Today’s guest post is by John Matthew Fox (@bookfox), author of The Linchpin Writer.
Update from Jane: Having trouble getting newer comps from the standard ChatGPT? There is a workaround. Use the Bing version of ChatGPT. Bing’s version has knowledge of current events and footnotes with links to sources from the information it pulled.
Finding comp titles used to be a gigantic chore.
You’d comb through hundreds of books, trying to find just the right two to suggest in your query letter. You didn’t want books too similar, and yet obviously they couldn’t be very different either.
And most of the time, you had doubts whether you’d picked the right two.
Well, ChatGPT makes finding comp titles easier than ever.
Here are five steps to finding your ideal comp titles for your query letter or book proposal. At the end I’ll put all five steps together in a prompt that you can use for your book.
1. Tell ChatGPT to pick titles published in the last three years.
Agents aren’t looking for books published a decade ago. They certainly aren’t looking for books published twenty or thirty years ago.
That’s because when they pitch publishers, they have to include recent titles. That shows publishers there is current appetite for this type of book.
2. Tell ChatGPT to choose mid-level books (not super-famous books).
Comp titles should never be Harry Potter and Jack Reacher—I don’t care how similar your book is to them. Sure, it’s one step above “I don’t have any comp titles” but not much better.
By picking super famous books, you are communicating to the agent:
- You’re lazy
- You don’t read much
- You have an inflated sense of your book’s potential
Now, I know you don’t have access to sales numbers to help you choose the best possible “mid-level” book, and you can’t even ask ChatGPT for Goodreads review numbers or Amazon review numbers. But you can say: don’t include any books that have appeared on bestseller lists.
3. Tell ChatGPT to pick books in your genre.
Describe your genre to ChatGPT. Be as specific as possible. For instance, don’t just say fantasy. Say high fantasy, grimdark fantasy, or paranormal romance fantasy.
Don’t just say mystery. Say cozy mystery, gumshoe mysteries, or capers.
If you don’t have a specific, nameable genre, then try some of these words:
- upmarket (between commercial and literary)
- literary
- realist
- commercial
- experimental
- book club book
- young adult
- new adult
- coming of age
The more specific you get, the more likely ChatGPT will suggest books that are perfect for your comp titles.
You also need to use negative commands, for example (if appropriate):
- Do not include nonfiction books.
- Do not include poetry.
- Do not include memoirs.
4. Choose the number of books.
I would recommend asking ChatGPT for either 10 or 20 books.
Anything more than that and you’ll have to do too much research to try to figure out the right titles. Anything less than that and you might not end up with two winners.
Remember, all you need is a couple comp titles. One isn’t enough, and as many as three might not be necessary, at least for fiction. (Nonfiction authors, you may need more for your proposal’s competitive title section.)
5. Specify a certain place or theme or topic.
Ask ChatGPT for books set where your book is set (Montana? Thailand?).
Ask ChatGPT for books on similar themes (anxiety? immigration?).
Ask ChatGPT for books on certain topics (divorce, children with special needs).
The more specificity you can provide, the more it will be able to suggest comp titles that are right for your book.
Sample prompts for ChatGPT
- Suggest 10 comp titles published in the last three years for a literary novel set in New York that features drug use. Do not include any books that have appeared on bestseller lists. Do not include nonfiction books.
- Give me 10 comp titles for a historical romance novel set in England in the 1800s. Only include books published in the last three years. Do not include any books that have appeared on bestseller lists. Do not include nonfiction books.
- List 5 comp titles for an upmarket fantasy book about a home for children with magical powers. Only include books published in the last three years. Do not include any books that have appeared on bestseller lists. Do not include nonfiction books.
- Suggest 20 comp titles for nonfiction books about brain atrophy in the elderly. Do not include bestselling books. Do not include any novels. Do not include any books that have appeared on bestseller lists.
After you get some results
It’s usually good to ask follow-up questions. So if you didn’t get what you were looking for, give ChatGPT additional questions that specify exactly what you need.
Of course you’ll need to do research on each of the suggested titles. Make sure they exist. (ChatGPT may hallucinate titles that don’t exist.) Do they really overlap with the themes in your book? Ensure they aren’t bestsellers.
In my experience, using prompts like this, ChatGPT is pretty close to the mark on the first round. But if you have a particularly challenging situation, you might need to re-prompt it for another round or two.
For old-fashioned methods of finding your comps, read this post.
John Matthew Fox helps authors write better fiction. He is the founder of Bookfox, where he creates online courses for writers. He is also the author of The Linchpin Writer: Crafting Your Novel’s Key Moments, and I Will Shout Your Name (Press 53). After earning a creative writing MA from New York University and MFA from the University of Southern California, he taught writing at the university level for a decade before devoting himself full time to Bookfox, which has been noted by The Guardian, Los Angeles Times, Writer’s Digest, Publisher’s Weekly, and The Huffington Post. His writing has also appeared in the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times. Currently, he lives in Orange County, California.
