Sudden Backlist Best Sellers

We’ve written about backlist titles hitting the NYT E-Book and Combined Best Seller lists as a result of sudden discounts by retailers.

The NYT explores the impact of  such “flash sales” in a story that appeared yesterday. Sourcebooks was a recent beneficiary. Their 1994 title, The Oracle Glass, by Judith Merkle Riley, hit the list last week after being featured simultaneously as a Kindle Daily Deal and a Nook Daily Find.

While some of these books quickly return to their former level of sales, for others, it has helped readers discover authors raising the sales of all their titles.

Don’t discount old-fashioned marketing, however. It can still renew sales of print backlist titles. See, for instance, City of Women, by David R. Gillham (Penguin/Putnam/Einhorn), now on the trade paperback list.

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