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Ha ha ha. (no, I’m not actually laughing, that’s a dry, ironic recital of those three syllables to show mocking, begrudging acceptance of a ridiculous situation)

I signed up for twitter — not so much because I feel it’s a necessary part of an online life but rather because it seems an ideal tool for what it does: a forum for short, snarky reflections on life, the universe, and everything.

However, my proper name was taken, my website’s name was taken, both my preferred handles were taken — and a few of my backups (Beer Disposal Unit, Taishi’s Otaku Army, Epictetus of Nicopolis) are all too long.

I can’t use my professional pseudonym, so… I’ve decided to instead take on a mantle of pretension — not without cause, as I have taught college courses in the past* — if you decide to follow me on Twitter you’ll have to look for ProfessorBlind.

(if you already subscribe to my RSS feed, you can likely ignore me on Twitter, unless Twitter is your preferred platform)

[* as a TA. Psych 1001, Ga. Tech. I also taught homebrewing as an extension course for three years.]

So, 2009:

I’m not quite done with it yet.

##

Here’s the thing: I don’t mind year-end-review posts. I’ve written my share. Mine tend to have too much math and too many numbers in them and they also tend to post late, as late as September in at least one case. I like to wait for corporate Annual Reports, read their conclusions, crunch the revenue & profit, analyse sales — all that jazz. That means waiting: for the Census Bureau, for the end of the fiscal year (as late as June for some companies) and for hard data. Since I wait for that data, I’m always at least four months behind on this thing.

I could post a stop-gap. (I did last year.)

[aside: While I’m over there, my predictions for 2009: Yotsuba&! — Yes! — picked up by Yen Press, but that’s the only thing I got right, and I didn’t so much predict that as beg publicly on the internets for anyone to please please please rescue the title from limbo. Past that, zilch. Though my “Batman Punches Everything” event suggestion may yet come to pass in 2010.]

This past year there was so much stuff that wasn’t comics that not only consumed my time and attention, but seriously distracted from the actual books…

Actually, that’s the tack I think I’ll take on this past year:

Top 10 Distractions of 2009:

10. Borders. The whole, “will they won’t they” dance around bankruptcy or a (possible) buyout, and their changes in-store, and the saga of their former overseas empire [Borders UK went belly-up, but Borders Oz is still a viable co. under the aegis of REDgroup Retail, though, so: one hit, one miss?] and over the course of the year their [the US flavour of Borders] website has only grown stronger and the whole web approach more self-assured.

Of course, they’re still losing money, but it was a tough year for all retailers. The Big News is that They’re Still In Business. “I’m not dead yet! I’m feeling much better …I think I’ll take a walk!”

9. Movies. Watchmen. Wolverine. Dragonball Evolution. Surrogates. …and to a lesser extent Whiteout, and the Astro Boy CG movie …and to a greater extent but not so much pure ‘comic-book’ Transformers 2 and GI Joe …and some of us were still talking about Dark Knight, Iron Man, Speed Racer, Hulk, Hellboy 2, The Spirit, and even the new Punisher flick (did anyone see that?) from 2008 —

We sure can waste a lot of time, effort, and attention on things that aren’t comics, can’t we? Of course, movies pay the bills, and Diz wouldn’t have looked twice at Marvel if it weren’t for the movies (but that’s another comment).

8. Digital. Comics on the Kindle, comics on the iPhone, comics on the web (no, not that one), eManga, eComics, Marvel’s DCU (and it takes huge honking testes—or alternately, steely feminine nerve, if one would prefer to characterise their behaviour that way—for Marvel to persist with that moniker) or even the lovely, delectable porn PDFs from my casual internet acquaintance good friend Simon Jones.

All sound and fury, signifying nothing [yet; and the idiot is implied but the jury is still out on that point] — Yes, eventually, it’ll all be digital. Will it look like anything we have today? Doubt it.

The business models, legal dodges, ruthless contracts, audience investment, social marketing, and historical publishing models are likely already out there, somewhere — but the new magic combination of whatever secret herbs and spices hasn’t hit us yet. The person who gets this right will make millions (or will get screwed over by a big corporation that will then make millions) but there isn’t a perfect, or even an accidental, solution in place yet. And even when the obvious digital format appears (“why didn’t I think of that?” ) there will be so many immediate copycats that the innovators may not be able to cash in to the extent that would pay off their investment. But that’s New Media for you.

