This spring has been full of retrospectives on the pandemic and what it’s meant for the publishing business as well as predictions about whether 2020’s behavioral changes will stick around for the long term. In sessions hosted by Westchester Publishing Services and Publishers Weekly (as well as Ingram), we heard publishing insiders express gratitude that book sales have been resilient and have even grown during the pandemic—and that books have indeed remained essential to people. But the darker side of that resilience is that readers have been turning to books and authors they know, rather than discovering new titles.
Recently, The New York Times reported that 98 percent of new titles in 2020 sold fewer than 5,000 copies. That was a shock to some, but to longtime industry vets, not so much. According to NPD BookScan, backlist sales are now 67 percent of all book sales. This is up from 63 percent in 2019; in 2010, backlist accounted for 54 percent of unit sales. The shift toward backlist sales accelerated more quickly in 2020 as bookstores closed to foot traffic, removing a key avenue for big publishers to promote new titles.
Digital subscription services like Kindle Unlimited, Storytel, and Scribd are largely populated by backlist titles, and those businesses grew in 2020 as consumers experimented with new ways of consuming content. Libraries, too, saw dramatically increased digital borrowing: OverDrive (which sells digital books to libraries) reported 33 percent growth. EPIC, a direct-to-consumer subscription service focused on children’s content, has seen its audience grow from 20 to 50 million over the past year, with the amount spent per student per book up by 60 percent. Ingram says that there’s high demand for children’s audio content, especially screen-free entertainment.
Sourcebooks CEO Dominique Raccah recently said that, during the pandemic, readers have been taking fewer risks with new authors and new books: “There has been a consistent frontlist challenge, and [our] backlist is up 74 percent year to date. I think that is about people looking for books that they know, that they’re comfortable with.” Her comments were part of a panel discussion co-hosted by Westchester Publishing Services and Publishers Weekly, but a separate event hosted by Ingram Content echoed the exact same sentiment. Nicole Robinson-Hamilton, a lead content manager at Ingram, said that, during the pandemic, “People were choosing to go back home.” This expressed itself not just in increased backlist sales but in a huge increase in series sales and authors with long publishing histories.
When asked if there was less investment in the frontlist during the pandemic, publishers said no—they were in fact spending more. While certain kinds of promotions have disappeared (such as trade show marketing and bookstore display), in terms of advertising dollars, Raccah said Sourcebooks is spending more. “What we’re seeing is just that brick-and-mortar retail—and we’ve known this all along—is an easier and more appropriate discovery mechanism.” Tom Chalmers, managing director of UK’s Legend Press, said, “Online sales give much more power to the customer rather than the curator.” The customers are making decisions about what’s popular and what’s not through online communities, review sites, and word of mouth (e.g., crying on TikTok). To gain momentum for a title, his team is relying on advertising spend through the various online retail platforms. Raccah confirmed the same.
Direct-to-consumer business is increasing. Raccah said that while brick-and-mortar sales are not back to pre-COVID levels, there’s been growth in direct-to-consumer sales and at all online retail partners, not just Amazon. Lorraine Shanley, a longtime industry vet and consultant, reported growth in book clubs; e.g., Book of the Month Club, which targets Millennial women, is doing extraordinarily well. (There’s also considerable startup activity in the book-club space, including Book Club, Fable, and Literati.) Cathy Felgar at Princeton University Press says they’ve had successful website sales and put more effort into digital marketing and keyword optimization to ensure visibility in search engines. According to Peter McCarthy at Ingram, Google saw a 50 percent increase in book-related searches in 2020, underlining the need for publishers to have good SEO for their websites and titles.
No one was keen on online events as a way to sell books now or in the future. Raccah in particular said she was not “in love” with that method of book touring: “I don’t think virtual events translate into sales well. It’s pretty challenging.” Shanley added that Zoom tours were successful at the beginning of the pandemic, but they’ve now petered out, and sales are minimal. The format is too limiting, and both new tools and experimentation are needed. Raccah said they’re working on a new idea with EL James for the launch of her new book this year, to be announced in May.
Bottom line: At the end of the Westchester–PW panel, an author asked what they should be doing differently to compete and prepare for a post-pandemic book sales environment. Raccah said, “If the world that we are living in has moved from 65 percent frontlist to 65 percent backlist, then the fundamental infrastructure that we’ve all built into our businesses needs to shift to represent that. And that includes the efforts that we ask from our authors. We need to be talking to our authors in different ways and asking different things from them. That’s the question I think that’s fundamental, and I don’t know whether we have data on that. I certainly don’t. I don’t know if the shift that we’re looking at is going to be an ongoing one or whether we’re going back to having the same frontlist momentum we’ve had in the past.”
There is at least one bit of research: according to reports from McKinsey, about 43 percent of consumers expect to continue their pandemic buying behavior for books. (In fact, see the closing image in today’s issue for a surprising look at how books are projected to be the retail item most likely to have sustained online buying post-pandemic.) If that turns out to be the case, then the bookstore will no longer be curator of new titles, and publishers and authors alike will have to devise a launch playbook that is digitally dynamic and doesn’t treat readers as a bookstore-visiting monolith.
Jane Friedman has spent her entire career working in the publishing industry, with a focus on business reporting and author education. Established in 2015, her newsletter The Bottom Line provides nuanced market intelligence to thousands of authors and industry professionals; in 2023, she was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World.
Jane’s expertise regularly features in major media outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, NPR, The Today Show, Wired, The Guardian, Fox News, and BBC. Her book, The Business of Being a Writer, Second Edition (The University of Chicago Press), is used as a classroom text by many writing and publishing degree programs. She reaches thousands through speaking engagements and workshops at diverse venues worldwide, including NYU’s Advanced Publishing Institute, Frankfurt Book Fair, and numerous MFA programs.