For writers like me who have no clue about this, what is the first step? Where do you go (website?) to actually enter this data? Do you have to sign up for something?
Hi Susanne: You can sign up for a free account here: https://chat.openai.com/chat
No other steps required aside from typing in your prompt.
An interesting idea. One thing to keep in mind is that you really have to play with the language of your query. I tried several times, specifying books written in the last three years, and which were not bestsellers. But more than half the returns were either bestsellers or written more than three years before (sometimes five or six years before). Then I changed the query to say books written after 2020. This time it not only worked, but it also included a synopsis of each of the novels, which it had not done before.
Appreciate the tip, Joe – thank you!
This was a helpful exercise and got me thinking about my selected comp titles differently. Thank you for this idea. I’m going to use a few of the suggested titles in my query to shake things up.
Even aside from the info on ChatGPT, this post was very helpful. I thought that citing a best seller as a comp would ensure the agent or editor would know the work, not that I have an inflated sense of my book and/or that I’m lazy to boot! So thank you for sharing all kinds of information in this article.
Ha! I did a similar thing recently for a list I wanted on books of a certain genre published in the last few years. Not comps but similar. Almost every title was made up and they looked so good! It was basically useless. Maybe, when I learned to make a better query it would work better but right now it took more time than it was worth. This was before I knew knew that AI queries would and could produce “hallucinations.”
I asked the AI to list title and author, so at least I haven’t gotten any fake titles yet. 😉 But it also sometimes gives me 1900s when I ask for 19th century, etc.
exactly what I experienced. I was very frustrated. I tried again with different wording and got what appear to be actual books with synopses. As always Jane’s advice was/is invaluable and I have much better expectations for my queries/pitches.
I’m having this issue, too. ChatGPT admits that it is making up “hypothetical” titles for me and I get some variation of this:
As an AI language model, I don’t have access to real-time data or a list of books published after 2020. However, I can still provide you with a list of hypothetical comp titles for a whodunit mystery set in America featuring journalists. These titles are entirely fictional and not actual books:
I’ve tried asking for books in the last ten years, and it STILL won’t give me any real titles.
Update: I finally took away the publication year part of my inquiry, and I got this from ChatGPT:
Certainly! Here are five mystery novels that feature journalists, and as per your request, I will exclude any books that have appeared on bestseller lists and nonfiction books:
Uh, huh? These weren’t bestsellers at any point in time?!
Yes, they were. The more you use ChatGPT, the more you’ll find that it ignores your directives and returns what it wants.
Interesting. I’ve been debating whether to try this, but I think I will – if for no other reason than to find out about and read other books like what I’ve written (since I’m sure to like them!!). One thing to point out, however, is that ChatGPT only has info up to 2021, so there will not be very recent titles included.
I clearly did something wrong, because I got no results back and that’s impossible. I tried about ten different variations. This was my first time using it however, so I might need to find a primer for it. Thank you for the tips!
I’ve been playing around with ChatGPT in various ways, so this article caught my attention. Great article, but one important point should be mentioned. ChatGPT was trained on a dataset last updated in 2021. This means when it’s asked for books published within three years, it gives books published from 2018-2021. When I asked for a list of 20 comps, only two were within 3 years. The other 18 suggestions were already too old.
Thanks, Carolyn. This limitation may not apply with future versions of ChatGPT (we’ll see!), but in any event, one hopes that good comps that are 3+ years old can still be helpful, if only to lead you to more recent ones.
Good points, Jane. I can’t imagine ChatGPT won’t update its dataset and older comps can lead to newer ones by the same author. Actually, I’ve been wondering how rigid the 3-year issue is. One of mine is now 7 years old. (Too ancient?) Anyway, I flagged ChatGPT’s 2021 dataset limitation because John mentioned 3 years in his post. I do think it’s an important issue to be remind people about. My workaround was to ask ChatGPT for comps published since 2020. I got a handful worth researching—leads I wouldn’t have had otherwise!
If you have a Microsoft (live.com, outlook.com, etc.) account, you can download the Bing app and get some queries on the ChatGPT 4 beta. But thanks for reminding me that it’s a limitation!
This is a great tool once you narrow things down by saying not to show certain genres and changing up the topics and themes. Also, as others have said here, don’t trust all the results. I eventually got a list of ten books that sounded exactly what I was looking for, only to find that none of those books or authors actually exist. So you could call ChatGPT a very unreliable narrator.
The odd thing is that when I added “in New England” to the same prompt, it gave a list of ten authentic books. So you really have to try it every which way and then go from there, and you’re certain to find a few comps you hadn’t considered.
This post couldn’t have come at a better time. Thanks John and Jane!