7. Diamond. A Google search will bring you up to speed – will Steve Geppi’s apparent financial shenanigans pull down the entire direct market? So far, DCD and their related bookstore-oriented business seem insulated from the problems facing Gemstone and Geppi’s Entertainment Museum. But that’s only half the story, and a smaller half:

There were the new Diamond order minimums that, in a single stroke, just pushed the bottom half of the market out of the business. …or bottom two-thirds? or four-fifths? It may not be much dollar-wise (DC, Marvel, Dark Horse, Image aren’t affected, so far as I know) but a lot of the flavour, flash, spark, joy, weirdness, and unexpected surprises have suddenly been squeezed out of the comic business. A major fraction (in number though not in sales) of the medium have, at a whim by the gatekeeper who had been previously thought of as an advocate of comics, been left on the curb to either fend for themselves or to be picked up with the other “trash” — but what is trash, and what is literature? Should we let the first month, or week, of orders and sales decide what is worthy? Would Faulkner withstand that test? Would Spiegelman, or Bechdel? Would Blue Beetle, or Deadpool, or Chew, or The Walking Dead, or Planetary, or Sandman have survived this kind of test?

6. Kodansha. After 18 months all we get is reprints of Dark Horse localizations?

I feel I have to invent new profanity to adequately express how I feel about this.

Granted, Kodansha is just behaving like any conservative Japanese publisher would (note: Viz was an independent company that struck out on it’s own and carved out a huge niche for itself before it was bought up and brought back into the fold of Shogakukan/Shueisha) so no one can really fault them for taking it slow — unless it just pisses us off; it certainly pisses me off — but as a business decision this glacially slow move into the American market is understandable. That, and I think they’re using the Sure Thing of Akira and Ghost in the Shell as financing for future releases; kind of like a stock offering but instead of selling fractional ownership of the company to a bunch of investors (who would expect a return) they’re just soaking the fan base for ready cash.

This is, in my opinion, a real dick move — but it makes perfect business sense. If they use these otaku-dollars to finance riskier, and most certainly more manga releases, then all is forgiven. We’ll see what the new year brings.

5. Events. I’m tempted to put ‘events’ in quotes.

Many a blogger has commented on ‘Event Fatigue’

But Events Work, in a business sense. They engender discussion and debate; good or bad, fans talk about them. And Events Sell Books — even when fans say they hate them, some significant fraction is still buying the books, else this trend would have died out in the 90s.

My objections would be: 1. An event intended to cross the entire line by design handicaps the story told in any one book, or title; 2. Cross-line events represent a significant investment, in both time and dollars, on the part of any fan who tries to keep up with all the tie-ins and side stories, 3. …or even a significant investment from a fan who just wants to read the ‘main story’ — which will be dozens & dozens of pamphlets, or a solid block of Trade Paperback collections, or an expensive set of three of four hardcovers. Past events have been collected into a single volume — but I don’t know that any similar collection from 2009 (or 2008) will fit in anything less than a hefty two-volume hardcover box set.

That is, if the publishers deign to collect the storylines in a single, fan-friendly package. So many are willing to buy the assorted 96-page fragments at $20 a pop, and the publishers are more than willing to sell such…

4. Continuing fallout from the collapse of the anime/manga bubble. Part of this is Kodansha pulling titles. Part is Tokyopop losing said titles, and pulling back on anything that isn’t Princess AI/DJ Milky-aka-Stu Levy’s ego project, part is Japanese publishers (I’m looking at Broccoli here) just quitting the NA market, and the largest part is that anime-and-by-extension manga were gloriously overhyped in the first half of the decade, and no matter how good the books are — the market is fickle, and past performance is no guarantor of future success.

This reckoning was coming. And there are business cycles; we just happen to be in a trough. But so long as Japan puts out books and TV shows, some fraction of that output will be made available to fans through legal channels. [piracy was a different essay]

3. Recession. This has been an extremely tough year to sell anything, let alone comics. Nearly all comics collections tend to be much stronger backlist titles, as opposed to any sort of sales they show as a new release, so even in a bad year good comics are being produced and only later in this new decade will we be able to say who are the sales winners and losers.

