If you even want the possibility of being traditionally published, you should care about comp titles. What are comp titles? They are books in your genre that have a similar story, character arc, and/or vibe as your story. A publisher or agent normally won’t consider a proposal without them. But this isn’t just for them, you need to know the market if you want a chance at making a profit.

When you know how other books are doing on the market, you can better anticipate how your story will go. You can discover unique ways of marketing by seeing what’s already working for other authors. For a while I kept hearing people say that “dystopian is dead” and it was discouraging because I love reading, writing, and narrating dystopian stories. It wasn’t until I genuinely looked into the genre that I discovered… The dystopian genre was alive and well, it was even on the rise. I found this out by looking at comparable titles to my own dystopian/scifi Fluorescent Frost.

The way you find comp titles is simple, do a search starting with your genre, then get more specific with key words. What similarities do you find from your story to those popular titles? What are the main differences? For my story Fluorescent Frost I found the following:

Maze Runner by James Dashner

Legend by Marie Lu

Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi

The Darkest Minds by Alexandra Bracken

Uglies by Scott Westerfeld

Origin by Jessica Khoury

Cinder by Marissa Meyer

So yes, if you’re going to publish, either indie or trad, you should identify comp titles. Look at your author career through a business owner’s lens, just this once. You may finally start seeing growth. At the very least, you’ll learn something from your fellow authors that will help your flourish.