What counts as a good backlist?

I've been spying on researching various AW authors in erotic romance, science fiction, fantasy, and a few other fields - as well as authors on other online platforms - for four years now. Some people are happy with a backlist that conservatively earns them $10K to $15K a year. Others appear to be making from $65K to $150K (or higher). Most of those in the latter group will have at least 50 books (novels and novellas), not counting shorter fiction in anthologies or magazines, or repackaged collections.

My personal definition of a 'good backlist' would be one that gets me back up to the after-tax equivalent of $32,000 per year, which was my best year in commercial publishing. That's less than $3K per month, but given that my average royalty from online e-book sales is going to be from $2.70 to $1.80 per copy, I have a lot of sales to make during a month.

I write slow: there's no way I'd be able to churn out six to ten novels a year, and I wouldn't be happy with them if I did. I'm also quirky, in that my work tends to fall in that weird borderland between erotic romance and science fantasy, with aspects that appeal to neither dedicated readership. I'm getting a few very vocal fans, so that's beginning to help. I've been networking with some crossover authors in erotic romance/science fiction/ fantasy; when they explode on the scene in a few months, I might see a little residual traffic come my way.

I hope to get a few more erotic romance novels and novellas out to my favorite three e-pubs in the the next year or so, perhaps lifting my average sales per month from a couple dozen copies to a couple of hundred. I'm trying for some short story sales at some respectable erotic romance and SFF magazines, just for more publishing credits. But I'm placing more effort in a mainstream science fiction contract or two with a major Big Five imprint, because those sales (even for odd ducks like me) could be exponentially higher.

Oh, and I have an agent, just for making a run at those Big Five houses. She's more than earned her pay from the erotic romance contract she helped negotiate, and I wouldn't dream of tackling the big SFF imprints without her.

ETA: Self-publishing is going to be my last resort, at least for now, but I'm laying the groundwork to do it properly if the option becomes my best shot.

To add just for the online erotica market: I've been watching this one since last year around this time, esp. Kindle.

The major trend I've seen is that, while some authors can handily get $3K to $5K per month in self-pub erotica sales, the most effective ones do it with high-quality product as well as steady writing. There are authors who rehash their early work by maybe changing a name or two, who churn out unedited 6K to 10K wank-stories by the dozen. But upon looking at their long-term performance on Amazon, their 'backlist' appears to mean very little. There's a steep dropoff on sales of older works, and growing criticism of shoddy writing as shown by one and two-star reviews. These writers are constantly having to produce more and more to keep up, which often seems to lower their story quality even more.

Audiences who are just looking for a quick thrill will always grab the latest from So-and-So, even if they see bad reviews, esp. if it's cheap. But effective reader loyalty seems to be forged on better prose and plots.

When I first started out, I was told the magic number was 7. Once you had 7 books out, every subsequent release would cause an uptick in sales on backlist titles. This was true for both of my pen names -- once I hit that number, I could predict a small but not insignificant rise in sales whenever a new release came out. That rise has gotten steadily bigger over time, too.

I have active books (including shorts, but mostly novels/novellas) dating back to late 2009, with new releases roughly every month. Most of my books seem to level out after about a year, and the sales stay pretty consistent after that. With most backlist titles, I can anticipate around $100/month (some as low as $30-50/month, some as high as $200-300/month), even 2, 3, 4 years after the initial release.

So, what qualifies as a "good" backlist really depends on your goals.

Sierra, 6K to 10K is a great length for Amazon shorts. What bogs many writers down is the unedited part.