Rocket Bomber - article - commentary - manga - Application and Practice: Yes - I can do more than post long lists of titles.

The usual five paragraphs on methodology:
[skip it]

Chapters of Canada has been an excellent source for the online rankings, going all the way back the very first chart [recently rescued from the archives] and for most of 2007 and all of 2008 they were one of the cornerstones (even more so than Books-a-Million and Borders, which only became really useful after each revamped their sales sites) — well, OK, Chapters was like 10% of the total, but I liked the added flavour they gave the rankings, subtly boosting some titles and introducing many others (Manga Shakespeare, anyone?) that either would never have ranked or would have been relegated to the bottom of the chart.

Every website has to make decisions about what is manga, how to deal with used books & e-books, how much weight to give to current sales as opposed to historical sales (and what time-frame constitutes ‘current’ and ‘historic’ in this application), and how to report their bestsellers — if they choose to report them at all. At first glance Chapters isn’t doing anything different, but by the time you get past the top 100 titles, there are quite a few very odd listings that start to creep in. Now, I’m not talking about french-language titles from Glenat, though it’s certainly entertaining to see those selling on any site (and those are easy enough to acccount for) — no, what I’m seeing is just odd. I’m not sure how out-of-print titles are ranking at Chapters, or why pre-orders for Yen Press titles out into 2010 are there, or what is wrong with their math.

I will still check Chapters, but I’ve decided to only consider a top 100 (instead of 300) from the site. In terms of how much weight they are given in my charts, that puts them on par with Powell’s and Buy.com. There is a lot of potential there, still, and the site is still doing gangbusters business ($86million in 2007) but whatever their new formula is, it’s just too flakey for me to trust their full listings.

Similarly, while I had briefly considered Hastings (link to their manga lisings) as a replacement for Virgin (virginmega.com) I just can’t use their site. Dear Hastings: I need a volume number or a cover thumbnail. It’s fine that you list something as ‘Naruto’ but do you know how many volumes of that there are? I can’t be arsed to click through for every other listing just to get a volume number — and if you can’t even include a cover on the item detail page then I don’t know what you’re thinking; do you really want to sell books online? It takes a little bit of an investment to serve all of your customers, not just the ones buying Grisham, Patterson, and Danielle Steel.

At the moment there is no replacement for Virgin in my sources; I’m steaming bravely forward with just the 9 sales sites. I’d love to have a tenth (or eleventh or twelveth for that matter) but a site has to fit certain criteria to be useful as a source for the manga rankings. First, there has to be a manga category (or advanced tags or subject fields that include ‘manga’ and that are searchable) that Second, can then be sorted by Popularity or Sales or Bestselling or whatever so long as the source chart has a ranking of titles. Third, it helps if I can check the whole of the category but I’ll take a top 100 if that’s all that is offered. And finally, it needs to include as much of every genre, demographic, OEL title, manhwa, manhua, manga-related-but-not-manga tie-in title, and everything else as possible. I can make the decision if something is or isn’t manga (I skip about 60 titles over on Amazon, for example) but I prefer to have that option.

I’d love to include The Right Stuf as a source, for example, but they don’t present their manga listings in a way that is useful for my chart.

##

So the biggest news in my small field of endeavor is that the Grey Lady thinks she can muscle in on my action.

The New York Times, so noted for bestseller lists that when people talk about generic “bestsellers” theirs are the rankings that people mean, has decided to get in on this comic book thing with their newest charts. On top of that, they’ve decided to introduce a new term for the market segment, refering to the books not as comics or graphic novels but as Graphic Books.

Of all the contenders for the throne I think I still prefer Sequential Art — but there is nothing wrong with the term Comics. Oh sure, comic as a word has other meanings but the etymology doesn’t directly affect the current definition (or the most recent generation of books). We call novels “novels” because at one point in time 500 years ago or so the format (long-form non-verse fiction) was in fact new and novel — but very few think of this fact when referring to the books today. Maybe one day we can get to the same point with Comics.

Enough semantics; people don’t read my blog for the discussion of linguistics, y’all are here for the numbers —

So NYT has a manga chart. meh.

First up: MPD-Psycho vol 8 and Eden vol 11. Ranked 5 and 10, respectively.

