Publishing has always been a curious business.
Most products have a short shelf life. A new phone replaces the old one. A new car model arrives every year. Even movies and television shows often have a brief moment in the spotlight before the world moves on.
Books are different.
A reader might discover a novel the week it is released. Another reader might discover the same book five years later. A third reader might stumble across it a decade after publication and find that it is exactly the story they needed at exactly the right moment. That’s why we’ve always believed in backlists.
At Stories Rule Press, we certainly get excited about new releases. We enjoy launch days, cover reveals, Kickstarter campaigns, and all the other milestones that come with bringing a new book into the world. But we also know that a publishing company isn’t built on a single title. It’s built one story at a time, over years and decades.
Some of the books finding new readers today were written years ago. Some of them have been with us long enough that they feel like old friends. Every now and then, a reader discovers one for the first time and reminds us that stories don’t have expiration dates.
In fact, one of our current projects is a special collector’s edition of Born Of No Man by Tracy Cooper-Posey. The novel was first published in 2018. That’s eight years ago. Yet readers are still discovering the story, still falling in love with the characters, and still asking for new ways to experience the book. That’s the magic of a backlist. Each book becomes part of a growing library. Every new title strengthens the catalogue, but every older title remains available for the next reader who comes along.
When we look at the future of Stories Rule Press, we aren’t just thinking about next month’s releases. We’re thinking about the hundreds of stories already sitting on our virtual shelves, waiting for the right reader to find them. Because in publishing, a book’s first day isn’t always its most important day.
Sometimes the most important day is the one when a reader discovers it years later and decides to turn the first page.
— Mark