how about a top 40?
originally written for and posted on Comicsnob.com [Dec ’06 – May ’08]
Online Manga Sales Ranking, 6 July 2007
Manga and Comic bloggers are each different in their background and interests, but if there is any common gound, it’s that we all like numbers and rankings.
I saw the usual slew of links this morning to the USA Today rankings noting that once again manga (Naruto, anyway) is registering in the top 150, for the first time in 4 weeks. Well, that’s nice for Naruto, I guess.
A national book-sales list doesn’t help when comparing manga to manga, though. Where’s Bleach in that list, or Death Note? Well, being a enterprising sort with access to internet shopping sites and a little time on my hands, I thought to myself, “How hard can it be to compile a few rankings?”
This is going to be much more like college football rankings as opposed to an actual bestseller list — mostly, because I don’t have sales numbers. Those are damnably hard to come by. A few sites will tell you which series are popular, or new, but the only usable data typically found is a ranking of bestsellers: Top 10, or top 25, or top however-many-pages-you’d-care-to-click-through. If this is the input I have, I’ll slosh it around a bit, add some lime juice, bar mix, ice, and tequila, and see what comes out.
– so, like the college top 25, the list is subjective. Also oddly like the BCS, it includes a number of “computer polls” and an arcane weighting system. (which makes me wonder, If I can crank this out in a couple of hours, what’s the big deal with the BCS?)
But for obfuscating an issue, there’s nothing like bald lies and statistics, and I managed to boil five sources down into a single number (the “score” used below) that we can now complain about and argue over. Some commentary and a few notes on methodology follow the rankings.
Sources: Amazon — B&N — BAMM — Chapters — TRSI
I’m feeling kind of nostaligic for Casey Kasem and the Top 40 today, and so: a Top 40
#. Title + Vol# (score)
1. Death Note 12 (95)
2. Warriors: The Lost Warrior (88)
3. Kingdom Hearts II, vol. 1 (84)
3. Naruto 15 (84)
5. Ouran High School Host Club 9 (82)
6. Naruto 14 (81 — #1 selection at BAMM)
7. Bleach 19 (80 — #1 selection at TRSI)
8. Naruto 13 (63)
9. Fruits Basket 16 (60)
10. Yotsuba &! 4 (55)
11. Fruits Basket 15 (53)
12. Avalon High: Coronation 1 (50 — #1 selection on B&N)
12. Dark Hunger — Christine Feehan (50 — #1 selection on Amazon)
12. Naruto 12 (50)
15. Making Comics – Scott McCloud (44)
16. Naruto 10 (37)
16. Naruto 11 (37)
18. Death Note 1 (36)
18. Love is Like a Hurricane 1 (36)
20. Naruto 2 (35)
21. Bleach 18 (34)
21. Blade of the Immortal 17 (34)
23. Naruto 3 (33)
24. Bleach 17 (30)
24. Love Recipe 1 (30)
26. Vampire Knight 1 (28)
27. Bleach 1 (26)
27. Naruto 4 (26)
29. Naruto 1 (24)
30. Fullmetal Alchemist 13 (20)
31. Vampire Hunter D vol. 7 (18)
32. Death Note 2 (16)
33. Vampire Knight 2 (15)
33. Kingdom hearts Chain of Memories 2 (15)
35. Death Note 11 (14)
36. Warcraft 3 (14)
37. Death Note 10 (12)
37. Naruto 9 (12)
39. Naruto 6 (11)
(tie)40. Tsubasa 13 (10 — #1 selection at Chapters)
(tie)40. Ichigenme: The First Class is Civil Law 2 (10)
(tie)40. Naruto 7 (10)
Also appearing in the assorting rankings, but not in this top 40: Ai Yori Aoshi 16, Berserk 16, Berserk 17, Bleach 2, Death Note 4, Death Note 5, Death Note 6, Death Note 9, Fruits Basket 1, Fruits Basket 14, Gunsmith Cats Omnibus 2, Hana-Kimi 18, Kingdom hearts Chain of Memories 1, Kingdom Hearts I vol. 1-4 box set, Megatokyo 5, Naruto 5, Naruto 8, Negima 14, Oh My Goddess 26, Pokemon: Mystery Dungeon
##
From whence the scores?
- For the Amazon and B&N lists, I awarded 2 points for placing at #25, and an additional 2 points for each rank above 25. (#1 = 50 points)
- For the BAMM (Books-a-Million) list, I went with 1 point for #25, and an additional 1 point for each rank above 25 (#1 = 25 points)
- For a little local colour, and potentially to break ties (though there still are ties; always will be) I’ve also included the top 10 from Chapters (of Canada) and The Right Stuf, Intl. For these rankings, titles score one point for placing at #10, and an additional point for each rank above 10. (#1 = 10 points)
All websites were checked between Noon and 1pm EDT on 6 July 2007. Sales data will almost certainly have changed since then.
Don’t complain to me about what’s “manga” and what isn’t: in this case, I’m using the keyword searches and provided categories of the websites cited; this is what they’re calling manga.
To give folks a rough target for to look for (and a nice round number besides): Any book that scores in the top 5 of all three main “polls” (Amazon, B&N, and BAMM) will score at least 100 points. This week, no single volume did that — though several titles have multiple volumes on the list.
##
Odd that: Both Dark Hunter from Berkley (a pre-order) and Avalon High #1 from HarperCollins/Tokyopop are #1 on a site’s bestselling manga lists, without appearing anywhere else. If I were to run the numbers again right now, I think Avalon High would be number one — I found it odd that it was completely missing from Amazon’s top 25 and certainly expect that to change soon. That Dark Hunger thing, though, has me completely baffled.
Because of a tie for #40, there are actually 42 titles to consider in this ranking, though aside from one very odd outlier (the yet-to-be-published romance novel and/or manga from Berkley Books) there are few surprises. 13 volumes of Naruto (all of them except five and eight) managed to make it into this top 40, along with 5 Death Notes and 4 volumes of Bleach. Even without the two Shojo Beat titles–Ouran High School Host Club and Vampire Knight–more than half of the list is all Viz.
The good news for Tokyopop is that they managed to snag 3 of the top 10 spots, even with the Ninjas and Shinigami all over the rest of the list. ADV should also be proud of Yotsuba&!, and we all should wonder why it took them so long to release #4 with this kind of customer response.
##
This is an excercise I plan to repeat each and every Friday, for as long as it seems worth doing — any comments so far?