2. Time Warner realises they own DC. This has been brewing a long time. TW was always willing to cash in on DC’s comic capital, but they always worked one-level-removed. It was almost like the movie guys at Warner didn’t want to get their hands dirty with [*ack*] comics and the print guys at Time, despite being intimately familiar with periodical publishing, just couldn’t lower themselves to get hands-on with the funny book trade. It likely didn’t help that Time Warner sold off their book division entire to Hachette Livre (as in hindsight, we all can see that the comic business is the book business, or at least that is one possible future for the industry)

Now though, (perhaps in response to Diz/Marvel) the DC comics brand has been folded into the movie arm of the company and if company org charts count for anything, DC is being moved closer to the center of movie/TV production and will no longer languish as a forgotten (or neglected) vestigial limb of the Time Warner Empire.

This may be a Bad Thing. That’s my hunch; that, or the whole semantic shuffle will amount to less than a hill of beans. A lot depends on the people TW brings into DC to effect the changes — and honestly, they didn’t need to change the name to do that. Names are meaningless, past the meaning we invest in them, or the meaning they garner over time through association with consistent output.

DC didn’t need the ‘Entertainment’ moniker. Perhaps Time Warner did… but the shuffle/kerfluffle doesn’t add anything to the DC family of properties, there is nothing that can be done as DC Entertainment that couldn’t have been done in 1969 when the Kinney Parking Company bought flagging Warner Brothers/Seven Arts, 40 Years Ago. All the pieces were in place then; did it honestly take you four decades to realize you owned both a movie studio and also the biggest comic book company ever? (full props to Marvel, and others, but Batman-Superman-Wonder Woman-Flash-Green Lantern-et al. and all the sidekicks, spinoffs, earth one-two-etc. and a solid 60 years worth of stories most of which I’m not even familiar with? Dude. An intern who reads comics could have clued you guys in sometime in the 70s, let alone before 2009.)

Still, and despite the protestations that the DC move was in the works before the Diz/Marvel announcement, it’s a fact that it came out after, and it looks to most of us like the Time Warner/DC Entertainment announcement was made merely to steal some of Marvel’s thunder.

1. Disney Buys Marvel. Obvious as Number One. And it’s been talked to death, but it’s still Number One. And Marvel was tied up in so many movie deals before the buyout that it’ll be years before Disney/Marvel get to actually make their own [Disney] movies based on the Marvel properties — but even if a movie makes two tonnes of money for someone else, that still means a ton of money for Marvel, and that’s why Disney snapped up the House of Ideas.

##

Honourable Mention: Con Wars, Wizard vs Reed. Didn’t rank because while this was a distraction in ’09, it’s only the first moves: this isn’t going to blow up until the head-to-head contests play out in 2010.

##

and these were only the distractions. And they still have mighty powers to distract; this wasn’t actually the point I intended to write about this evening: The primary purpose of this post was to let you know that while I haven’t given up on 2009, I will be posting new 2010 sales charts just as soon as I finish the data entry and analysis on the week ending 3 January.

I have 3.34 gigabytes of archived sources from 2009, so even as I stride boldly into a new (and more timely) world of 2010 estimated online sales rankings, I also have an obligation to fill in the historical charts from ’09 as quickly as my work schedule and the regular posts permit. Since I’ll be posting two different sets of top 10 charts, I ask you [now] to note the dates in each post — even though it should be obvious. [can’t be too careful]

I’m actually working as hard as I can to get ahead of the New York Times Graphic Books chart — not because they’re wrong, necessarily, though occasionally I have a strong suspicion that they are — but instead because every time I can post ahead of their Arts Blog I score one for the independents and shove a New Media spike direct into a soft spot of the Paper of Record. It’s a petty, pyrrhic victory, but damn I love sticking it to the Times. Some guy with a blog can not only post a “graphic books” chart, but he can do it while disclosing all sources, being entirely open with both the data collection and ranking criteria, and can post it faster than the Times…

…well, in those weeks when I can beat them. It’s why I’ve been up since 5am this morning, in fact, though I’ve lost a lot of time in writing this post.

