How do you choose comp titles for a nonfiction proposal?

Short answer: Kelly Bergh’s advice: Find 3-5 traditionally published titles from the past five or six years (post-2020), open the section with a paragraph on what those titles have in common and what market gap remains, then work through each one individually, noting what it did well and what your book will do differently.

Answered by Kelly Bergh, Literary Agent, Lucinda Literary.

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The agent’s answer

The comp titles section is Kelly's favorite to work on with authors, and she describes the process as detective work: go find 3 to 5 traditionally published titles from roughly the last five to six years, since older or self-published books reflect a different market. The section should open with a paragraph establishing what those titles collectively signal about the topic's appeal and what gap remains unaddressed, then work through each title individually with the same what-worked, what's-missing, and how-you'll-do-it-better structure. She specifically warns against leaning on blockbusters as comps unless your own platform is genuinely comparable, since it is hard to measure a standalone phenomenon like The Body Keeps the Score or Let Them Theory against the rest of the field. Invoking a blockbuster elsewhere in the proposal is still fine, for instance describing a book as 'X meets Y' in the overview. She also encourages writers to comp more creatively than topic-for-topic matching, pointing to tone or structural similarity as valid grounds for a comp.

In Kelly’s words

I recommend avoiding blockbusters unless you have a really similar platform.
Kelly Bergh, 31:55

Source: How to Develop a Sellable Nonfiction Book Proposal.