When bookstores across the United States closed last spring, Tyrrell Mahoney, the president of Chronicle Books, braced for disaster as she watched revenue plummet. Then, months into the crisis, Chronicle found an unlikely savior: the rapper Snoop Dogg and his two-year-old cookbook.
"From Crook to Cook" sold 205,000 copies in 2020, nearly twice as many as it had sold in 2019. It was one of several older Chronicle titles with stronger-than-expected sales during the pandemic, and the company ended up making a profit last year.
"It really was our backlist that saved the day for us," Ms. Mahoney said.