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NEWS: New York Times Manga Best Seller List, March 31-April 6




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Alexander55



Joined: 19 Mar 2013
Posts: 104
Location: Ontario, CA
PostPosted: Fri Apr 12, 2013 6:04 pm Reply with quote
What's the point of the NYtimes giving us their "Top 10" list? Does it even cover individual sales from online websites, and vendors from Amazon/Ebay? Because it sounds more like a popularity contest more so than anything else.

ICV2, a website biased towards mainstream pop-culture/comics, claims to have the "right" estimates even though they get most of them from comic book shops and Walmart. And I heard an ANN member go on about them not being accurate because most comic book shops don't store Manga and they don't get them from online retailers. Can anyone clarify this?
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terminus24



Joined: 19 Jun 2011
Posts: 304
PostPosted: Fri Apr 12, 2013 8:05 pm Reply with quote
After checking out the NY Times site, it seems accurate enough, as they get their info from many different retailers:
Quote:
Rankings reflect sales reported by vendors offering a wide range of general interest titles. The sales venues for print books include independent book retailers; national, regional and local chains; online and multimedia entertainment retailers; supermarkets, university, gift and discount department stores; and newsstands. E-book rankings reflect sales from leading online vendors of e-books in a variety of popular e-reader formats.

E-book sales are tracked for fiction and general nonfiction titles. E-book sales for advice & how-to books, children's books and graphic books will be tracked at a future date. Titles are included regardless of whether they are published in both print and electronic formats or just one format. E-books available exclusively from a single vendor will be tracked at a future date.

The universe of print book dealers is well established, and sales of print titles are statistically weighted to represent all outlets nationwide. The universe of e-book publishers and vendors is rapidly emerging, and until the industry is settled sales of e-books will not be weighted.

Among the categories not actively tracked at this time are: perennial sellers, required classroom reading, textbooks, reference and test preparation guides, journals, workbooks, calorie counters, shopping guides, comics, crossword puzzles and self-published books.

The appearance of a ranked title reflects the fact that sales data from reporting vendors has been provided to The Times and has satisfied commonly accepted industry standards of universal identification (such as ISBN13 and EISBN13 codes). Publishers and vendors of all ranked titles conformed in timely fashion to The New York Times Best Seller Lists requirement to allow for independent corroboration of sales for that week.

Publisher credits for e-books are listed under the corporate publishing name instead of by publisher's division.

Sales of both print books and e-books are reported confidentially to The New York Times. The Best Seller Lists are prepared by the News Surveys and Election Analysis Department of The New York Times. Royalty Share, a firm that provides accounting services to publishers, is assisting The Times in its corroboration of e-book sales.

So yeah, I'd trust this list.

Oh, and about it looking like a popularity contest- popular books that everyone wants just sell well, so obviously you'll see really popular series (such as Sailor Moon) completely dominate the charts.
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Vertical_Ed
Company Representative


Joined: 01 May 2009
Posts: 278
Location: New York, NY
PostPosted: Fri Apr 12, 2013 9:20 pm Reply with quote
Alexander55 wrote:
What's the point of the NYtimes giving us their "Top 10" list? Does it even cover individual sales from online websites, and vendors from Amazon/Ebay? Because it sounds more like a popularity contest more so than anything else.


No service provides the whole picture.

NY Times does a good job of attempting to get data from a wide net of sources. But it doesn't cover everything in great detail.

ICv2 is actually even less accurate as Diamond numbers are not significant for some manga genres - like shojo, josei, kids, or BL.

BookScan is very good as it covers 3000 vendors, including Amazon, Walmart, B&N, BAM, Hastings and more. That doesn't cover comic shops or library sales, but adding BookScan and Diamond totals covers about 85% of the market.

The only way to know for sure...is to be a publisher. Wink But don't consider the NY Times a popularity contest. 90% of the time the books on their lists actually sell very very well in all markets. Sometimes though they have titles on there that only do well in one specific market sector and not the market as a whole.

Oh and no service counts eBay. As eBay sales are treated as resales.
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Tenbyakugon



Joined: 11 Jan 2012
Posts: 788
Location: Ohio, United States
PostPosted: Fri Apr 12, 2013 10:18 pm Reply with quote
Damn that Sailor Moon.
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Relairknight



Joined: 16 Mar 2007
Posts: 128
PostPosted: Sun Apr 14, 2013 8:36 am Reply with quote
Awesome, I love seeing Dawn of the Arcana on the list, its a nifty little series. Still makes me smile every time I see Sailor Moon being #1 at anything too.
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