Michael La Ronn
Your backlist is a vital part of your author career because it's always available. A book you wrote ten years ago may seem like old news to you, but it will be just as fresh as it was on launch day to readers who find it today.
Backlists take the pressure off grueling production schedules for new titles. The bigger your backlist, the more money you can earn. However, it's normal to feel overwhelmed by the idea of refreshing your backlist. The process can take time and effort—but it doesn't have to be hard.
You can approach revitalizing your backlist in three steps:
- Review your books.
- Review your marketing materials.
- Send traffic to your backlist.
Read on for ten tips to get the best out of your backlist with little time, effort, and money.
Step 1: Review Your Books
- Assess Your Book Cover
Older book covers might need a redesign, but consider the cost, especially with a large backlist.
According to the book cover design company MiblArt, common mistakes with cover designs include bad fonts, bland designs, and poor image quality. New authors often make these mistakes.
Identify bestselling self-published books in your subgenre that were published after your book so you can spot new trends. You should look at self-published books because their covers are most likely to be appealing to your target readers. You can also use tools like K-Lytics (https://K-Lytics.com) and Publisher Rocket (https://PublisherRocket.com) to do market research and find comparable books quickly.
Pro Tip: Place your book cover with ten recent best-selling indie covers on a Pinterest board. If it blends in, rebranding might not be necessary. If it doesn’t, consider a rebrand. Send the Pinterest board to your designer, and ask them to design something that fits on the board.
- Spruce Up Your Book Description
Unlike cover design, rewriting your book description is free and may help grab potential readers’ attention just as effectively.
According to BookBub, it’s important to keep your specific genre in mind as you write your sales copy. Pay careful attention to the language that indie bestsellers in your category use in their descriptions, and analyze your book description against comparable books, carefully reviewing the hook and first paragraph in particular. Also be sure to include sales words, like “captivating,” “spell-binding,” and “full throttle.” You can even consider adding snippets from reviews to your book description—all of it helps to build hype for your book.
While you’re here, don’t forget to refresh the metadata for your book. Look at your categories and keywords to see if they need updating.
Pro Tip: Use AI tools like ChatGPT or Claude for rewriting tips. They can help you find hidden opportunities to use more sales words, making your description more appealing.
- Revamp Your Back Matter
In your back matter, consider an Other Books By page to promote your most popular backlist titles. If you have a small backlist, you may have to update this page from time to time as you release new books, but an outdated page is still better than no page at all.
If your backlist contains series that are different from your current one, sending readers to those backlist books can be a good way of keeping them entertained until you launch the next book in your active series, especially if you don’t release new work quickly.
Step 2: Review Your Marketing Materials
- Adapt Your Autoresponders
Autoresponders are a series of pre-written emails that are sent to your mailing list in response to specific triggers, like new signups. Most email marketing platforms allow you to create them.
The Alliance of Independent Authors recommends updating your autoresponder sequence to inform readers about your backlist. They also recommend adding to your autoresponder sequence each time you release a new book or series.
- Expand into New Editions
Your book is likely to exist as an e-book and trade paperback, but consider the following additional formats:
- hardcover (case laminate or dust jacketed);
- limited edition hardcovers, with a foil-stamped cover, illustrations, or custom chapter headers;
- large print; or
- audiobooks or translations, if your books are selling well and you have the money.
These editions are easier to create than ever before now that many cover designers are familiar with them and IngramSpark no longer charges setup fees.
Pro Tip: Consider launching a Kickstarter campaign to help you fund the creation of these editions. While time-intensive, Kickstarter is a great way to drum up renewed interest in older books.
- Create Cover Mockups
Use a tool like Book Brush (https://BookBrush.com) to create compelling mockups of your books that you can share on social media. These tools allow you to put your book on mocked-up tablets, phones, and even paperback books. Mockups are more eye-catching on social media feeds than flat book cover images and may draw more eyes to your promotional posts.
You can also use Book Brush to create ads for Facebook and BookBub Ads, so it can serve a dual purpose in your revitalization efforts.
Step 3: Send Traffic to Your Backlist
- Update Your Website
Consider spotlighting a featured backlist title or series on your website’s homepage, just below the fold—before users have to scroll. The homepage is often the most visited page on a website, so it is prime real estate to promote your backlist.
Find other creative ways to promote your backlist on your website, such as in the menu bar of your blog, the footers of your blog posts, or a dedicated page for each of your books or series on your website’s navigation menu.
- Write a Newsletter
It's easy to overlook your newsletter, so if you haven't communicated with your readers recently, run a $0.99 promotion and send a quick email to your readers to let them know about it.
Keep your email brief, but be sure to include your new cover if you have one, your revised book description, and any creative mockups. Remind your audience about your backlist every so often—if anyone is newer to your mailing list, they might not realize you have other books available until you tell them.
- Run Ads
Ads can be a great way to test your rebranding efforts. Experiment with small-budget ad campaigns on Amazon, Facebook, and BookBub. If you’re active on TikTok, consider ads there as well.
If you’re not familiar with these ad platforms, consider investing in a paid course to learn the basics quickly. Although these platforms have a learning curve, you will have lessened your work considerably if you have a new cover, revised book description, and creative mockups.
You can also stack promotions with a $0.99 sale using sites like CraveBooks (https://CraveBooks.com) to help you get more out of your promotion campaign.
- Sell Direct
Selling books directly on your site can also help your backlist sales. Whether you sell on Payhip (https://Payhip.com), Gumroad (https://Gumroad.com), Shopify (https://Shopify.com), or a similar direct sales platform, you can create special offers for your readers.
With the increasing popularity of tools like BookFunnel (https://BookFunnel.com) and StoryOrigin (https://StoryOriginApp.com) delivering books directly to readers, many readers are more familiar with purchasing books direct from authors. Selling direct is a great way to increase your income.
Use direct sales platforms to offer special coupons and upsells that you can’t create on retailer sites. For example, you might offer a 10 percent Christmas coupon, or, if a reader buys book 1 in a series, you might upsell them books 2 and 3 at a small discount.
Pro Tip: Use a printer like Bookvault (https://Bookvault.app) to enable direct print sales on your website. Bookvault integrates with Shopify, and when readers purchase the book, it ships directly from Bookvault, and you don’t have to keep inventory.
You don’t have to do all of this in one day. Take it one step at a time, and you’ll be well on your way to revitalizing your backlist, growing your income, and keeping your books fresh for years to come. Your backlist will thank you!
Michael La Ronn