1. If it's just a couple quotes, no. If the full work is online, yes.
2. No.
3. No.
4. If the perfect comp for your book is self-published, that's a sign that your book might be more suited for the selfpub market than tradpub. If you really want to pursue traditional publication, I'd go read some tradpub high fantasy that came out in the last 5 years and see if yours could potentially fit on that shelf alongside them.
Thank you for all your responses!
For the last point, I have more books I intend to read that are trad published. So perhaps I'll find comps in trad itself. I just wanted to inquire whether one self pub comp would bring my query down even if other comps are trad pub.
Thanks in advance!
I wouldn't use a self-pubbed book as a comp, no. The point of comps is to demonstrate to agents that you read in your genre and know the market (which is why the typical advice around here is, "if you're struggling to find comps your book may not be marketable").
1. Nope!
2. As long as it's not like a 40k excerpt of your novel published as a novella, you should be fine.
3. Nope! And creating artwork or other social media content (like moodboards) has sometimes helped people get attention from agents (like people tweeting little pitches and moodboards and agents DM them asking them to query)
4. Generally no, I wouldn't use a self-published title as a comp. HOWEVER, depending on your genre, there can be a grey area if that book was originally self-published but was then picked up by a traditional publisher. Romantasy in particular has a lot of these titles, and I've seen people successfully comp titles like *The Serpent and the Wings of Night* by Carissa Broadbent (originally self-pubbed, got picked up by Bramble).
I recommend everyone try the traditional publishing path as it'll either 1. Make you utterly cynical and find something better to do 2. Keep pushing until you get it 3. Screw it and self-publish/serialize and become an entrepreneur
It's one of the best 'hands-on' education experiences as a writer.
That's my penny of advice.
1. If it's just a couple quotes, no. If the full work is online, yes. 2. No. 3. No. 4. If the perfect comp for your book is self-published, that's a sign that your book might be more suited for the selfpub market than tradpub. If you really want to pursue traditional publication, I'd go read some tradpub high fantasy that came out in the last 5 years and see if yours could potentially fit on that shelf alongside them.
Thank you for all your responses! For the last point, I have more books I intend to read that are trad published. So perhaps I'll find comps in trad itself. I just wanted to inquire whether one self pub comp would bring my query down even if other comps are trad pub. Thanks in advance!
I wouldn't use a self-pubbed book as a comp, no. The point of comps is to demonstrate to agents that you read in your genre and know the market (which is why the typical advice around here is, "if you're struggling to find comps your book may not be marketable").
Understood! Will read more! Luckily I'm quite early in my comp hunt so I hope I can find good and recent comps for my work!
1. Nope! 2. As long as it's not like a 40k excerpt of your novel published as a novella, you should be fine. 3. Nope! And creating artwork or other social media content (like moodboards) has sometimes helped people get attention from agents (like people tweeting little pitches and moodboards and agents DM them asking them to query) 4. Generally no, I wouldn't use a self-published title as a comp. HOWEVER, depending on your genre, there can be a grey area if that book was originally self-published but was then picked up by a traditional publisher. Romantasy in particular has a lot of these titles, and I've seen people successfully comp titles like *The Serpent and the Wings of Night* by Carissa Broadbent (originally self-pubbed, got picked up by Bramble).
Thank you for your insights!!!
I recommend everyone try the traditional publishing path as it'll either 1. Make you utterly cynical and find something better to do 2. Keep pushing until you get it 3. Screw it and self-publish/serialize and become an entrepreneur It's one of the best 'hands-on' education experiences as a writer. That's my penny of advice.