Earlier this year, at the Tech Forum panel “Serving communities in crisis: The bookseller’s role”, our bookseller panelists mentioned a growing trend: backlist titles were selling more than usual in their stores. But booksellers were not alone, throughout Tech Forum sessions, it came up again and again, from publishers, retailers, and book industry folks across the supply chain — backlist titles were big movers in 2020! So we thought we’d draw back the curtain and take a look at how frontlist and backlist titles performed last year.
But first, what’s the criteria we use at BookNet to determine that a book is ‘frontlist’ or ‘backlist’? Well, a frontlist title is a book that has been in circulation in the marketplace for one year or less, backlist titles are all the remaining books that have been in the market for over a year.
Sales of frontlist and backlist print books, by subject, 2020
Looking at 2020 data, on average across all subjects, 35% of sales were frontlist titles. Fiction titles made up the highest percentage of frontlist titles sales, at 58%, while Juvenile sold the least, at 24%.
But how does this stack up against the sales of frontlist and backlist titles over time? We compared the last three years to get the scoop. In 2019, frontlist sales made up 37% of all sales, and in 2018, frontlist titles made up 40% of all sales — confirming the anecdata that came up time and time again throughout Tech Forum sessions this year: backlist is playing a bigger role in the market recently.
Sales of frontlist and backlist print books, year-over-year
Backlist titles are clearly having a strong showing across all subjects in the retail market, but what about library circulation? In libraries, backlist titles make up the lion’s share of book circulation, year over year.
Loans of frontlist and backlist print books, by subject, in 2020
In 2019 we estimated that only 25% of print book loans were frontlist titles. Our updated 2020 data shows that only 14% of circulation is frontlist titles across all subjects. Frontlist titles have the highest performance in Young Adult (24%) and Fiction (25%) subjects, while both Juvenile and Non-Fiction (10% each) titles see the least checkout action in their first year of release. It’s clear from this data that books have an incredibly long life in the library!
Whether you’re at your favourite bookstore, or your beloved local library, it’s clear backlist titles are anything but forgotten after their first year of release. Even with teetering TBR piles, readers are making time (and shelf space) to cozy up with a great read they might’ve missed the first time around.
Top 10 backlist bestsellers of 2020
Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens (9780735219090)
Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari (9780771038518)
White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo (9780807047415)
Educated by Tara Westover (9781443452489)
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson (9780062641540)
Atomic Habits by James Clear (9780735211292)
Love You Forever by Robert Munsch 🍁, illustrated by Sheila McGraw (9780920668375)
Burn After Writing by Sharon Jones (9780399175213)
I Love You to the Moon and Back by Amelia Hepworth, illustrated by Tim Warnes (9781589255517)
Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer (9781571313560)
What did BookNet read in 2024? We’re sharing some tidbits of data about our team’s reading habits this year.