 | This article needs additional citations for verification .(August 2024) |
A backlist is a list of older books available from a publisher. This is opposed to newly-published titles, which is sometimes known as the frontlist. [1]
| | This article needs additional citations for verification .(August 2024) |
A backlist is a list of older books available from a publisher. This is opposed to newly-published titles, which is sometimes known as the frontlist. [1]
Building a strong backlist has traditionally been considered the best method to produce a profitable publishing house, as the most expensive aspects of the publishing process have already been paid for and the only remaining expenses are reproduction costs and author royalty.[ citation needed ]
"The backlist is the financial backbone of the book industry, accounting for 25 to 30 percent of the average publisher's sales," printed The New York Times . "Current titles, known as the front list, are often a gamble: they can become best sellers, but they are much more likely to disappear in a flood of returns from bookstores. By contrast, backlist books usually have predictable sales and revenues." [2]
In the US, backlist and midlist publications were negatively affected by the US Supreme Court decision in the 1979 case Thor Power Tool Company v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue . This decision reinterpreted rules for inventory depreciation, changing how book publishers had to account for unsold inventory each year, and their ability to depreciate it. Because stocks of unsold books could no longer be written down without proof of value, it became more efficient tax-wise for companies to simply destroy inventory.
The Thor decision caused publishers and booksellers to be much quicker to destroy stocks of poorly-selling books in order to realize a taxable loss. These books would previously have been kept in stock but written down to reflect the fact that not all of them were expected to sell. [3] This has been somewhat mitigated by the development of online bookselling, which makes less popular titles more accessible to average readers. (For more on this phenomenon, see The Long Tail.)
Because this book is out of print, the publisher has an opening on its list, more cash to invest, and a serious need to replace the steady (if small) income stream that book would have generated. So the publisher must release not only the new title it would have published anyway, but a second new one, to make up for its lack of a backlist... This results in title proliferation, which itself promotes both lower advance orders on the part of major buyers, and a higher return rate. That means writers must write more, and sell more often, in order to survive. [3]
Recording companies also have backlists of music titles they have published.[ citation needed ]
Oxford University Press (OUP) is the publishing house of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world. Its first book was printed in Oxford in 1478, with the Press officially granted the legal right to print books by decree in 1586. It is the second oldest university press after Cambridge University Press, which was founded in 1534.
Publishing is the activity of making information, literature, music, software, and other content available to the public for sale or for free. Traditionally, the term refers to the creation and distribution of printed works, such as books, comic books, newspapers, and magazines. With the advent of digital information systems, the scope has expanded to include digital publishing such as e-books, digital magazines, websites, social media, music, and video game publishing.
Inventory or stock refers to the goods and materials that a business holds for the ultimate goal of resale, production or utilisation.
Print on demand (POD) is a printing technology and business process in which book copies are not printed until the company receives an order, allowing prints in single or small quantities. While other industries established the build-to-order business model, POD could only develop after the beginning of digital printing because it was not economical to print single copies using traditional printing technologies such as letterpress and offset printing.
A textbook is a book containing a comprehensive compilation of content in a branch of study with the intention of explaining it. Textbooks are produced to meet the needs of educators, usually at educational institutions. Schoolbooks are textbooks and other books used in schools. Today, many textbooks are published in both print and digital formats.
An income statement or profit and loss account is one of the financial statements of a company and shows the company's revenues and expenses during a particular period.
A small press is a publisher with annual sales below a certain level or below a certain number of titles published. The terms "indie publisher" and "independent press" and others are sometimes used interchangeably.
Omnibus Press is a publisher of music-related books. It publishes around 30 new titles a year to add to a backlist of over 300 titles currently in print.
An out-of-print (OOP) or out-of-commerce item or work is something that is no longer being published. The term applies to all types of printed matter, visual media, sound recordings, and video recordings. An out-of-print book is a book that is no longer being published. The term can apply to specific editions of more popular works, which may then go in and out of print repeatedly, or to the sole printed edition of a work, which is not picked up again by any future publishers for reprint.
Remaindered books or remainders are printed books that are no longer selling well, and whose remaining unsold copies are liquidated by the publisher at greatly reduced prices. While the publisher may take a net loss on the sales of these books, they are able to recover at least some of their sunk costs on the sale and clear out space in the warehouses.
Thor Power Tool Company v. Commissioner, 439 U.S. 522 (1979), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court upheld IRS regulations limiting how taxpayers could write down inventory.
Midlist is a term in the publishing industry which refers to books which are not bestsellers but are strong enough to economically justify their publication. The vast majority of total titles published are midlist titles, though they represent a much smaller fraction of total book sales, which are dominated by bestsellers and other very popular titles.
Ten Speed Press is a publishing house founded in Berkeley, California, in 1971 by Phil Wood. It was bought by Random House in February 2009 and became part of their Crown Publishing Group division.
Sell-through refers to the percentage of a product that is sold by a retailer after being shipped by its supplier, typically expressed as a percentage. Net sales essentially refers to the same thing, in absolute numbers. Sell-through is calculated during a period.
Red Wheel/Weiser, also known in different periods in its history as RedWheel/Weiser/Conari and Samuel Weiser, Inc., is a book publisher with three imprints: Red Wheel, Weiser Books and Conari Books. It is America's second-largest publisher of occult and New Age books, behind Llewellyn Worldwide, and is also one of the oldest American publishers to concentrate exclusively on that genre. It publishes on average 60-75 new titles per year and maintains a large backlist, partly of books that it originally published, and partly of older public domain rare occult books.
The Espresso Book Machine (EBM) was a print on demand (POD) machine created by On Demand Books. It printed, collated, covered, and bound a single book in a few minutes.
Self-publishing is the publication of media by its author at their own cost, without the involvement of a publisher. The term usually refers to written media, such as books and magazines, either as an ebook or as a physical copy using print on demand technology. It may also apply to albums, pamphlets, brochures, games, video content, artwork, and zines. Web fiction is also a major medium for self-publishing.
Boni & Liveright is an American trade book publisher established in 1917 in New York City by Albert Boni and Horace Liveright. Over the next sixteen years the firm, which changed its name to Horace Liveright, Inc., in 1928 and then Liveright, Inc., in 1931, published over a thousand books. Before its bankruptcy in 1933 and subsequent reorganization as Liveright Publishing Corporation, Inc., it had achieved considerable notoriety for editorial acumen, brash marketing, and challenge to contemporary obscenity and censorship laws. Their logo is of a cowled monk.
Chelsea Green Publishing is an American publishing company which specialises in non-fiction books on progressive politics and sustainable living. Based in Vermont, it has published over 400 books since it was founded in 1984, and now releases between 25 and 30 titles each year.
A hybrid press is a publishing house which can be broadly defined by its source of revenue. The revenue source of a traditional publisher is through the sale of books that they publish, while the revenue of hybrid publishers comes from both book sales and fees charged to the author for the execution of their publishing services.
 | This publishing-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |