This past fortnight I’ve been soooo busy with fireworks, quiznights, and tonight more fireworks, I’ve got behind on blogging about books and my stock of ephemera too even. Normal service will resume next week I hope! So meanwhile, I’d like to have a voxpop type discussion with you…
We all love ‘new’ books – titles hot off the press, piled high in bookshops on the 3 for 2 table, featured in the ever-decreasing review sections of papers etc, Richard & Judy picks, nominated for major prizes, what happens to a book when it moves out of company with the new. If it’s lucky, it’ll have two chances – in hardback, then paperback – but then it’s onto the dreaded backlist.
You hear many authors groan that once their books lose their shiny new book du jour status and go on to the publisher’s backlist, then it’s a slippery slope towards being deleted off the backlist for straggling sales, diminishing royalties – hence they’re only as good as their latest book.
One small section of my TBR!
Bookshops have limited shelfspace for backlisted titles and have to choose their stock carefully to keep sales going, and this is where I believe that bloggers and book groups really are playing their part. By not always reading the latest new best thing, and delving back into our TBR piles occasionally to read books that are a few years old or more, or even buying backlisted titles new, we are doing our bit to help.
Often book groups choose backlisted titles – usually preferring (ours does anyway) to opt for books once in paperback to keep the monthly expense down. Admittedly, we tend to stick to the backlists of better-known authors, but occasionally will pick something less well known or off the wall.
Many bloggers like to combine reading and writing about the latest titles, with exploring their TBR piles – and this can all help raise interest in living authors’ backlists. As a blogger with a TBR mountain range that’s now totally out of control, since it got my late Mum’s books added to it, exploring it will remain a key reading resolution for me for years to come!
The key thing for me is finding real gems in authors’ outputs that can be shared – there are so many good books out there from recent decades that are getting forgotten about.
Over to you – what do you think about backlists?
I think you’re absolutely right. I have to admit that I don’t have the money to read all the new releases and my blog isn’t big enough (and non-American/UK) to receive many of them for review, which makes me more dependent on the TBR pile and “older” books. Book blogging has made me more aware of new releases in English fiction (as I live in a non-English speaking country), but it has also made me more able to explore fiction that isn’t recent as in the last 12 months.
I have no idea what kind of impact bloggers and book groups are having on actual sales of backlist titles, but I certainly know that they influence my reading and they often point me toward older titles. The mix of old and new is one of the things that I love about book blogs, and it’s something that print reviews simply don’t provide.
I would rather wait and see if the book has withstood the test of time and, as a result, I read few books released within the year they’re released. My book club does tend to concentrate on new-ish books, but I tend to get those out of a library. When I buy books (but I’m trying to stop because my 285-book TBR pile scares me) they tend to be backlists or classics.
I often avoid the big books of the moment – too much yabbering about them for me to make my own judgements. I am a big fan of reading by publisher – especially with smaller, more independent ones. That way, I get to read different and new to me authors, but know that a book has been judged as good enough by someone whose taste I trust – Persephone being a prime example.
I also think books need to be read at appropriate times for you as a reader, not when a publisher decides to push them. Viva la backlist!
Your TBR pile looks very similar to mine – tall and in danger of falling over! I notice a lot of books that we both have too
I am a fan of shiny new books, but I try to ensure about 50% of the books I read are older . I love the way book bloggers highlight older titles. Too many wonderful books go out of print
I mainly borrow the fiction I read from the library. I almost never choose books from the bestseller list, I browse the shelves and find books that interest me. I prefer series. Often, by chance, I have choosen books that I find out have been popular choices, usually in past years. I have found many wonderful books and authors in this way, and, the first of a series is, of course, older, sometimes by decades.
I tend to read a mixture of new books and back list. My current library pile includes both Room by Emma Donoghue and two of Richmal Crompton’s adult novels, the copies of which are actually almost as old as I am!
I would like to think that bloggers influence the maintenance of back lists, as I think that they understand what keen readers actually want rather than what the mainstream booksellers think we want, but all I can say for definite is that a lot of my reading in the last year or so has been blogger influenced – the Richmal Cromptons’ being a case in point as I have to say thank you to Simon from Stuck In A Book for putting me on to her books.
I also tend to read a mixture of old and new, but I thought I had problems until I saw your TBR pile. A recently discovered love of Balzac is messing up my reading flow!
I always have my eye open for new books but take so long to get to them that by the time I read them they’re on the backlist:) So I’m a BIG fan of backlists. Plus paperbacks are smaller and cheaper. All good things. I also feel that if you follow the natural path of reading where your choices are influenced by the books you read, subjects that crop up in your life and what others are reading, then it’s almost impossible to just read newly published books. There’s so much out there that half the fun is finding the titles that you’ve missed. For me, anyway.
In the words of Michelle Williams (on Strictly last Sat) I agree with everything! I love discovering older books highlighted by other bloggers in particular – long may it continue.