So after I finally post my year in review post on Thursday night, I wake up on Friday morning to find I’ve been scooped by none other than the New York Times
Publishers sold 3.13 billion books last year, compared with 3.1 billion in 2006, an increase of just 0.9 percent, according to Book Industry Trends […]

All of 2007 –That’s a large mandate; I tried to take a look at retail, publishing, and some specific trends relating to graphic novels — at least as much as I can manage, given my resources.
Bullet points
Economy
[source: Census Bureau]
* Retail Sales were up 3.2% in 2007 …but inflation was up 4.1%. Excluding energy and […]

Estimated Online Sales Rankings For the Week Ending 25 May 2008
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Sources
Online Bookstores:
Barnes & Noble, Books-a-Million, Borders (beta), and Chapters of Canada
Other Sales Charts:
Amazon [their manga category, as their manga Hourly Bestsellers are on hiatus — at least until they fix their site: here’s a link], Buy.com, Deepdiscount.com, Powell’s, Tower, and Virgin
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last week’s rankings
About the […]

Sources
Online Bookstores:
Barnes & Noble, Books-a-Million, Borders (beta) [offline this past week], Chapters of Canada, and Amazon’s Manga sales by Category
Other Sales Charts:
Amazon Hourly Bestsellers [also offline since 13 May, as false search results for downloadable videos currently spam the ‘manga’ list], Buy.com, Deepdiscount.com, Fye, Powell’s, Tower, and Virgin
##
last week’s rankings
About the Charts
Weekly Analysis and […]

So no online sales rankings yet. Yep. Sorry; working on it.
What’s up?
Have I complained recently about Amazon? No?
First, let me just point out that Amazon uses a flexible system of keywords derived from publisher-provided info, along with previous customer search criteria (apparently; though this is just a guess on my part) instead […]

It’s rare that I get a link from Heidi MacDonald, so rare in fact that this is only the second (hm… third?) time that it’s happened. I felt like clarifying my drunken, rambling post of the 9th for the readership on The Beat, and of course since I know no one bothers to read […]

To begin with, some off topic updates:
- Still working on the ‘2007 year in review’ bit. Check back tomorrow/Wednesday for the second ‘half’ (much more than half actually, this post is a beast.)
- at the moment (Mon. 12 May 20:25) f.y.e. by way of www.fye.com is telling me that “all book product is currently […]

Sources
Online Bookstores:
Barnes & Noble, Books-a-Million, Borders (beta), Chapters of Canada, and Amazon’s Manga sales by Category
Other Sales Charts:
Amazon Hourly Bestsellers, Buy.com, Deepdiscount.com, Fye, Powell’s, Tower, and Virgin
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last week’s rankings
About the Charts
Weekly Analysis and Commentary Posts
##
Consolidated Online Sales Rankings
For the Week Ending 11 May 2008
Your Executive Summary and Index:
Manga Top 500
1. ↔0 (1) : Death […]

Bullet Points:

Japanese manga sales slip another 2.3% in 2007, but
the medium is gaining currency as a tool of Soft Power diplomacy
…and increased academic and scholarly attention.

Numbers first–
We’ll begin with My Usual Complaint: sources are hard to come by. It’s not that market research isn’t being done; oh no, it’s that if you want it you’ll […]

(pay no attention to the man behind the curtain)
(and the Big Reveal comes much, much later)
(and once again: If it’s really worth reading you all know I like to bump comments to the main page)
So for those of you who read blog comments — a small, but proud few, and I salute you — and […]

Now I’m well past what may be considered my ‘prime manga reading years’ (given that most manga readers can’t buy beer yet …legally) and perhaps the wrong gender, but even from my point of view — not 180° opposite the intended audience but probably, say, 167° — there is a clear winner this week for
The […]

Sources
Online Bookstores:
Barnes & Noble, Books-a-Million, Borders (beta), Chapters of Canada, and Amazon’s Manga sales by Category
Other Sales Charts:
Amazon Hourly Bestsellers, Buy.com, Deepdiscount.com, Fye, Powell’s, Tower, and Virgin
##
last week’s rankings
About the Charts
Weekly Analysis and Commentary Posts
##
Consolidated Online Sales Rankings
For the Week Ending 4 May 2008
Your Executive Summary and Index:
Manga Top 500
1. ↔0 (1) : Death […]

Bob hasn’t posted in a coon’s age but he’s still active (in an odd definition of the term…)
–here’s an excerpt from a recent email (me to Bob)
You’re watching Eva right now: that’s a 12 year old anime but it’s a classic — evergreen, always of note; combine it with gundam, macross, and patlabor and you […]