…Sure. Whither Bleach, Fruits Basket, Death Note, Vampire Knight, Rosario+Vampire, Chibi Vampire, Warriors, Fullmetal Alchemist, Ouran High School Host Club, Berserk, Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle, D. Gray-Man, High School Debut, Junjo Romantica, Kingdom Hearts, Hellsing, Vampire Kisses, Pokemon, Legend of Zelda, Negima!, Maximum Ride, Higurashi When They Cry, Skip Beat!, One Piece, Afro Samurai, Tail of the Moon or any of 230 other series and one shots that — according to my methods — outperform MPD-Psycho and Eden?

There are even two DH titles (Hellsing and Berserk) that I would expect to see way before we get to MPD-Psycho and Eden. Hell, I’d expect that almost-manga trainwreck of a romance comic, Feehan’s Dark Hunger, to rank ahead of either.

What we are seeing is an undue weight given in the NYT rankings to sales at just one type of outlet: the large indy comic shop. In fact, I’m going to point the finger at Midtown Comics in New York, which makes sense to me;

Rankings reflect sales of graphic novels, for the week ending February 28, at many thousands of venues where a wide range of books are sold nationwide. These include hundreds of independent book retailers (statistically weighted to represent all such outlets); national, regional and local chains; online and multimedia entertainment retailers; university, gift, supermarket, discount department stores and newsstands. In addition, these rankings also include unit sales reported by retailers nationwide that specialize in graphic novels and comic books.

Do I think that some lazy cub reporter or editorial intern (or whatever the job title would be) looked at sales from the local comic shop and then equated them with sales out of the direct market as whole? Let me pitch you that same question from another angle: Do you think it more likely that MPD-Psycho and Eden are bestselling series nationwide, or maybe just top 10 manga titles at Midtown Comics?

Both series are pretty good. My condemnation of the Times and their methods should not be construed as criticism of the works.

[a nod here to Brigid Alverson @ MangaBlog for her commentary on the same topic, where I posted some similar numbers and analysis in the comments; reposted in part, but also expanded, below]

From my charts, week ending 1 March:

1. ↔0 (1) : Naruto 34 – Viz Shonen Jump, Feb 2009 [723.9] ::
2. ↔0 (2) : Naruto 35 – Viz Shonen Jump, Feb 2009 [722.9] ::
3. ↔0 (3) : Naruto 36 – Viz Shonen Jump, Feb 2009 [708.9] ::
4. ↔0 (4) : Naruto 37 – Viz Shonen Jump, Mar 2009 [708.6] ::
5. ↔0 (5) : Naruto 33 – Viz Shonen Jump, Dec 2008 [670.7] ::
6. ↑21 (27) : Naruto 38 – Viz Shonen Jump, Mar 2009 [641.2] ::
7. ↔0 (7) : Naruto 32 – Viz Shonen Jump, Nov 2008 [592.4] ::
8. ↑23 (31) : Bleach 26 – Viz Shonen Jump, Mar 2009 [588.1] ::
9. ↓-3 (6) : Rosario+Vampire 5 – Viz Shonen Jump Advanced, Feb 2009 [581] ::
10. ↓-2 (8) : Fruits Basket 21 – Tokyopop, Nov 2008 [541.8] ::
11. ↓-2 (9) : Naruto 31 – Viz Shonen Jump, Sep 2008 [541.5] ::
12. ↓-1 (11) : Chibi Vampire 12 – Tokyopop, Jan 2009 [536.1] ::
13. ↓-3 (10) : Bleach 25 – Viz Shonen Jump, Dec 2008 [530.4] ::
14. ↑1 (15) : Vampire Knight 1 – Viz Shojo Beat, Jan 2007 [529.7] ::
15. ↓-3 (12) : Vampire Knight 5 – Viz Shojo Beat, Sep 2008 [521.6] ::
16. ↓-3 (13) : Vampire Knight 2 – Viz Shojo Beat, May 2007 [517.7] ::
17. ↓-3 (14) : Naruto 30 – Viz Shonen Jump, Jul 2008 [515.1] ::
18. ↓-2 (16) : Vampire Knight 3 – Viz Shojo Beat, Oct 2007 [495.6] ::
19. ↓-2 (17) : Naruto 29 – Viz Shonen Jump, May 2008 [494.1] ::
20. ↑1 (21) : Death Note 1 – Viz Shonen Jump Advanced, Oct 2005 [486.3] ::
21. ↓-2 (19) : Maximum Ride 1 – Yen Press, Jan 2009 [485.3] ::
22. ↑2 (24) : Rosario+Vampire 3 – Viz Shonen Jump Advanced, Oct 2008 [480.6] ::
23. ↓-1 (22) : Bleach Souls: Official Character Book – Viz Shonen Jump, Oct 2008 [473.5] ::
24. ↓-6 (18) : Rosario+Vampire 4 – Viz Shonen Jump Advanced, Dec 2008 [472.2] ::
25. ↓-5 (20) : Vampire Knight 4 – Viz Shojo Beat, Apr 2008 [470.9] ::

Now, my rankings are estimates based on online sales, but this is where I have the two “New York Times Bestselling” Dark Horse titles.

