The Rise of the backlist

[fjtorres]

From KKR:

http://kriswrites.com/2015/01/14/bus....z77jNmII.dpbs

The case in point is from an article that appeared on January 5, 2015. Publishers Marketplace analyzed the sales figures from Nielsen Bookscan (some of which you can find on Publishers Weekly’s site.)
Those figures that we’ll deal with are these:

Nielsen Bookscan reported that print book sales—in the outlets that report to Bookscan—went up 2.4% in 2014 over sales from 2013. Half of the gain in sales—1.2%—came from a better-than-expected holiday season.

In that first week, Publishers Marketplace went deeper into the numbers than Publishers Weekly did and came out with some fascinating information, some of which I’ll deal with in the next week or two. But here’s the take-away:

All of the year’s gains and then some came from backlist, however, not newly-released titles. Frontlist unit sales fell 2 million units to 276 million, while backlist sales rose 17 million units to 359 million…

Those of us who’ve been publishing indie have known how powerful the backlist is since 2010. Fortunately for most of us early adapters, the traditional publishing industry didn’t get the memo for about three years. They started to get a clue in 2013 that there was wine in those dusty old bottles, which is why it’s become harder and harder to get rights reverted from traditional publishers in the past couple of years.

Note: even for tradpub pbooks, backlist makes up 60% of sales.

Traditional publishers still don’t have a complete clue about the importance of the rise of the backlist, as evidenced by this comment from Publishers Marketplace:

[backlist sales rose]…reflecting the lack of new breakout hits…

Sorry, Publishers Marketplace, no. The backlist rose because the industry is changing. The way books are being sold everywhere, not just online, is changing.

Readers are changing. Well, actually, readers are staying the same. They want “what they want, when they want it, and at a reasonable price” to quote Kevin Spacey on the lessons Netflix learned from House of Cards. Readers have always wanted that.

But traditional publishing, like all other media in the 20th century, was based on the scarcity model: if you make readers hunger for a book, they’ll pay more when they see one. They also buy it immediately, and they’ll be grateful for what’s offered, rather than buy what they like. The internet broke the scarcity model. Actually, it didn’t break the model, it obliterated the model. But you still hear how the rising availability is bad.

As Hugh Howey said recently in a good post:

You mostly hear about this glut nonsense from book producers, and they aren’t worried about an infinite number of books, they are worried about the finite number of wallets. They see every one of those ten trillion llama books as taking money out of their pockets, because they think every reader would enjoy their work if there was nothing else to read. They think if they could just limit the number of books, they’d sell more. They’d be richer…

As Hugh accurately says, “…the glut is good. The glut is golden. There’s never been a better time in history for literature.”

Because the entire traditional publishing business is based on the scarcity model, Publishers Marketplace can’t understand the rise of the backlist. The rise doesn’t fit into the scarcity model. Here’s the logic of the situation when looked at from the scarcity model: if people are buying “old” books, then the new books aren’t satisfying. The new books aren’t “good.” That analysis was true-ish before backlist was constantly available. I say true-ish because, remember, not a lot of “old” books were available—just the ones that readers would keep recommending to their friends, so publishers couldn’t take those books out of print. Back then, breakout books happened for two reasons: First, the books stayed on the shelves long enough to get word of mouth; and second, the books dominated the conversation. It’s almost impossible to dominate the conversation now. Traditional publishing doesn’t control every book that makes its way into the media now. One book might get some traction, but definitely not all of the traction. And the conversation moves faster as well. We might discuss Book A today, but tomorrow we could be discussing Book J. Or not discussing any traditionally published book at all.

Lots more at the source.

Around here we already knew that the backlist rules but now there's "official" numbers showing the extent to which it rules.

Lots of good observations on the ways the internet has shattered the TradPub business model.

[theducks]

Lots of print books simply went Out of Print because the numbers did not indicate a second (nth) print run would have enough sales.
With e-books it is only catalog space (the disk space is negligible in this day o 6T drives )

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by theducks

Lots of print books simply went Out of Print because the numbers did not indicate a second (nth) print run would have enough sales.
With e-books it is only catalog space (the disk space is negligible in this day o 6T drives )

True.

But it's not just ebooks: the backlist is also outselling the frontlist in pbooks.
And its not just in online stores; it is in B&M too.
There has always been a fair amount of backlist in bookstores, the change is that buyers are now buying relatively more backlist despite the increasing push towards new releases.

[Sydney's Mom]

Isn't this the same thing as binge-watching video? I am buying a lot more backlist ebooks-I find and author I like, and after I finish one book, I look immediately online for another. Before ebooks, that would have had to wait for my next trip to the bookstore, by which time I probably would have been distracted by something else, and have forgotten all about it.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by Sydney's Mom

Isn't this the same thing as binge-watching video? I am buying a lot more backlist ebooks-I find and author I like, and after I finish one book, I look immediately online for another. Before ebooks, that would have had to wait for my next trip to the bookstore, by which time I probably would have been distracted by something else, and have forgotten all about it.

Uh-huh.
I suspect that with the increased popularity of series books the bookstores and publishers have belatedly realized that if the newest title in a series is coming out, it just might (possibly) be sensible to stock the rest of the series so newbies can catch up.

Didn't use to be that way just a couple years back...
I remember often finding interesting series books at BORDERS and B&N, but only volumes 4&5. Usually I would have to take note and go home to look the series up on Amazon. In some cases the early volumes would be out of print or, worse, the middle ones...

As KKR says, it is publishing starting to respond to the way readers actually behave. Still have a ways to go but... baby steps...

[Barcey]

I know from my own habits pre/post ereading this is true. I used to find it very difficult to walk past a book store and now I can't remember the last time I was in one. The reason is that I used to have a short window of time to find/buy the books I wanted to read, they weren't the top 10 best sellers and they probably never went into a second printing so you bought it then or you might never find it again.

The power of the backlist is really dependant on the genre though. For Fantasy or Historical Fiction it really doesn't matter if it was written two months ago or two decades ago. For a lot of Science Fiction it doesn't matter either but some gets dated by new scientific findings. Spy Thrillers that thrive on the latest gadgets get dated quickly. I've been ready a series of detective mysteries that started in the 80's and it's interesting to travel back in time to the pre cell phone era and the first personal computers. A lot of the non Fiction books still have a short window of opportunity.

[fjtorres]

Diane Duane had to rewrite her YOUNG WIZARDS series because the PC tech that was integral to the stories was making the books inaccessible to younger readers. Asimov's LUCKY STARR series was scientifically accurate for the 50's but pure fantasy today. Or at least alternate history. Doesn't make them unreadable but it does limit their appeal beyond the genre hard core.

Luckily, that is less common than it would seem and most older books work fine as period pieces. Sometimes it enhances the appeal, as with Noir.