Just in case there’s anybody reading GalleyCat who isn’t also a regular reader of marketing expert Seth Godin, there’s a post on his blog today you should look at about shifting our attention to the backlist, “where all the real money is made.” The premise is simple—”the opportunity isn’t to give into temptation and figure out how to recklessly and expensively market the frontlist,” he explains. “It is to adopt a long and slow and ultimately profitable strategy of marketing your ever-growing backlist.” Fans and true believers are usually deep enough into the loop that they know when stuff is coming (and willing to give you permission to tell them about it in relatively inexpensive ways), so you can spend your time calling attention to the backlist and use it to create new fans—and, of course, today’s frontlist will become tomorrow’s backlist.
“Key assertion: you don’t publish it unless it’s good,” Godin adds. “You don’t write more blog posts than you can support, don’t ship more variations of that software than your engineers can make marvelous. But given that you’ve got enough bench strength, enough remarkability to spare, now what?”