761. ↑863 (1624) : Eden 11 – Dark Horse, Feb 2009 [9] ::
886. ↓-12 (874) : Eden 5 – Dark Horse, Nov 2006 [4.8] ::
981. ↓-45 (936) : Eden 4 – Dark Horse, Aug 2006 [3] ::
1006. ↓-55 (951) : Eden 3 – Dark Horse, May 2006 [2.6] ::
1139. ↓-595 (544) : Eden 1 – Dark Horse, Nov 2005 [0.4] ::
1162. ↓-117 (1045) : Eden 2 – Dark Horse, Feb 2006 [0.4] ::
. (last ranked 18 May 08) : Eden 9 – Dark Horse, Jul 2007 [0] ::
. (last ranked 14 Dec 08) : Eden 7 – Dark Horse, Apr 2007 [0] ::
. (last ranked 7 Sep 08) : Eden 10 – Dark Horse, Apr 2008 [0] ::
. (last ranked 18 May 08) : Eden 8 – Dark Horse, Oct 2007 [0] ::

799. ↑725 (1524) : MPD-Psycho 1 – Dark Horse, Jun 2007 [7.3] ::
1247. ↑16 (1263) : MPD-Psycho 7 – Dark Horse, Nov 2008 [0.3] ::
. (last ranked 8 Feb 09) : MPD-Psycho 5 – Dark Horse, Jun 2008 [0] ::
. (last ranked 25 Jan 09) : MPD-Psycho 2 – Dark Horse, Aug 2007 [0] ::
. (last ranked 11 Jan 09) : MPD-Psycho 4 – Dark Horse, Apr 2008 [0] ::
. (last ranked 11 Jan 09) : MPD-Psycho 3 – Dark Horse, Nov 2007 [0] ::
. (last ranked 14 Dec 08) : MPD-Psycho 6 – Dark Horse, Aug 2008 [0] ::
. (last ranked 8 Feb 09) : MPD-Psycho 9 – Dark Horse, May 2009 [0] ::

It’s fun to note that MPD-Psycho vol 8 doesn’t even rank — but I did record pre-orders for vol 9 a few weeks ago.

Let me admit my faults — first, I don’t get sales numbers from anyone (not bookscan, not retailers, not a crystal ball or Ouija board) so I have to do this complicated math thing (I’m tired of typing it over and over — it’s in the FAQ) to approximate actual sales. I describe my rankings as both estimates and comparative — in that I really only want to know what’s number one and whether Ecchi Omnimanga Robot beat out Love Heartbreak Duel.

The only thing I have going for me is consistency, transparency, and brute-force methods that rely on ovewhelming piles of data over things like finesse or ‘fact’.

New York may be right. I have more faith in my methods and rankings, though.

##

Next up, with a nod to gottsu-iiyan for asking the question, is a look at the two new Viz Signature titles — Pluto and 20th Century Boys

Six Weeks, 25 Jan to 1 Mar.

20th Century Boys vol 1 – Feb 2009
wk1 1169. ↓-28 (1141)
wk2 not ranked
wk3 678. ↑ (last ranked 25 Jan 09)
wk4 225. ↑453
wk5 82. ↑143
wk6 66. ↑16

20th Century Boys vol 2 – Apr 2009
wk1 not ranked
wk2 not ranked
wk3 not ranked
wk4 not ranked
wk5 862. ↑new (0)
wk6 784. ↑78

Pluto: Urasawa x Tezuka vol 1 – Feb 2009
wk1 848. ↓-126 (722)
wk2 1271. ↓-423
wk3 757. ↑514
wk4 287. ↑470
wk5 105. ↑182
wk6 87. ↑18

Pluto: Urasawa x Tezuka vol 2 – Mar 2009
wk1 1138. ↑552 (1690)
wk2 996. ↑142
wk3 1182. ↓-186
wk4 not ranked
wk5 1097. ↑ (last ranked 8 Feb 09)
wk6 1040. ↑57

Pluto: Urasawa x Tezuka vol 3 – May 2009
wk1 1203. ↑new
wk2 1200. ↑3
wk3 not ranked
wk4 not ranked
wk5 886. ↑ (last ranked 1 Feb 09)
wk6 793. ↑93 (886)

Pluto seems to be garnering more pre-orders, and of the titles released in February (the two volume no.1s) sales steadily built over the past four weeks — the first month they were actually available.

