Friday, April 13, 2007  
Fun with Amazon.ca Bestsellers Lists

:: Posted by Bryan @ 4/13/2007 12:00:00 AM
Last week I posted the top 20 books taken from amazon.ca's ever-changing Bestselling Graphic Novels list. Once I started looking into it, I quickly realized the impossibility of ever getting an accurate reading of what the bestsellers really are from these lists and why no-one seems to talk much about the Amazon lists anywhere. Sure, the monthly Books in Canada list may be accurate, but the list at Amazon's website is updated hourly and really only reflects, with one or two exception, recent purchases through the website.

The lists are based on the infamous "Amazon Sales Rank" --the number attached to every book offered through Amazon that indicates, basically, how many books sell better than you. This number has been the ruin of many an author's mental health and I understand it is quite addictive (as well as frequently demoralizing) to monitor the ranking of a recently published book. It turns out that the use of these rankings to calculate bestseller lists is a highly-flawed strategy because, for the most part, the ranks can fluctuate wildly based on a single purchase of a book by a single consumer.

As this article explains, the rank accorded a particular book can be used as a rough guide to how many copies were sold in a given day or week. For example, in the U.S., a book ranked at #1 might sell approximately 3000 copies per day, whereas a book ranked at #10 overall might sell approx. 650 copies per day. Further, the ranks break down along these lines: #100=13/day, #10,000=2.2 (11/5 days), and #100,000=0.2 (1 copy every 5 days).

Since Canada's population is about 1/10th the size of the U.S., I'm guesstimating that these figures would have to be divided by ten to make sense of the sales rankings at amazon.ca which is a discrete entity from the main U.S. site. Meaning that the number one book at amazon.ca might sell only 300 copies per day, etc. Makes sense, since a book only needs to sell about 10,000 copies to be categorized as a bestseller in Canada. (Someone please let me know how off-base this is!)

With these numbers in mind, it's interesting to look at this week's chart. Like last week, Frank Miller's 300 is still on the Fiction Bestsellers Chart. Turning to the online Graphic Novel list, 300 has consistently sat at the #1 spot for several weeks. In general terms, this is a result of two factors: consistent high sales over a long period of time (it has sold well since its intitial publication and sales increased leading up to and following the release of the film version last month) and consistent continuing sales (given its sales rank, I am assuming it continues to sell between 10 and 50 copies per day).

List from Thursday, April 12, 8 pm

1 300
2 Civil War TPB
3 Batman The Dark Knight Returns
4 Civil War: The Road To Civil War TPB
5 Death Note, Volume 10
6 The Complete Peanuts 1963-1964
7 300: The Art Of The Film
8 Marvel Encyclopedia
9 Serenity: Those Left Behind
10 Death Note, Volume 1
11 Persepolis: the Story of a Childhood
12 Bone
13 The Winston Effect: the Art & History of Stan Winston Studio
14 All Star Superman (pre-order)
15 Loserpalooza : A Get Fuzzy Treasury
16 Teaching: Is a Learning Experience!
17 Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Tales of the Slayers
18 Batman The Dark Knight Strikes Again
19 Kingdom Come
20 Pride of Baghdad
21 The Walking Dead Volume 6: This Sorrowful Life
22 Rude, Crude, and Tattooed (strip collection)
23 Marvel 1602 TPB
24 Watchmen
25 Man's Best Friend (Yaoi)


Quite an interesting list, many different price points, with mostly teen and genre comics from big publishers, some strip collections, and quite a few "classics" --graphic novels that have been steady sellers for years (and, if I can be permitted a bit of editorializing here, what a mostly sad and ugly bunch of comics it is). In other words, the usual story with the usual suspects.

Amazingly, the books in the top 100 of amazon.ca's graphic novel list have sales ranks ranging from 1-3000 overall, quite respectable considering they are competing for rank with traditional novels, self-help books, Harry Potter, etc. Among those 100 graphic novels, only the top ten or twenty books can be found consistently anywhere on the list from week to week. The list is generated on an hourly basis and book ranks fluctuate wildly. As far as I can tell from monitoring the list over a few days, these fluctuations are mostly the result of individual sales.

For instance, a book with an overall rank of 100,000 can suddenly, for the period of one hour, leap to a rank of 2,000 and a prime place on the top 100 list with a single purchase. I saw this happen last week when Guy Delisle's Shenzen went from around the 30,000 mark to 2,333, springing to the #79 spot on the top 100 for an hour. It is currently sitting at a rank of 10,020, having been averaged out by Amazon's alchemical algorithmic ranking software.(check current rank)

Two other big caveats about Amazon's listing techniques: they lump quite a bit of stuff under the rubric "Comics and Graphic Novels" (strip collections, episode guides to science fiction tv shows, books about animation, how-to guides) and sometimes there is a real glitch and they just include a totally unrelated novel (usually a classic of some kind).

