Backlist

Part of speech: noun, adjective

Definitions

1. The collection of a publisher's older books that remain available for sale after their first release period
2. Older titles from a publisher's catalogue that continue to be sold long after their initial publication
3. Previously published books kept in a publisher's active range, as opposed to newly released works

Etymology: "Backlist" is a plain compound of "back" and "list," and its meaning follows directly from those two parts. "List" is the older element here, a word for a strip or border that later came to mean an enumeration, while "back" supplies the sense of older or earlier. Put together, a backlist is a publisher's stock of titles that were issued earlier and remain available, as opposed to the newest releases. The compound is a product of the publishing trade's own vocabulary rather than an old literary term. Its logic is simply the pairing of "back" in the sense of past or former with "list" in the sense of a catalogue, so the phrase describes a list of earlier works. Because the word is built transparently from two English elements, there is little more to unpack beyond that.

Synonyms: backlog, back catalogue

Antonyms: frontlist