In religion and spirituality publishing, good backlist pays the rent and butters editors' bread. Depending on publisher and backlist size, backlist business can provide anywhere from 60% to 80% of sales revenue. PW talked with a dozen religion publishers about the importance of backlist and their strategies for maintaining sales. All of them are optimistically looking for the next perennial and tending the ones they were smart enough to discover.
Keeping it Fresh
The first step is thinking long haul when acquiring. "We acquire books with the idea that this will become a backlist bestseller," said Mark Tauber, associate publisher at Harper San Francisco. "We wouldn't look at a book like The Paris Hilton Guide to Spirituality." HSF's range across religions has produced backlist standouts that include the venerable The World's Religions: Our Great Wisdom Traditions by scholar Huston Smith, first published in 1959 as The Religions of Man, and Richard Foster's million-selling Celebration of Discipline: The Path to Spiritual Growth, which has been published in three anniversary editions, none of them paper, since the original 1978 edition.
Joel Fotinos, director of religious publishing for Penguin Group USA, calls his house, like all big trade houses, a frontlist publisher, but describes backlist as his passion. "The publishers that are the most successful are the ones that keep a close eye on their backlist," he noted. From the Tarcher imprint, author Julia Cameron is a "shining example" Fotinos cites of backlist reliability. While creativity guru Cameron continues to produce new books, her classic The Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity, first published in 1992, continues to sell more than 100,000 copies annually and got new material and a new cover for a 10th anniversary edition.
"My goal is to keep every book in print forever," said Ehud Sperling, president and publisher at Inner Traditions/ Bear & Co., which has positioned itself as a backlist publisher and gets 80% of its revenue that way. Sperling said in his 30 years in publishing he's only had 20 titles go out of print, compared to 1,000 he's ushered into print. Good backlist is a workhorse: slow to start, but it goes the distance. "Every once in a while, you get a real breakout book," Sperling said, "but most of our titles that have achieved large numbers have done so over years."
Doubleday, on the other hand, said its backlist and frontlist sales split is closer to 50—50. "We're part of a trade house [Random House] with lots of emphasis on front list, and we've had a couple of good years lately," said Trace Murphy, editor-in-chief of Doubleday Religion. Authors Henri Nouwen, Scott Hahn, Anthony deMello and Joseph Girzone are of continuing interest to readers. The Catechism of the Catholic Church (1995) is a Catholic staple that has sold more than 1.1 million copies in less than a decade.
A number of publishers concur that slow but steady describes the sales pace of reliable backlist titles. It takes time for a title to establish itself. Recommendations can't be purchased, nor can course adoptions. "You can't buy word of mouth with marketing dollars," said Munro Magruder, associate publisher and marketing director at New World Library, where The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment by Eckhart Tolle (1999) "performed like frontlist" for years, racking up sales in North America of almost a million copies. A paper edition published in September has already hit bestseller status.
Backlist is a term that makes sense to publishers, but readers don't see it that way. "To the consumer who discovers it five years after it's released, it's a brand new book," said Lyn Cryderman, v-p and publisher at Zondervan, where All the Women of the Old Testament by Abraham Kuyper, the house's first book, has been in print since 1933 and has sold more than 100,000 copies.
Perennials Are Big Sellers
If publishers knew exactly what made for good backlist, they could follow a formula, churn out half a dozen guaranteed perennials each season and retire comfortably. "If we knew that for sure, we'd never do anything else," said Scott Tunseth, publisher at Augsburg Fortress, the publishing arm of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. One of its long-lived titles, Good Grief by Granger Westberg, first published by Fortress Press in 1962, has been licensed by card giant Hallmark, which earlier this year published a gift edition of the book with a four-color cover. Augsburg Fortress is in turn licensing back that version to sell to its trade customers that don't compete with Hallmark stores.
Westberg's classic has sold two million copies. Books that deal with grief or finding God in difficult circumstances have been successful for a number of publishers, because the subject is inescapable. "There's always a ready audience," said Tunseth.
Many religion publishers cite bestselling backlist titles that speak about perennial questions or experience. "I think there's a lot of religion publishing that meets a need," said Jeff Crosby, director of sales and marketing at InterVarsity Press. The press's Grieving a Suicide:A Loved One's Search for Comfort, Answers and Hope by Albert Hsu (2002) fit a need for readers facing an unusual and difficult kind of human grief. Other books answer theological questions that get posed again and again. Knowing God by J.I. Packer (1973), a book by a respected author that poses an essential religious question, has sold 1.2 million for IVP.
"Great backlist tends to be what I'd call the 'big theme' books," agreed Zondervan's Cryderman. The Case for Christ by Lee Strobel (1998), which has sold 3.6 million, is one treatment of a Christian universal that both authors and readers are always ready to probe.
Publishers are always happy when a book makes its way into a classroom or a study group. "For us, what makes good backlist is a mixture of audiences—if a book has retail interest and college adoption potential," said Ellen Chodosh, v-p and publisher of the trade division of Oxford University Press, where titles on Islam, notably those by scholar John Esposito, are strong backlist. Oxford also finds success with classics from world religions, such as the Upanisads translated by Patrick Olivelle (1998), W.Y. Evans-Wentz's version of The Tibetan Book of the Dead (4th edition, 2000) and St. Augustine's Confessions, translated by Henry Chadwick (1998). "We have some very, very deep backlist," Chodosh said.
