aside: did anyone else get the Tokyopop email advertising Naruto? (technically, I think they were advertising Naruto fan forums or some such over on Tokyopop.com, but still… I don’t know if we should applaud them for their audacity, or chide them for tying to fool some of the fan base — not all of whom, it must be noted, pay attention to publishers and brands and the like and just think of it all as monolithic ‘manga’ or perhaps ‘them cool comics wot come from Japan like’)

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This week’s numbers are over here, in two flavours. Go take a look, because we’re about to talk about them.

Last Thursday I compared my numbers to the USA Today Top 150, which as an overall summary for book sales each week is handy for this kind of thing. Unfortunately, it takes them 4 days to get around to telling us what’s a bestseller, and while that’s nice as a basis for comparison… it’s 4 days from now. If we cast about, though, maybe there are some other points of reference. ICv2 springs immediately to mind — but those are monthly numbers, and have their own drawbacks. But if we look, there are also nuggets of information to mine from the online sites themselves…

Each book for sale on Amazon and B&N has a sales ranking. Handy, that. And if we take a look at our top and bottom volumes, it might even seem illuminating:

• 1. Fruits Basket 17: #4,919 at Amazon, #2,253 at B&N
• 100. School Rumble 7: #65,269 at Amazon, #42,010 at B&N

At first blush, it seems that not only do manga sell slightly better at B&N, but that our Top 100 may in fact be descriptive of overall sales trends.

…not so fast. Let’s dip into some of the middle titles and muddy the waters a bit.

• 20. Making Comics: #5,039 at Amazon, #25,040 at B&N
• 50. Death Note 7: #42,718 at Amazon, #8,823 at B&N

So yeah, this little exercise proves nothing. Except perhaps that if we tried to graph a function with my rankings on one axis and individual online site sales ranks on the other (or on two other axes, if we want to go all three dimensional on it) we’d never get a straight line. In fact, if I were to do such a useless exercise the only upshot would be the possibility of selling the graphs as modern art doodles.

Though, these are *my* rankings, which pull from a number of sources. To get a better idea of how manga is selling online, we have to go back a couple of steps, forget we compiled a Top 100 at all, and just look at the bestselling manga on the sites themselves. (It’s still kind of neat to compare Amazon to B&N though)

• #1 on Amazon, Dark Hunger: #427 (#1,337 at B&N)
• #50 on Amazon, Gacha Gacha: The Next Revolution 4: #12,795 (and #377,474 on B&N)

And flip the coin over

• #1 on B&N, Naruto 19: #244. (#1,891 at Amazon)
• #50 on B&N, Wallflower 13: #10,605 (#11,113 at Amazon)

…and a couple of Yaoi titles (which sell much better at Amazon, for whatever reason)

• Love is like a Hurricane: #7,853 Amazon, #23,545 B&N
• My Paranoid Next Door Neighbor 2: #6,433 Amazon, #36,099 B&N

In a larger Manga vs Books debate (mostly covered in 5by8 #26) we can see that even online, comics are just a small part of the overall sales picture. In fact, online sales may not be the best indicator of overall sales numbers because nothing here cracks a top 150 list, like that put out weekly by USA Today, and manga does show up on the USA Today Top 150. My only conclusion is that comics buyers must prefer to pick up books in the store. (Actually, that’s good news; I work in a bookstore)

That, and if you take bad data and compare it to bad data you’re only going to end up with a headache. The consolidated sales rankings are still worth doing, though — over time I’m sure we’ll see some trends that were heavily distorted (or even rendered illegible) when placed under the intense focus a daily “snapshot” like today’s exercises produced. It’s a lot like a pack of blind men trying to describe an elephant.

Step back. It isn’t about #1; the Pulse rankings are more of a ‘big picture’ thing: a way to describe, not quantify, overall sales trends.

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And to cap off our recap: An excerpt from the top 100. Here is a denarutofied list (”no repeats” - only the top ranked volume of each series) down through 40 books — past that it looks a lot like the regular 100 list anyway.

1. ( ↑ 2) Fruits Basket 17 (#1 Selection at Chapters) (294)
2. ( ↓ 1) Naruto 16 (253)
4. ( ↑ 8 ) Bleach 20 (225)
7. ( ↑ 17) Vampire Knight 3 (198)
12. ( ↓ 6) Warriors 1 (166)
16. XxxHolic 10 (126)
19. ( ↑ 57) Berserk 19 (#1 selection at DeepDiscount) (122)
20. ( ↑ 24) Making Comics — Mccloud (118)
25. ( ↑ 29) Dark Hunger — Feehan (#1 selection at Amazon) (100)
26. ( ↑ 82) Vampire Kisses 1 (88)
26. ( ↑ 39) Death Note 5 (88)
32. Monster Book of Manga [technique/how to] (82)
33. Hana-Kimi 20 (80)
34. ( ↓ 33) Ouran High School Host Club 9 (79)
34. ( ↓ 18) Fullmetal Alchemist 14 (79)
37. ( ↑ 94) Absolute Boyfriend 4 (77)
40. Freefall Romance (70)
41. Wallflower 13 (69)
44. Invisible Boy 1 (66)
44. ( ↓ 12) Negima! 15 (66)
46. Berserk 18 (65)
47. ( ↓ 22) Avalon High 1 (64)
47. ( ↓ 38) My Paranoid Next Door Neighbor (64)
51. Kingdom Hearts Boxset (1-4) (60)
55. Love Mode 6 (57)
57. Tenshi Ja Nai (I’m No Angel) 8 (56)
60. Babymouse #7: Skater Girl (54)
62. ( ↓ 49) The Crimson Spell (52)
65. ( ↓ 44) Love is Like a Hurricane 2 (50)
66. Rozen Maiden 7 (49)
67. Kindaichi Case Files 15 (48)
68. Yotsuba&! 5 (46)
70. Black Cat 10 (44)
72. Tramps Like Us 13 (43)
74. Beck: Mongolian Chop Squad 9 (42)
76. Battle Royale novel (41)
76. Gacha Gacha: the Next Revolution 4 (41)
79. Welcome to the NHK 3 (40)
82. ( ↓ 74) Pichi Pichi Pitch 6 (38)
82. Loveless 6 (38)