Comments on: Reverse Engineering The New York Times Graphic Books (Comics) Bestseller List http://www.indignantonline.com/2009/04/16/reverse-engineering-the-new-york-times-graphic-books-comics-bestseller-list/ Because Attitude Matters Sun, 23 Oct 2011 04:46:06 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Brian Hibbs http://www.indignantonline.com/2009/04/16/reverse-engineering-the-new-york-times-graphic-books-comics-bestseller-list/comment-page-1/#comment-552 Brian Hibbs Fri, 17 Apr 2009 16:54:19 +0000 http://www.indignantonline.com/?p=150#comment-552 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 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

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