In softcover you see Walking Dead turning up a lot and you ask yourself if this is the bookstore market turning up with the old volumes.  There’s probably an element of that, you also have to realize those volumes were ordered in pretty healthy numbers through Diamond.  When volume 2 turns up, that might have just been the week all the reorders shipped.  Walking Dead is an evergreen title.  On the other hand, Jack of Fables Vol. 5, the #4 Diamond title of the month is one and done on the Times list.

All this leads me to conclude what we’re looking at with the New York Times Graphic Books Best Seller Lists is a sell-through chart for the direct market, where the bookstore market really only shows strong influence on weeks when the DM’s new releases are lower-powered.

Over at the Beat, Heidi’s been collecting a few of the conversations on this. A fellow named “Tommy Raiko” posed the theory this was sell-through data over on Chris Butcher’s blog.  From the general correlation between Times and Diamond rankings, I’m going with Tommy on this one (with a caveat that bookstores will creep in every now and again).

However, since we don’t know what stores The Times is getting their data from, there is a huge question about sampling that is unresolved.  Heidi’s quoting Brian Hibbs as saying that ComicsPro is working with the Times, sharing sell-through data from the Moby system (that’s the computerized Point Of Sale systems many comic retailers use for inventory management/cash register functions).  Heidi confirms hearing this from MOBY’s owner, Benjamin Trujillo.  This right here is a “holy cow” moment.  The first time we’d have any kind of coordinated sell-through data in the direct market.

And, upon saying that, I have to turn into a wet blanket.

There are two _main_ POS systems in comic shops.  ComicsSuite is the system being pushed by Diamond and MOBY is the system favored by ComicsPro.  They are probably not the only two POS systems in use and not every direct market retailer has one.  And this is where the problem begins.

1. We don’t know for sure that The Times is also collecting information from ComicSuite retailers.
2. If the Times is concentrating on POS retailers, that’s what you call a “self-selected” sample and those tend not to translate accurately.
3. Your POS retailers in general (and probably ComicsPro members in specific) are more likely large shops that cater to independent market, so the relative sell-through rankings of things like Dark Horse archives and Devil’s Due TPBs may be skewed higher than they are in reality.
4. One suspects that retailers without POS systems may be smaller shops with a higher Marvel/DC ordering mix.

You’ll also have more regional disparity where graphic novels are concerned in terms of retail selection.  Walk into a NYC Barnes & Noble and look at the graphic novel section, then come to Chicago and look at what passes for a graphic novel section in B&N.  You might cry.  We really don’t know how these various stores DM or bookstore are weighted and how well that reflects reality.

I offer you the following food for thought and you can decide for yourself how wacky the Times list is:

Diamond top sellers that did not make a weekly best seller list in March:

#2: STAND CAPTAIN TRIPS PREM HC BERMEJO ED,                       14,460
#6: INVINCIBLE IRON MAN TP VOL 01 FIVE NIGHTMARES   3,908
#10 AMERICAN JESUS TP VOL 01 CHOSEN                           3,815
#11 POWERS TP VOL 12 COOLEST DEAD SUPERHEROES          3,738
#15 MIGHTY AVENGERS TP VOL 03 SECRET INVASION BOOK 01            3,458
#18 SECRET INVASION TP X-MEN                                             3,279
#19 AIR TP VOL 01 LETTERS FROM LOST COUNTRIES (MR)          3,195

Based on the correlation between the Diamond lists and the Times lists, I can offer three theories why these well ordered books did not appear.

1. They sold over the course of 2-3 weeks, instead of the first week
2. The sampling method the Times uses needs adjusting
3. These books just didn’t sell through as well as the ones on the list.

Ultimately, the Times isn’t going to tell us their formula and we’ll all come to our own conclusions about its validity.  We’re used to getting our DM data in monthly chunks, not weekly.  If there were a monthly bestseller list from the Times, it would be easier to compare, and we also don’t know what the selling window for the bookstore market is (certainly not as first-week-centric as the DM) or have a handy chart with the delay between DM and Bookstores from publisher to publisher.  The Times list is what it is, and _some_ indication of sell-through is better than none.  Personally, I’ll take it with a slight grain of salt for now and publically ask the Times if they’ve got a policy for clearance sale items, since the 3/28 list was so odd.

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