Is Backlist the New Frontlist?

Abstract

Streaming services for audiobooks and ebooks have grown rapidly in recent years. The shift in consumption patterns has transformed both reading and publishing. One visible change is the attraction and importance of backlist titles. The article investigates how the relationship between frontlist and backlist in the bestseller segment has developed, and discusses the shift in the power balance between the two. By examining large-scale consumer behaviour data (6.23 million streams) from one of the key players in subscription-based digital bookselling – Storytel – we track book consumption both in detail and at a structural level. Our results show that backlist titles are increasingly important for bestselling authors who continue to publish frontlist titles, especially for fiction written in series. Streaming services foster new types of book consumption behaviour thanks to a combination of technology, media, reading habits, and social change.

Book Consumption Literature : Literature Review on the Subject of the Behavior of Book Consumers

“…In 'Is Backlist the New Frontlist?' (Berglund & Steiner, 2021) the researchers analyze a set of large-scale data from subscribed book consumers from the aspect of the effects of titles on the purchase. Hupfeld et al (2013) in 'Leisure-based reading and the place of e-books in everyday life' made a very intruiging study by tracking the reading habits of 16 participants by making a digital ethnographic experiment done by diaries and the snapshots of digital cameras the trackees were given to make memory prompts.…”

Társadalom – gazdaság – természet: szinergiák a fenntartható fejlődésben (Konferenciakötet)

“…In 'Is Backlist the New Frontlist?' (Berglund & Steiner, 2021) the researchers analyze a set of large-scale data from subscribed book consumers from the aspect of the effects of titles on the purchase. Hupfeld et al (2013) in 'Leisure-based reading and the place of e-books in everyday life' made a very intruiging study by tracking the reading habits of 16 participants by making a digital ethnographic experiment done by diaries and the snapshots of digital cameras the trackees were given to make memory prompts.…”