How New Titles Impact Your Backlist

After playing around in the author portal last week for the Real Talk issue on royalty statements, I dug a little deeper to explore the impact of new releases on the sales of previous books. The findings were interesting, so I decided to share them with all of you.

Before I dive in, an important caveat:

This is obviously a very limited sample size (one author across three books), and two of these release dates also coincided with the start of the COVID pandemic. As such, we can't really draw any specific conclusions to apply to other situations. There have also been changes in the market -- in particular with how Barnes & Noble stocks their stores -- which aren't reflected here since this data predates those changes.

Despite those limitations, I found the data really interesting, so I figured it was worth sharing in the name of transparency in a highly opaque industry. 

The Impact of Releasing a Sequel

The first data I looked at was the impact releasing a sequel (This Coven Won't Break) had on the first book in the series (These Witches Don't Burn). 

To start, I pulled the first 52 weeks of sales data for TWDB. (The PRH author portal allows you to sort data by date or based on weeks since the release of the book.) 

Sales were strongest the first week (thanks to pre-orders), settled down in the 200-400 copies/week range for the first six months (with some little increases here and there), lowered to just under 100 copies a week in the second six months, before shooting back up to the same number of copies as release week on the year anniversary...which is when TCWB released.

Here's a zoomed in view of Oct 2019 - May 2020 where there are several months where TWDB sold around 60-90 copies per week.

Once the sequel came out at the end of May, Book 1 popped back up to the same number of copies sold as its own release week. In fact, Book 1 outsold Book 2, even with all the Book 2 preorders! 

The increase in sales for Book 1 continued beyond the initial burst. There was a second bump on Week 3 of Coven's release, which I think correlated to an ebook sale, but it's been so long that I don't remember for sure. Even after that first month, overall weekly sales of TWDB remained elevated. Instead of averaging 60-90 copies a week, sales increased to approx. 150-200 copies a week, and that increase lasted for several months.

In the below screenshot, you can see TWDB selling 182 copies the week of August 1, 2020 while the sequel sold 105 copies.

As an author who doesn't really do much in the way of events (especially not in 2020), most of the bigger increases in sales tend to correlate to either seasonal relevances (like being included in witchy Halloween roundups) or ebook sales (which my publisher would often time around Halloween or Pride Month).

Here's an example of a sales bump for Halloween 2020. Given that Book 1 sold 688 copies and Book 2 only sold 95 copies, I assume there was an ebook sale happening that week.

Even at that point, five month after the sequel's release, you can see that Book 1's average weekly sales are still elevated compared to the few months leading up to Book 2's release. Clear, at least in the case of this particular series, releasing the sequel definitely improved sales of the first book.

The Impact of Releasing a Standalone

Does that same sales bump happen when an unrelated standalone book comes out? Obviously, I can't speak to that in a general sense, but in the specific case of The Coldest Touch... that sales increase didn't happen. First, here's a look at how the two witchy books were doing prior to TCT coming out (green is Book 1, blue is Book 2):

While there were certainly peaks here and there, overall, sales were fairly steady with TWDB selling in the 150-200 range and TCWB siting around 50-100 sales a week. Here's a zoom in of sales in October 2021, about two months before TCT came out.

When TCT released on December 7, 2021... it really didn't have any noticeable impact on the other books. Certainly not in the way we saw Witches bumping up when Coven came out in 2020.

When we zoom out a few months, sales for my first two books are pretty much unchanged from where they were in the months leading up to my third book (also, sorry some of the color coding swaps!). 

My Theories on Why This Happened

Without being able to examine other authors' weekly sales data, I can't say for certain whether this is simply what happens when you release unrelated standalone novels or if this is unique to these particular books, releasing at that particular time in society. (Side note: if you're an author and would like to share your data for comparison, I'm happy to chat. Send me an email!)

