The Importance of Building a Backlist

There are authors who win the publishing lottery at their very first attempt in writing a book, but they are more the exceptions to the rule than the reality. The truth is that many of the first few books of authors remain unread for years before they are discovered by readers.

And this is still a very optimistic view of the book publishing industry. There are books who remain unsold even though years have passed since they were published. This information is not meant to scare aspiring authors, it is just reality.

The sheer reality is that there might be hundreds and even thousands of books for every single book reader. There are for example 1.8 million books self-published in the US for 2018 alone. This is a staggering figure. Imagine your books competing with a million other books.

That is why it is advisable to be realistic in the way you approach your book publishing business. You must realize that it may take more than a couple of books and more before you make even a small amount of money in your author business.

Even JK Rowling who is now a billionaire didn’t become one until years later when she first wrote her internationally famous Harry Potter book series. You might think that she garnered instant fame with this book.

But the truth was that her Harry Potter book languished for years unread before it became a well known and widely read book. So don’t lose heart if your books are not yet selling at the moment. They might just be biding for their time in the limelight.

The same is true for other authors who were once unknown but are famous now. RL Stein for example wrote the first few of his Goosebumps children’s horror books with not much success in the beginning.

Months passed by with these books hardly selling at all. According to RL Stein, it took almost a year before he got decent sales from the books in his Goosebumps book series. But when they eventually began selling, they sold like hotcakes.

And it was a good thing that RL Stine and his book publishers created not just one book, but a series of books from the very beginning. This enabled them to earn more by being able to offer more books at once.

In short, they already have a backlist of books to begin with that when demand picked up, they did not have to wait to write and sell more books. Their backlist of books were already there for them to begin with.

As you can see, the author business can be a waiting game where you have to patiently wait for months and even years before your books start selling. As has been said before, authors who make money with their first books are a rarity in the book publishing business.

It takes time and may even be never before your books shows up in the search algorithms of the online bookstores. This is especially true in the sea of self-published books which has no signs of abating.

Another author I could mention who didn’t find instant fame is Nicolas Sparks. According to him, he first started writing when he was just barely in his twenties. He however did not find success in being an author in the beginning.

This failure of him discouraged him from further writing books. He stopped writing altogether and just worked on a more conventional office career. He did this for decades before developing the desire to write fiction books again.

He was thirty when he wrote The Notebook which became one of his most famous and bestselling novel. But as you can see, it took him decades before he became a success and all the time he was not writing a novel.

If he hadn’t stopped despite his initial failures in novel writing, who knows how many more successful novels he could have written at a much younger age. He could have definitely been worth much more now.

And this is the importance of continuing to write despite your lackluster author career. Your first successful book may just be around the corner and when it comes, expect the readers to come demanding for your backlist of books.

Your author career might not become the likes of JK Rowling, RL Stein, Nicolas Sparks as well as the other famous authors of today, but you can still expect your book readers to demand for your backlist of books when you achieve a certain amount of popularity.

In the olden days when books cannot be still read digitally, many aspiring authors just write their stories using paper and a pen or typewriter and then hide it away at some corner of their house.

The reason for this is that before a book can be published during those days, it must first be read and accepted by a publishing house. And this process can be very difficult and time consuming.

These days, in the age of self-publishing, you don’t need to write on paper and pen or typewriter anymore. You don’t need a publishing house to have your book published. You can publish your book globally using only a computer and an internet connection.

And this is the reason why there are many authors these days who are so emboldened to make quick money with book publishing that they strive to write as many books as they possibly can.

In my experience, the first few books you self-publish may not be your best work. There would typos and grammatical errors. The quality of your writing may even be subpar. Unfortunately, this is the state of many self-published books today.

It is undeniable that you must first write a couple of books even more than a dozen before you get good at writing. I learned this the hard way when I have to redo some of the books that I have written. But I could not have been a better author if I hadn’t accumulated a backlist of books.

When I first began writing, one of the things foremost in my mind was to see if my books would sell. I think this is what many beginning authors and even seasoned authors think about. The question of being able to sell a book is paramount in the minds of many authors.

But I am happy now that my books didn’t initially sell because it gave me the opportunity to take a second look at them. And I have found out that they needed a lot more work. The covers needed to be changed, there were storylines that needed revision and so much more.

Imagine if someone had bought my books earlier and realized that they were not really of the highest quality? These people could have posted bad remarks against my books which could have affected my overall sales.

I realize now that my author career is not only about writing a few books that sell really well but about writing a catalog of books where each one reflects the quality of the other books. In short, it is not only one book that defines your author career, its the entirety of all your books.

I must admit that it is very hard to get rid of the book rapid release mentality. The allure of earning more the more books you write can be irresistible for many, but remember, it takes only a book to destroy your author career.

George RR Martin is a good example. He’s more famously known now as the author of Game of Thrones or GOT, but before he was truly famous, he first wrote The Armageddon Rag which didn’t sell well because it was unlike any of his previous novels.

Backlists are not only useful in their original forms as books, but they can be very useful as marketing materials for your catalog of books in their entirety. This means your books can be used to market your other books.

”The Other Books By This Author” Page:

In this age of digitized books, the pages of digital books do not only now just contain the pages of the story, the chapters, the title page, the dedication, forward or even the epilogue of the book.

The digital pages of ebooks are increasingly being used as marketing materials for the other books of the author. This is exemplified by the “The Other Books By This Author” page which of course contains a list of the other books of the author.

This means that the more books you put out which has this page, the more is the marketing that you are able to do for your other books. Besides this, an author can also promote their website or social media account using this page.

Using Some Of Your Books As Promo Materials:

Admittedly, there would come a point in your author career when you would feel the need to give out promotional materials in order to sell your books. And this is where the beauty of having an extensive backlist begins to shine.

If you only have a few books to begin with, it would be very hard for you to give out promotional and free books without feeling that you are cannibalizing the sales of your books. If you have just a few books, this is how exactly it feels like.

But if you have for example a lot of books which may for example number in the hundreds, then you would feel less bad or might not even give a thought of making some of your books promotional or free.

Another thing about having an extensive backlist of books to sell is having the capability to offer several of your books at bargain or sale prices. You could for example bundle a couple of your old books or books than are not selling.

You can offer these books for the price of one of your books or sell them at a very discounted rate. Again, if you do not have an extensive backlist of books, it may feel that you’re cannibalizing the sales of your books.

Another decided advantage of having a huge backlist of books is that you are not much dependent on the price of your books to sustain yourself. You can sell your individual books at cheap prices and you would still make a living.

This is what happened to Amanda Hocking. She tried for years to get her books traditionally published with no much success. She was still broke when she decided to sell her books in ebook format for 99 cents each only.

You might think that selling your backlist of books for 99 cents only won’t amount to much money. She however has proven that you can still be a millionaire even if you sell your ebooks for 99 cents only.

But it’s not only her who is an example of why building a backlist of books is important. According to George RR Martin, he has an author friend who makes about $50,000 a year entirely from the sales of his backlist alone.

This friend of George RR Martin may not be a multimillionaire like him, but his friend can support himself comfortably through his backlist sales alone.

At the beginning of your author career it might be important first that you build a good backlist of your books. By writing continuously even though your book sales might be lackluster, you can continuously improve yourself which may lead to more book sales for you overall.

A backlist is also a good marketing tool for you as each of your books can be used to market your other books. You can use your books as promo and sales materials. You are also not as constrained about the individual prices of your books as your overall sales are more important.

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