Reverse Engineering The New York Times Graphic Books (Comics) Bestseller List
3/21/09
HC
1 Watchmen (#100: 1,153 + #137: 857 = 2,010 Copies)
2 Batman: The Killing Joke (#60: 1,713)
3 Starman Omnibus, Vol. 2 (#85: 1,337)
4 Just A Pilgrim (#111, 1,052)
5 Joker (#34: 2,613)
6 Jungle Book (#283: 439)
7 Spike: After The Fall (N/A)
8 Batman: R.I.P. (#53: 1,896)
9 All-Star Superman, Vol. 2 (#66 1,566)
10 Ultimate Origins (N/A)
TPB
1 Watchmen (#1: 32,123)
2 Light Of Thy Countenance (#4: 4,302)
3 Squadron Supreme: The Pre-War Years (#71: 1,523)
4 Squadron Supreme: Power To The People (#77: 1,433)
5 Astonishing X-Men, Vol. 1 (N/A)
6 Batman: The Dark Knight Returns (#73: 1,482)
7 Hack/Slash, Vol. 5 (#105: 1,122)
8 Scott Pilgrim Vs. The Universe (#22: 3,069)
9 Sheena Queen Of The Jungle, Vol. 2 (#106: 1,109)
10 Walking Dead, Vol. 9 (#37: 2,504)
3/28/09
HC
1 Dark Tower: The Gunslinger Born (N/A)
2 Angel: After The Fall, Vol. 3 (#35: 2,599)
3 Angel: After The Fall, Vol. 1 (#234: 550)
4 Watchmen (#100: 1,153 + #137: 857 = 2,010 Copies)
5 Ted Mckeever Library: Book 3 (#206: 603)
6 Batman: R.I.P (#53: 1,896)
7 Batman: The Killing Joke (#60: 1,713)
8 Joker (#34: 2,613)
9 The Beats: A Graphic History (N/A)
10 The New Avengers: Illuminati (N/A)
TPB
1 Watchmen (#1: 32,123)
2 Batman: The Dark Knight Returns (#73: 1,482)
3 Transformers: Beast Wars Omnibus (#149: 786)
4 V For Vendetta (#70: 1,539)
5 Scott Pilgrim Vs. The Universe (#22: 3,069)
6 Walking Dead, Vol. 2 (#192: 641)
7 Hack/Slash: Omnibus 1 (#252: 494)
8 Tiny Titans Vol. 01 (#241: 516)
9 Walking Dead, Vol. 9 (#37: 2,504)
10 The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Vol. 1 (#134: 888)
What I’m seeing is total Direct Market domination of this list. Remember, your local comic shop usually gets their graphic novels before the bookstore market does. In many cases, a graphic novel will go from Diamond to the book distributor to the store. This can add a week or two. You also need to remember that the Direct Market culture is to buy a comic the week it comes out. Graphic novels certainly have a longer shelf life than monthly comics, but front-loaded sales is much greater in the DM than the bookstore market (call bookstore closer to “buy it this month” than “buy it this week”).
Your big exceptions to this would appear to be Watchmen, The Dark Knight Returns, and The Joker. All three of these books have been in bookstores for awhile and have traction that should add to their Times ranking, however they also still had respectable Direct Market Orders, months (years) after their initial release.
If you go through the lists, for the most part, what you see is each week’s hardcover and paperback list roughly following the Diamond sales rankings. Scott Pilgrim appears a little lower than you’d expect for his Diamond ranking, but he’s on the top 10 list every week. As a February release, he’s likely also aided by some bookstore sales. The order of the hardcovers for the week of 3/14 is a little jumbled up, in terms of Diamond ranks, but the estimated spread of copies sold is so close, it seems reasonable to think that the differences here are a matter of what actually sold to the customers that week (that elusive sell-through we don’t normally see in the Direct Market).
Now, we do have a few exceptions that are a little harder to explain. Several books pop up that aren’t on Diamond’s March list of Top 300 Graphic Novels. Punisher War Journal: Secret Invasion for the week of 3/7 was the #74 Diamond title for February, so figure either that was copies selling late in the DM or the bookstore market flexed its muscles. For the week of 3/21, Spike: After the Fall was a book that shipped to the DM in February (#44 Diamond title), so you think that either a LOT of copies sold later or the bookstore market is flexing its muscles. Ultimate Origins was the #20 book in January, so you’d think either somebody had a clearance sale in the DM or that was bookstore sales popping up in a big way.
The week of 3/28 is a very curious week. The #1 hardcover is Dark Tower: The Gunslinger Born and the #10 hardcover is The New Avengers: Illuminati. Both Marvel titles are roughly a year and a half old. Maybe the “Long Tail” theory is at work and people sought this out. Maybe this is the bookstore market flexing its muscles. Maybe somebody, DM or bookstore, had a really big sale. It’s hard to explain. On the other hand, the #9 hardcover is The Beats: A Graphic History released by Hill and Wang (that’s a book publisher, since you may not have heard of them). This is almost certainly a bookstore market book.
The pattern for the bookstore market books turning up seems to coincide with the Times list having fairly low-selling titles that week relative to the Diamond rankings. For the week of 2/38, the Diamond estimates for the new releases on the Hardcover list are 2,599; 550; and 603.
Continue Reading
One minor note, that may or may not impact a number of titles — sometimes, upon reporting to the NYT, so hit a book that they don’t think is valid, for example:
#2: STAND CAPTAIN TRIPS PREM HC BERMEJO ED
Since that is “DM only”, the ISBN isn’t in the Times data list (or wasn’t in week #1, at least!), and it would not allow the title to be submitted this week.
There are also a few peculiarities in the Times’ database – for example, most books with Subtitles are actually listed under the sub, not under the main title. So, like (and this is from memory, I may have a book wrong)
Y the Last Man, v10 Motherland
might be listed under “M” for Motherland, or, even worse it might just be listed under “Last Man” with no volume #, along with two other “Last Man” titles that are only differentiated by ISBN.
While you CAN upload a file to the NYT, MOBY doesn’t yet output best-seller data with ISBNs (new version will, I think?) — primarily because there’s really not any comics retailers who think in terms of ISBN — anyway, this yields us manually having to type our data in for the moment (I spend about 40 minutes a week doing this for the moment)
What I (at least) have been doing is scanning the prepopulated list, then adding things they don’t have in, but because of the two step start-and-stop process, it’s pretty easy to not enter something exactly correctly.
It will work out better as time goes on though.
-B