Because of all this, I'm including several lists in this post, snapshots taken at various times over the Easter weekend. For comparison, I've compiled several short top 10 and top 25 lists, with interesting or unusual entries from lower down in the rankings. At worst, the amazon.ca Comics and Graphic Novel bestseller list is totally useless, and analyzing it is a mug's game. At best, I think it gives an interesting peak into the variety of comics purchases Canadians are making, across the country, on an hourly basis.

While manga (including a surprising amount of Yaoi) and superhero trade paperbacks make up the bulk of the list, there are occasional spikes of interest in terms of more literary graphic novels and 100% Canadian content. There are few surprises in terms of the superhero stuff (although it is reassuring to know that conventional wisdom about the reliability of certain "mainstream" creators like Alan Moore and Frank Miller is mostly true).

The variety of manga that is popular with teens and younger readers (I am assuming that they still make up the majority of readers) continues to astound me. The various lists introduced me to many manga titles (and even publishers) that I had never heard of.

For my own lists, interesting titles are included and books by Canadian creators or publishers are in large BOLD type.

For the most part, Canadian books rank well below the manga and superhero books I'd expect to be bestsellers, but many Canadian titles --including many I'd consider either classics or at least well-reviewed-- have quite respectable rankings. (On other lists, just by way of contrast, there aren't quite as many U.S. and translated Japanese titles in the prose novel bestseller lists!) As a benchmark, the popular manga series Naruto is currently ranked at #27,808 and Maus is #13,608. A quick check last week of a few well known graphic novels reveals this interesting list by well-known Canadians, all published within the last few years:

14,408 The Essential New Frontier HC
24,234 Melek by Julie Doucet (Oie de Cravan, 2002)
25,636 DC The New Frontier (SC)
26,632 Louis Riel SC (#439,616 in U.S.)
26,833 Scott Pilgrim 1
34,138 Dramacon 1
41,058 Paul a la peche
51,304 Pyongyang
60,135 Clyde Fans: Book-1
62,483 Dramacon 2
64,648 J comme je by Julie Doucet (Seuilm 2005)
65,474 Long Time Relationship
68,308 Magasin general: Marie
77,932 Wimbledon Green (#188,798 in U.S.)
77,125 I Was a Child of Holocaust Survivors
73,627 Dragonslippers
98,123 Les Nombrils
110,837 Paul Moves Out

-------

Now Lynn Johnston, whose latest strip collection has been up and down the top 100 list for the past few weeks, basically could have a complete "Canadian Bestseller List" category all to herself. As befits the most popular strip cartoonist in the world, half of her books rank higher than most other Canadian comic books:

93 Teaching is a Learning Experience

3,967 She's Turning into One of Them!
4,316 Never Wink at a Worried Woman
4,366 Reality Check
4,399 Striking A Cord
4,401 With This Ring
4,426 Starting From Scratch
4,428 "There Goes My Baby!"
4,834 Things are Looking Up
4,437 The Big 5-0
4,438 Love Just Screws Everything Up
4,439 If This Is A Lecture, How Long Will It Be ?
4,433 What, Me Pregnant?
4,841 Family Business
4,848 It's the Thought that Counts!
4,850 Growing like a Weed
4,851 A Look Inside For Better or For Worse: The Tenth Anniversary Collection
9,553 Laugh 'n' Learn Spanish
37,681 I've Got the One-More-Washload Blues (1981!)
38,974 So You're Gonna Be a Grandma!
40,588 I Love My Grandpa
43,737 Suddenly Silver : Celebrating 25 Years of For Better or For Worse
49,960 Is This "One of Those Days," Daddy? (1982!)
71,121 It Must Be Nice to Be Little
77,415 Just One More Hug
83,138 Keep the Home Fries Burning

99,727 Pushing 40

-----
Here are some of the quirky lists, as posted over the Easter weekend:


April 6 ---8pm

1 25 300
2 93 Teaching is a Learning Experience
3 173 Firefly: the Official Companion: Volume Two by Joss Whedon
4 342 Watchmen
5 386 Bone

