The Magic Number is 9, I am not a robot, the podcast is in fact forthcoming, and um... manga and rankings and junk.
“We pick up our commentary this week where we left off last Monday…”
Manga Force Multipliers
also known as ‘intangible sales factors’Cartoon Network Afternoon Anime Broadcast:
Instant Win. Hire another two translators to get the books out faster, and hire an accountant to count the money,Adult Swim 10pm Broadcast +5
Adult Swim 11pm Broadcast +3
Adult Swin post-Midnight Broadcast +2
Other Cable Broadcast +1
New. (volume released in the past month) +1
Anime available on DVD +2
Anime available as a Fansub +8 *
Manga available as scanlation +1Volume Five.
The customers like longer series: part of that is the appeal of long-running stories; mostly it’s that 5 volumes take up at least 4 inches of shelf space … +1Frequency.
Viz has capably proven that releases every other month seem to engage the fan base moreso than titles that slowly exit the gate at the rate of 2 or 3 a year. … Bi-monthly merits a +5, 4-a-year gets you +1, anything else is a push (or a negative).
* (re: fansubs: yeah, yeah… see last week)
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So, say you had a manga not otherwise available in other formats (i.e. no anime version) but were pumping the sucker out just as fast as you could, every other month.
That’s a bi-monthly bonus, +5, and then you hit the vol. 5 bonus, +1, with a New Release bonus, +1, and maybe some fan in Kobe has been scanning and translating chapters as they come out in the home islands — one more +1 for a total of +8.
Oh… so close.
No win for you.
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On the other hand, if there is an anime adaptation available to download in even the rawest, most amateur fansub, (+8) and you publish the respective manga version (for at least the first month, you get that automatic ‘new’ +1) then, lucky you, you hit the magic number right off the bat for an instant win.
It’s wrong. Oh my yes, it’s all kinds of wrong. Wrong — but true.
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But considering that all of the so-called-force-multipliers listed above were just an off-the-cuff estimate to begin with, you can take my simple equations with a half-kilo block of halite. The so-called magic number as applied to these Force Multipliers is a happy coincidence;
In actuality, when I said “the magic number is 9” I had a completely different set of maths in mind.
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I run two sets of data, only one of which is handy when calculating a Top 10. (Well, I run them both at the same time—I’m crafty like that—so no one ever notices. And then I post great big lists of rankings to distract you from what I’m doing on the side)
In an attempt to explain the second process, I’ll start with the site checks ( * that’s the very last bit of info I append to the top 500 post ) — each week I look at 9 sales sites, some multiple times, and I’m loading up either the first 100 or 300 titles to appear in the manga category as ranked by sales (in whatever way each site chooses to report that data). Since I then post the site checks chronologically, it looks like a random jumble. Properly sorted though
1b&n (300)
2b&n (300+100)
3b&n (300+200)
1borders (300+100)
2borders (300+200)
3borders (300)
1amazon (300+200)
2amazon (300)
3amazon (300+100)
chapters (300+100)
1amzn-hourly (100)
2amzn-hourly (100)
3amzn-hourly (100)
buy.com (100+100)
powells (100+100)
deepdiscount (100)
tower (100)
virginmega.com (100)
…a little bit of method shows through the static. Here you can see the breaks fairly clearly: top 300s for the bookstores, top 100s otherwise. And these are scored at a point for each rank above last place, such that the #1 title at BigBoxBookstore scores 300 points, and the #1 at LittleOnlineSalesSite scores 100 points.
As I’ve noted in the past, though, after I get to ‘last place’ I often just… keep going. I’ll go as far as 500 manga volumes at least 3 times a week (once at each of my core source charts). That’s the +100 and +200 listed above. The scoring on this ‘and-then-some’ portion of the data is only 1 point each, basically a 101- or 201-way-tie for last place. Nothing here is going to displace Naruto from the top slot, even if I multiplied their score by 10. Or 100.
The Magic Number is 9. A volume could theoretically score 9 whole points by placing in dead last — strike that: by placing even lower than last place — because I look at 9 of these extended charts each week. 9 points doesn’t even get you into the top 1000, let alone into the posted chart, but it isn’t a bad showing for a title that wouldn’t even appear under my original methods. And for the break-out, supplementary charts (like the preorders or the publisher spotlights) a score of 9 is going to matter quite a bit.
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In an email exchange earlier last week, a fellow blogger registered some surprise that I was not, in fact, some sort of number-crunching-manga-obsessed robot from the future.
If I am a robot, I am rather decidedly a Futurama-class ethanol-powered ‘bot with all the personality quirks and sarcastic turns-of-phrase that would imply. Bender is My Personal Life Coach. (somebody put that on a wristband for me, stat.)
I suppose that if some refugee robot from the future were stuck in what-was-its-past and was perhaps in a situation where it siphoned power and wifi access from a bookstore, then just to keep boredom at bay it might take an interest in what they actually did everyday at his ersatz home… The wifi would allow a fair amount of research to be done into retailing and publishing. The bookstore computer systems would give a little real-life reinforcement to info found online.
The only question is, what kind of book would interest a robot? Books about Robots, obviously. There’s a chunk of manga that fits that bill nicely. I suppose a wifi-enabled thinking machine could even start a website; it can be done entirely online — I know because I’m doing it. I don’t even have a computer plugged into a wall…
I mean, um,
I run the site from a laptop. (Yeah, that’s it.)
I don’t even bother with an ethernet cable at home, it’s all wifi. All I need is internet access, a little bit of electricity, a steady supply of ethanol, and I’m good.
But I am not a robot. I don’t know how these rumors get started.
…and the podcast is in fact forthcoming. As are the new release and preorder charts.