With strengths in theology and biblical studies, Westminster John Knox Press spots backlist winners through "steady sales and continued academic adoptions, which we can tell very easily," said Bill Falvey, director of sales. Study group potential is another asset. The press's successful Gospel According to... series, which looks at popular culture for spiritual themes, includes study guides that are published a year after the book comes out. The granddaddy of the series, The Gospel According to Peanuts by Robert Short (1965), has sold 10 million and was rejacketed for a 35th anniversary edition in 2000.
Books that have become essential in one or another way—whether for academic study or as a foundation for other texts or spiritual practices—also perform year in and year out. "There's a new generation all the time" for fundamental texts about Wicca and paganism, said Carl Weschke, president and publisher at Llewellyn, which specializes in those topics. Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner by Scott Cunningham (1992) has sold almost 640,000 copies. Some books have much longer shelf lives. When Weschke purchased the company in 1960, he also acquired a title by company founder Llewellyn George that has been popular as a fundamental astrology reference since publication in 1910. Lifetime sales for Llewellyn's New A to Z Horoscope Maker and Interpreter, in a 14th edition updated in 2003, total almost 750,000.
At Penguin Putnam, Fotinos has sold 100,000 copies of The Science of Mind by Ernest Holmes, the founder of Religious Science, an American religion. Originally published in 1926, the company's Tarcher imprint purchased rights to publish it in paperback. Similarly, from the Philosophical Research Society, a group that promotes the world's wisdom literature, it licensed The Secret Teachings of All Ages by Manly P. Hall. Originally published in 1928 and considered a primary resource on esoteric teachings, the volume was retypeset and repackaged in 2003 as a reader's edition, a 750-page paperback with 16 color plates. It has sold 21,000 copies. "Our edition looks completely different and that's why it does so well," Fotinos said.
Strategies for Success
Like a wardrobe, recent as well as deep backlist needs attention if it is to remain fresh looking. Publishers have a variety of strategies for reviewing and renewing backlist. Evangelical publisher Thomas Nelson has a senior v-p and staff of editors whose sole responsibility is backlist, said Jonathan Merkh, senior v-p and publisher of Nelson Books and Nelson Business. Nelson relies on branding authors—developing a distinctive identity for an author and the author's work—and meets several times annually with key authors to talk about old as well as new work. Authors such as John Maxwell have platforms—speaking engagements, workshops—that make a difference in providing constant exposure for backlist. Maxwell's Developing the Leader Within You (1997) recently reached one million in sales. "We have been deliberate and specific about developing our authors as brands, and that contributes to backlist," said Merkh.
Nelson author John Eldredge is a word-of-mouth phenomenon. Sales of his Wild at Heart:Discovering the Secrets of a Man's Soul (2001) didn't begin taking off until almost a year after publication and now have reached 1.5 million copies through study by men's groups and purchase by women for men they love. "It's turned into a movement of sorts," said Merkh.
Publishers are happy when an author whose work has performed solidly approaches them with a request to update. Harper San Francisco will update Marcus Borg's Jesus: A New Vision: Spirit, Culture and the Life of Discipleship (1987),next year. "[Borg] came to us and said, 'This book has scholarship in it that needs updating. I want to go back and revise it,' " said HSF's Tauber. "We're happy to do that."
In illustrated works, sometimes hairdos need redoes. "We'll update a backlist title when the examples and haircuts are outdated yet the message is still relevant and sought after," said Gloria Capik, assistant marketing director at Paulist Press. Ordinary People as Monks and Mystics by Marsha Sinetar (1986), an organizational psychologist who commands a following, is getting a makeover for 2005. The book has sold more than 100,000 copies.
Publishers can do some spadework on subjects. New World Library works on developing topics in which it sees interest emerging. Animal spirituality is one such subject, and The Tao of Equus: A Woman's Journey of Healing and Transformation through the Way of the Horse by Linda Kohanov (2001) has become evergreen hardcover backlist. "We're actively acquiring more books in that category," said associate publisher Magruder.
Anniversary editions provide an occasion for content or jacket updating as well as publisher rejoicing, and a number of publishers actively inspect backlist for celebration potential. When Too Busy Not to Pray by popular Willow Creek Church pastor Bill Hybels (InterVarsity Press) came out in a 10th anniversary edition in 1998, it came out in cloth, as an audio book and with a journal. "The life cycle of a strong book can be reinvigorated by freshening it up," said Crosby at IVP.
Maintaining reader interest that is solid but not necessarily flashy, and in need of occasional maintenance, backlist really is the success secret of religion publishing. List credibility may be intangible, but it gives a publisher a reputation for quality.
"I can't tell you how many people say to me they remember Image [paperback] books from 30 or 40 years ago," said Doubleday's Murphy. "That means a lot in a business sense and also from an integrity sense. It matters to have that backlist, to build upon it."
