book by showing that similar books sold well. But at the same time, you need to show there is room in your market for a new book that takes a new approach. A market crowded with successful books will cause publishers to think, “Great, lots of people are interested in this, but why do we need another book on it?” A market with few hot-selling books will cause them to wonder, “Why don’t people buy books on this, and in what way will your book change that?”

Because of these goals, you should evaluate competing books on these three criteria:

• Recency. How recently was it published? Books published within the last five years are most relevant.
• Success. Did it sell well? If it’s a legitimate bestseller (on a list published by the New York Times or another national publication), the answer is yes. You’ll be able to tell because the book description on Amazon will boast about that. If not, you can still guess if a book is selling well by the number of Amazon reviews; more than 500 indicates a strong seller.
• Similarity. Is it aimed at the same audience as your book? Is it on a similar topic?

Taken together, these criteria both tell the publisher about the market for the book and demonstrate how you are thinking about differentiation. Do not assume that publishers already know about the size of the market — it is your job to educate them.

For example, I’m currently working on a book for startup founders with an author who is an expert in that field. Here are the comps we selected.

• The Lean Startup, by Eric Reis. Published 2011, extremely influential.
• Zero to One, by Peter Thiel. Published 2014, but a New York Times #1 bestseller.
• The Hard Thing About Hard Things, by Ben Horowitz. Published 2014, also a big seller.
• Blitzscaling by Reid Hoffman and Chris Yeh. Published 2018, highly influential.
• The Startup Owner’s Manual, by Steve Blank and Bob Dorf. Published 2020.
• How Innovation Works, by Matt Ridley. Published 2021.
• Why Startups Fail, by Tim Eisenmann. Published 2021.
• Disciplined Entrepreneurship by Bill Aulet. New edition published 2024.

The first three books on this list are quite old by publishing standards, but they continue to sell and influence people. For these books, we need to answer the question, why is a new book needed? Blitzscaling is seven years old, somewhat more recent than the first three, but is worth including because it made a big impact on a lot of startup founders. The books published in 2020 or later are less well known, but it’s still important to understand how our book positions against them (and why their sales, while still strong, were somewhat lower than the earlier books).

You might be disinclined to include a hot-selling book by a rival in your list. This is dumb. Your publisher is no idiot, and they have access to the data in BookScan, so they have a strong idea of how well other books sold. Leaving out such a book tells the publisher you don’t know your market.

How to write about comps

It’s tempting to start by writing about what’s wrong with the competing books. This is a questionable approach. These books likely sold well, which means they must have something going for them. As you describe each of the comps, begin by explaining what its approach is and why it sold as well as it did at the time it was published. This shows that you understand the strengths of the book.

After that, your description of the book is a positioning exercise. For example, “While this book sold well, it is aimed at different part of the market than [title of your book].” Or, “The approach this book took has a significant weakness. Our book will reach the same market and explain how to get beyond that weakness.” Or, “At the time this book was published, this advice was state-of-the-art, but new technology like A.I. has made it increasingly obsolete.” Notice that these statements are not “This book is bad”-type statements (if they were bad, they would have succeeded so well), but more along the lines of, “There is an opening to position my book against theirs.”

Note that you don’t have to complete reading the other books to do this exercise. You can often get a clear idea of how these books are written by reading the first few chapters and the Amazon description or author’s web site for the book.

Taken together, the list of comps and the explanation of your competitive positioning against them should communicate, “This is a market worth targeting and my book has a unique opportunity to reach it in a way the other books don’t.”

After having written the comps, write (or revise) a positioning statement about your own book: “This book is the first book that. . . ” For example, “This is the first book about digital marketing that explains how to use AI tools.” Or, “This is the first book on self-improvement that has different advice based on different personality types.”

Note that you do not have to outsell other books in your list of comps to be successful. If you write an innovative book on habits and behavioral change, it’s unlikely that you will outsell Atomic Habits. But people often buy more than one book on a topic. How will your book extend the conventional wisdom, and is there a niche for it? You only need to have a plan to sell enough to convince a publisher. If your book sells 1% as well as Atomic Habits, you and your publisher will still be very happy with it.

How comps help you think about your own book

If you cannot a unique positioning statement about your book, you have some serious thinking to do. It’s best if you do this thinking before you write the book, which is one reason to do this exercise at the proposal stage and not after the manuscript is done.

Evaluating comps will change your thinking about what you are doing with a book. This will help focus you on what your goals are and how you will position yourself. And that’s a lot better than flailing aimlessly in a field filled with many competing books.