If there is normally more of a sales bump even with unrelated titles (in the same age category/genre), it's possible that TCT's cover was too different from the witch titles for readers to easily connect them. Or, it could be that TCT's lower sales overall meant that there wasn't much in the way of new readership finding that book. It's possible that most of those early sales came from existing readers who had already read my backlist.

TCT also didn't get the same level of marketing that TWDB received, partially because debuts in general tend to get more publicity than existing authors (there are obviously exceptions, but in general, publishing loves the "freshness" of a debut). As far as I can remember (again, this was now four years ago), this was also around the time when media outlets that actually covered books started dropping like flies. 

There is so much that goes into how well a book sells that is outside of our control, and it's possible that how much front list titles directly impact the sales of backlist varies, too. As a final note for this section, book sales aren't solely about what happens in the first couple months. There's no way to know how many TWDB and TCWB sales have come through over the past four years from readers who found TCT first. 

 
The (Potential) Impact of my 2026 Title

After reviewing all of this data, I've decided to make some predictions about how I think releasing my next book (With All My Haunted Heart - due out fall 2026) will impact my backlist. Since WAMHH is also with PRH (this time Berkley rather than Razorbill), I'll have access to this same portal to compare data once that title is live.

Factors that Suggest Low Impact 

I think the biggest factor is the change in age category. Since WAMHH is an adult book, it will be shelved in the Romance section rather than the YA section with my other books. That means if someone stumbles across Haunted Heart, they won't naturally bump into my other books sitting beside it on the shelf. That alone limits the possibility for organic sales for my previous books. 

On top of that, my YA titles are old as far as publishing is concerned. It's getting more and more rare for bookstores to carry my first three books. Coven is mostly out of print these days (you can still get it in ebook but finding a paperback is near impossible), and TCT never had as much in-store buy-in. I still find stores carrying my debut, but that's happening less and less, too. It's fully possible that even if someone knew I had other books, they may not be able to find any in-store when they pick up a copy of WAMHH.

It's also possible that WAMHH might not include an "Also by Isabel Sterling" section in the front since it's both a new imprint and a new age category. We're still too early in the process to know for sure. (I could ask my agent or editor, but I don't particularly care either way, and I try to save my questions for things I really want answers to.)

Factors that Might Increase Impact 

All that said, I do think there are some factors that might lead to a sales bump for some of my past titles when WAMHH comes out.

First, there is not a ton of trad published sapphic witchy romance (especially in adult), so it's possible that new-to-me readers will be excited enough to find more sapphic witch books that they'll look up my past work and give my first series a try. As a result, I would expect to see TWDB having the biggest sales bump, followed by TCWB, while my vampire book probably won't see much of a bump at all.

I'm also older and wiser when it comes to marketing and promotion. It's still too early to be doing much for WAMHH, but I already have better ideas for marketing than I did in 2019-2021. Even though there's still a lot out of my control as far as sales go, I do think I'm in a position to do better by my books than the first time around.

There's also the possibility that WAMHH breaks out in a bigger way than any of my previous books. This is true with all new titles (and is part of why the adage "nothing sells front list like backlist" is so popular), but especially in this case, I have the benefit of being a "shiny new debut" again since this is a new age category for me. Plus, Berkley paid $100k for this book rather than the $20k I got for TWDB. In theory (though it's not a guarantee!) that means more marketing support.

Only time will tell how this all shakes out. 

Final Thoughts

Publishing data, when we can get our hands on it, can be really useful so long as we're careful not to extrapolate causality where there isn't any or assume that one person's (or one book's) experience translates to everyone else.

If you're still reading this, thank you for getting nerdy with me.

As a reminder, I'm not a statistician or anything like that. I'm just an author who did okay in math back in high school (a bazillion years ago) and likes looking at graphs. I hope this was useful. Or, at least, interesting.

Until next week, happy writing.

-Isabel 

PS - Don't miss a single issue of Real Talk for Writers. CLICK HERE to sign up for the Real Talk newsletter. You'll receive an email every Monday morning with the newest issue plus notifications about upcoming workshops.