There is a muliplier that will begin to take effect in the coming months: more volumes lead to more sales of the backlist, at least up through vol. 6 or 7. Also, books tend to sell better online once they are actually available (“ships in 24 hours” is a powerful selling point) — if you recall my analysis of Blood+ (and assuming that title is typical) we see a spike one month after release, then a slow drop-off over 3 months. The drop-off is mitigated with a faster release schedule as each new volume in stores introduces more readers to the series, who often must go online to buy vol. 1 et al.

Eventually a title will achieve its total “buy-in” from readers and at that point there isn’t an across the board lift from new releases — Bleach 26 and Fruits Basket 21 sell well (top 10 titles in fact) but they aren’t moving the backlist. Readers buy the new volume and that’s it because they own the rest.

Page up and take another look at my posted top 25, though: Just outside the top 10

9. ↓-3 (6) : Rosario+Vampire 5 – Viz Shonen Jump Advanced, Feb 2009 [581] ::
14. ↑1 (15) : Vampire Knight 1 – Viz Shojo Beat, Jan 2007 [529.7] ::
15. ↓-3 (12) : Vampire Knight 5 – Viz Shojo Beat, Sep 2008 [521.6] ::
16. ↓-3 (13) : Vampire Knight 2 – Viz Shojo Beat, May 2007 [517.7] ::
18. ↓-2 (16) : Vampire Knight 3 – Viz Shojo Beat, Oct 2007 [495.6] ::
22. ↑2 (24) : Rosario+Vampire 3 – Viz Shonen Jump Advanced, Oct 2008 [480.6] ::
24. ↓-6 (18) : Rosario+Vampire 4 – Viz Shonen Jump Advanced, Dec 2008 [472.2] ::
25. ↓-5 (20) : Vampire Knight 4 – Viz Shojo Beat, Apr 2008 [470.9] ::
32. ↑5 (37) : Rosario+Vampire 2 – Viz Shonen Jump Advanced, Aug 2008 [434.3] ::
43. ↑10 (53) : Rosario+Vampire 1 – Viz Shonen Jump Advanced, Jun 2008 [402] ::
44. ↑30 (74) : Vampire Knight 6 – Viz Shojo Beat, Apr 2009 [396.7] ::

(& 125. ↑168 (293) : Rosario+Vampire 6 – Viz Shonen Jump Advanced, Apr 2009 [248.3] :: but at #125 it’s more of an outlier)

The newest volumes will peak next month, they’re not even the primary factor yet. Vampire Knight is selling because of A. Vampires, B. chapters currently running in Shojo Beat, C. anime fan-subs, & D. shojo title by Matsuri Hino (MeruPuri), so there might have been a pre-existing fan base.

Rosario sells because of A. Vampires, B. fan service, C. chapters currently running in Shonen Jump, & D. anime fan-subs — plus witches, demons, and vampires that happen to be cute high school chicks; did I mention the fan service?

Rosario+Vampire is also on a faster release schedule (bimonthly) so will eventually overtake Vampire Knight in the series ranking even though individual volumes of VK might still outrank most volumes of R+V. Anyway, my point was with only one or two volumes of Pluto and 20th Century Boys out, we aren’t seeing the full impact of the series. Not everyone obsessively reads manga blogs (or compulsively compiles rankings based on online sales) and so there is a much longer discovery process for the average fan — someone has to buy it, read it, talk about it with their friends (offline) who then go look for it in stores (& not find it) before we see the sales online.

My estimate is it takes a month. And a series doesn’t really get going until volume 5 is out.

##

I can do a commentary & analysis every week (and it was my intention to do so) but I can’t always come up with a topic and I can only write so many “manga is cool, wot?” essays before I run out of steam.

I rely on the ongoing conversation in the greater manga community to keep this thing chugging along. And, I take requests. Anything about my charts bugging you?