52 1,624 D & Q Showcase Volume 3
79 2,333 Shenzhen: A Travelogue from China

-----

April 6 ---10pm

1 300
2 Teaching is a Learning Experience Lynn Johnston
3 Firefly: the Official Companion: Volume Two by Joss Whedon
4 Death Note, Volume 11
4 Watchmen
6 Complete Sin City Box Set
7 Bone
8 Id_entity Volume 9
9 Xombie Dead on Arrival
10 Johnny Homicidal Maniac Directors Cut

----

April 7 ---6am

1 300
2 The Complete Peanuts 1963-64
3 Teaching is a Learning Experience
4 Warriors: The Lost Warrior by Erin Hunter
5 Y The Last Man Kimono Dragons
6 Complete Sin City
7 Serenity: Those Left Behind
8 300: The Art Of The Film
9 The Walking Dead Vol 3: Safety Behind Bars
10 Fruits Basket Volume 16
11 Krazy & Ignatz 1939-1940: A Brick Stuffed with Moom-Bims
12 Matters Of The Blood
13 Shenzhen: A Travelogue from China (#371)

-----

April 7 ---8pm

1 300
2 Teaching ---somewhere around the #50 mark on the U.S. site, amazon.com
3 Lost Girls
4 Peanuts 1963-64
5 Warriors: The Lost Warrior by Erin Hunter
6 Illusion Of Life Disney Animation by Frank Thomas, Ollie Johnston
7 Batman: Arkham Asylum
8 Tintin vol 2
9 Civil War: X-men by David Hine, Yanick Paquette
10 Heroes For Hire Volume 1: Civil War TPB
11 Civil War: Young Avengers & Runaways TPB
12 Cartoon Animation: The Collector's Series
13 Captain America: Winter Soldier Volume 1 TPB
14 Flight Volume Three
15 Walden; Or, Life in the Woods by Henry David Thoreau (????)
16 Adventures Of Tintin Volume 3
17 Zero Girl: Full Circle
18 The Art of the Incredibles
19 Il y a des tresors partout! (translated Calvin & Hobbes collection)
20 New X-Men: Childhood's End Volume 4 TPB
21 The Little Endless Storybook
22 Death At Death's Door
23 Embracing Love 5
24 Miss DD, Vol. 2
25 Y The Last Man Kimono Dragons by Pia Guerra, Brian K Vaughan
35 Theories of Everything by Roz Chast

69 Bleach, Volume 18
71 In Me Own Words: The Autobiography of Bigfoot by Graham Roumieu
76 The Party After You Left: Collected Cartoons 1995-2003 by Roz Chast
79 Poor People by Fyodor Dostoevsky (novel)

87 With This Ring : A For Better or For Worse Collection by Lynn Johnston

-----

apr7 --10pm

1 300 (#31 overall)
2 Embracing Love 5 (Yaoi)
3 Teaching Is a Learning Experience
4 Lost Girls
5 The Complete Peanuts 1963-1964
6 Bone
7 Warriors: The Lost Warrior
8 Illusion of Life
9 Arkham Asylum
10 X-men: Civil War
11 Tintin Volume 2
12 Heroes for Hire: Civil War
13 Civil War: Young Avengers & Runaways TPB
14 Cartoon Animation: The Collector's Series
15 The Rejection Collection : Cartoons You Never Saw, and Never Will See, in The New Yorker
16 The Tyrant Falls in Love V01: Yaoi
17 The Walking Dead Book 2
18 Captain America: Winter Soldier Volume 1 TPB
19 Lovely Sick V03: Yaoi
20 100 Bullets Decayed
21 Allure: Yaoi
22 Worthless Love V01: Yaoi
23 The Tyrant Falls in Love V02: Yaoi
24 Omen: Yaoi
25 Worthless Love V03: Yaoi

32 American Geisha: The Art Of Olivia III by Olivia De Berardinis
33 Cerebus by Dave Sim (#1,085)
35 Flight Volume Three
96 X/1999, Volume 1 : Prelude by Clamp
97 Bleach, Volume 18
98 In Me Own Words: The Autobiography of Bigfoot by Graham Roumieu
99 Bleach, Volume 17

Less than an hour later, someone bought a bunch of Asterix albums, and a bunch of other people bought some more manga, and the ranks were messed up again, pushing Cerebus to #66 and Bigfoot right out of the top 100.

