An independent publisher made its entire backlist available as e-books, having previously released e-book editions only for new titles. Backlist e-book sales grew steadily, but total backlist revenue, print and digital combined, rose only four percent over two years, well below the publisher's fifteen percent target. The modest gain suggests that most backlist e-book buyers were already purchasing the same titles in print, so the digital release mainly shifted format rather than generating new sales; only a handful of titles, all previously out of print entirely, saw revenue increases large enough to plausibly reflect readers who would not otherwise have bought the book. Editors now caution that a publisher expecting backlist digitization alone to meaningfully grow revenue should expect gains concentrated almost entirely among previously out-of-print titles.