I'll not only link, I'll steal his subject line: There Isn't One Bestseller List.
Seth Godin over on his thought-of-the-day blog points out something I might have said myself once or twice. There isn’t one bestseller list
“The way to understand lists that aren’t vintage pop music is this: it isn’t one list. It’s four or five, mushed together. You have the list of rock acts, overlaid with the list of comic book heroes, etc. There isn’t one person (at least I hope not) who’s interested in all of these articles.”
He also points out that combining markets can result in some marketing missteps — oddly enough, he doesn’t reference my favorite example: People eat breakfast in the morning. People take showers in the morning. But you should stop short of putting a toaster in the shower. [that’s a false synergy right there. When some flack comes at you with merger-this and new-synergies-that remember the Shower Toaster]
There are at least five threads in the ‘comics’ market right now: Marvel/DC, Vertigo/Image/Darkhorse/Other-Indy, “serious” graphic novels (mostly biographies for some strange reason), manga, and comic strip collections.
Yeah, sure, Blackest Night or Dark Reign or whichever event is the “bestselling” comic right now: but bookstores make more off of Dilbert, FoxTrot, and Peanuts than “graphic novels” at the moment. What, exactly, does the New York Times track? What are their sources — what might be excluded?
Why do we slavishly link and reprint their hackneyed list? What is the magic that is conjured by the label “New York Times Bestseller”?
other than the fact that they post on time every week. [*cough*]
Yes, I know DC owns Vertigo.
(Does DC remember that?)
My comment was more about defining market segments than corporate ownership.
Comment by Matt Blind — 2 October 2009, 13:18 #