-----

april 9 ---10am

1 300
2 Civil War TPB (pre-order)
3 Runaways Volume 2 HC
4 Penny Arcade Volume 3: The Warsun Prophecies
5 Wormwood Volume 1
6 Good Omens (novel)
7 Astonishing X-Men Volume 3: Torn TPB
8 Civil War: Young Avengers & Runaways TPB (pre-order)
9 Da Brudderhood of Zeeba Zeeba Eata : A Pearls Before Swine Collections
10 Batman: Hush
11 Watchmen
12 The Complete Peanuts 1963-1964
13 Don Bluth's Art Of Animation Drawing
14 The Walking Dead Volume 6: This Sorrowful Life (pre-order)
15 Spawn Collection Volume 3
16 Spawn Collection Volume 2
17 Spawn Collection Volume 1
18 Ex Machina Smoke, Smoke
19 100 Bullets Samurai
20 Death The High Cost of Living
21 The Future Was F.A.B.: The Art Of Mike Trim
22 Kingdom Hearts Boxed Set V1-4
23 Teaching: Is a Learning Experience
24 New Avengers Volume 5: Civil War Premiere HC
25 Return of The Bunny Suicides by Andy Riley
32 Safe Area Gorazde
33 Dorm Porn : Raunchy Tales of Boys on Campus (novel)
36 The Acme Novelty Date Book
44 Comic Abstraction: Image-Breaking, Image-Making by Roxana Marcoci

59 The New Frontier
85 Nextwave: Agents Of H.A.T.E Volume 1: by Warren Ellis & Stuart Immonen
92 Genshiken 8: the Society for the Study of Modern Visual Culture

-----

april 9 --12 pm

somebody went on a D&Q buying spree

1 300
2 Civil War
3 Flower Of Life Volume 1 (Yaoi)
4 Walt and Skeezix: Book Three (pre-order)
5 Runaways Volume 2
6 Flower Of Life Volume 3 (Yaoi)
7 Penny Arcade Volume 3: The Warsun Prophecies
8 Wormwood Volume 1
9 Moomin Book One: The Complete Tove Jansson Comic Strip
10 Good Omens (novel)
11 Flower Of Life Volume 2 (Yaoi)
12 Virgin Soil (pre-order)
13 Astonishing X-Men Volume 3: Torn TPB
14 Wimbledon Green: The Greatest Comic Book Collector in the World (rank #441)
15 Aishiteruze Baby, Volume 5
16 Aishiteruze Baby, Volume 7
17 Aishiteruze Baby, Volume 7
18 R.O.D.: Read or Dream, Volume 3
19 Hedge Knight Volume 1 Premiere HC by George R. R. Martin (novel)
20 Nobody Gets the Girl by James Maxey (novel)

21 Civil War: Young Avengers & Runaways TPB
22 How To Draw Manga Costume Encyclopedia Volume 4: Kimono And Gowns
23 The Complete Peanuts 1963-1964
24 Da Brudderhood of Zeeba Zeeba Eata : A Pearls Before Swine Collections
25 Watchmen

65 Safe Area Gorazde
74 Teaching Is a Learning Experience

One hour later, the first Walt & Squeezix book, Sgt Rock Archives, In the Shadow of No Towers, and Gilbert Hernandez' Luba: Three Daughters were all in the top 25 and Wimbledon's ranking had been reduced to #889.

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april 10 --10am

1 300
2 Watchmen
3 The Walking Dead Volume 6: This Sorrowful Life (pre-order April 11)
4 Promethea 5
5 Promethea Book 4
6 Promethea Book Three
7 Promethea Book Two
8 Testament West of Eden by Douglass Rushkoff
9 Scrum Bums : A Get Fuzzy Collection
10 Serenity: Those Left Behind
11 New Avengers Volume 4: The Collective TPB
12 Firefly: the Official Companion: Volume Two
13 Civil War TPB (pre-order April 25)
14 Garfield Blots Out the Sun: His 43rd Book
15 300: The Art Of The Film
16 V For Vendetta
17 Teaching: Is a Learning Experience!
18 Batman Dark Victory
19 The Walking Dead Book 2
20 The Fantasy Figure Artist's Reference File
21 Bone
22 The Walking Dead Book 1
23 Peach Girl Authentic: Volume 1
24 Civil War: The Road To Civil War TPB
25 Astonishing X-Men Volume 3: Torn TPB

39 Naruto Vol 15 (pre-order July 3)
54 Abandon the Old in Tokyo
70 Bill Peet : An Autobiography
92 In the Studio : Visits with Contemporary Cartoonists


Some conclusions:

-these lists are really unreliable
-as many other critics have pointed out, these lists are easy to manipulate
-if your book is anywhere on the top 100 Graphic Novels at amazon.ca at any given time, it is safe to say you've sold at least one copy this past week
-publishers should really pressure amazon to release a regular weekly list that reflects Actual Sales from week to week --these lists influence readers
-amazon really should divide their graphic novels between teen (most superheroes and manga) and adult
-there are quite a few bugs in the system

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