Comparable Titles, or Comps, are a quick way to make your accounts happy. Wisely chosen comp titles will speed up the process of deciding on a buy, especially for accounts who are Analytics users, as their sales and inventory history will feed right into this tool. This is information they’re going to look up anyway, and if they have to leave Edelweiss to reference it in their point-of-sale systems, the amount of time they spend on each title increases.

Basic guidelines: Established author? Add their last few titles as comps. Is this a paperback listing? Include the hardcover as a comp. Re-Issue? Add previous editions as comps. Debut author? Use realistic comps! For better or worse, your accounts will likely let you know if you do this “wrong.” In fact, you can see a document written by a veteran buyer here, that explains comps from a buyer’s perspective.

The mechanics of it: Your catalog administrator will, hopefully, include comparable titles in their catalog listings. As a rep, you can designate certain comparable titles as “Highlighted Comps,” or those that you see as being the most relevant for your buyers.

If your publisher has chosen a good couple of comps that you’d like to highlight in your markup, click the Star icon next to a comp title. Doing so will “Highlight” that comp, letting your accounts know that you believe that particular comp title is especially relevant. They’ll still be able to view all comps, of course, whether you choose to highlight any or not. Highlighted Comps are markup-specific and will only display as such when you share your markup with accounts.

You can change the order of your Highlighted Comp Titles, too, by dragging and dropping!

Note: You and your accounts both have a handy tool that allows you to see only the comps you’ve highlighted in the selected markup, via the Preferences menu.

Reps can also choose to Highlight All Comps.

To find and add more comps to your markup, click Find Additional Comps. In the next window, you can search for comps and easily add them to your markup.

Simply search by ISBN, Title, Author, etc. to find the titles you’re looking for. Note: If another user has added a comp in this way, it will show as a “Community Comp.” Click on that yellow number to see what that comp is.

If you’d like to add a Community Comp, just click the checkmark next to the title and then on Add Selected Comp Title(s).

When you search for new comparable titles, you can optionally choose to filter out any digital formats.

If you’d like to search a not-yet-published title to add as a comp, select Show Not Yet Published Titles before running your search. These settings should remain in place until manually changed, so you don’t have to select them for future attempts.

Within a catalog, you can also hide publisher-added comp titles if you don’t want to see them. Note that this will only hide them in your own view and will not impact what your accounts see.

 

The Comps section will then reduce in number and indicate that there is a hidden comp. If you want to unhide the comp title, click on # Hidden and select the title you wish to restore.

 

Note, the view of comp titles changes if you look at no account or at an account that is not an Analytics subscriber. That view will look like this:

The view for Analytics subscribers* will look like this:

*As mentioned previously, you’ll be able to quickly see an account’s sales and inventory history for a title, as well as their current stock.

The S1, S2, and S3 columns indicate the first 3 months of sales and average on hand for each title. I1, I2, and I3 indicate the average inventory levels for this title for the first 3 months after publication. LYS= Last Year Sales, LFS=Lifetime Sales, OH=On Hand, and OO=On Order

If an account has multiple locations, you can quickly open a drop-down view for each comp title to view activity at each location, like so:

Or, as you’ll likely prefer, you can open all locations for all comp titles in the Preferences menu using the Comp Cross Store View option:

Note: When exporting a markup (details here), only your Highlighted Comps will export. If you want to export all comps with your exported markup, simply highlight all comps.