So. New Charts to post soon. And also the remaining 2009 charts to post until I catch up (that’s the ‘mulit-track recording’ part referenced in the title) (and a stats-porn-rich recap of ’09 to post as soon as I get there) but for now, just this commentary.

Rethinking the Box, other features, and columns will all be put on hold for the next few months while I catch up on the rankings.

Yes, really.

I’m a full three months behind and I need to fix that. The upshot is that after I catch up, I can then crunch 3 months of complete, comparable data drawn from the same 9 sources and I can post some of the nifty pie charts and graphs again. (fair warning: if you don’t like nifty pie charts and graphs you just might be reading the wrong blog)

I’ll try to find time on Sundays to post at least one item a week that isn’t a historical top 10 list of graphic novels — And I’ve the new Akira and Ghost in the Shell on the way from Kodansha Comics, so there will be reviews & coverage there — but otherwise, there is a massive backlog of data and I feel I need to get through it all before New Years.

I was noticing some really odd entries in my hit logs, and decided to do some research. The pages supposedly visited were along the lines of:

?​pg=2/​main.​php?​page=http://​somespammer.spam

where, of course, “spammer.spam” was replaced by something that looked like an investment or pharmaceutical firm. Since I’ve never written posts like that, and don’t link to that kind of thing, these have no business being in my hit logs.

So I did some research.
here: Google has links, if you know what to search for

It seems that if you have a web form set up for email (like, say, on your contact page, or to allow readers to easily subscribe to an email newsletter) then you can be vulnerable to someone who knows enough about PHP and SMTP to, basically, hijack your form to send any kind of email to anyone and make it look like you sent it.

Needless to say, I’m not going to put up with that. While I may not have enough programming mojo to keep spammers from using the form in illicit ways, I can certainly remove the form.

SO it might be a bit more difficult to subscribe to the Graphic Novel Rankings newsletter (which once was weekly and will again be weekly just as soon as I can catch up) or to send me hate email about how much my website sucks — but motivated readers can still do either with a minimum of extra steps.

Other site owners: take note! Take a closer look at some of your incoming hits (not all traffic is good traffic) and if you don’t know where something is coming from, or why, there may be a similar exploitable feature on your site, and you should nail that sucker down.

Remember the charts?

1. First up: they’re back. :)
2. Moving forward, the bulk of the charts will be posted as streamlined HTML files to Archive.org. Not that I mind posting long long lists of titles to my blog, but most of my readers (even the comics fans) balk at the bulk.
3. Working through a back-log of data for the month of July; will post new charts as they’re ready.
4. Tracking down publishing information for what is now 8,144 titles — even in the little way that I’ve attempted to date — is the main choke point on the process now. Charts as posted this week are complete for the volumes, but not the series ranking.
5. After I’ve caught up on the graphic novels, I’ll go back and pull out the manga charts. One problem at a time, though.

##

The Latest:

Week ending 5 July 2009
Comics Top 500

1. ↔0 (1) : Watchmen – DC Vertigo, [852.8] ::
2. ↑3 (5) : V for Vendetta – DC Vertigo, [744.6] ::
3. ↑5 (8) : Dark Tower 3 – Marvel, [726.7] ::
4. ↑283 (287) : Final Crisis – DC, [717] ::
5. ↓-2 (3) : Batman The Killing Joke – DC, [715.1] ::
6. ↑8 (14) : Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight 4 – Dark Horse, [706] ::
7. ↓-3 (4) : Batman The Dark Knight Returns – DC, [689.5] ::
8. ↑17 (25) : Maximum Ride 1 – Yen Press, [681] ::
9. ↑22 (31) : Batman RIP – DC, [670.6] ::
10. ↓-3 (7) : Star Trek Countdown – IDW, [655.9] ::

[more]

Top 50 Series:

1. ↔0 (1) : Naruto – Viz Shonen Jump, [2001.7] ::
2. ↔0 (2) : Batman – , [1872.5] ::
3. ↔0 (3) : Sandman – , [1409] ::
4. ↑9 (13) : Bleach – Viz Shonen Jump, [1287.8] ::
5. ↑4 (9) : Buffy the Vampire Slayer – , [1277.5] ::
6. ↔0 (6) : Y The Last Man – , [1229.9] ::
7. ↑1 (8) : Dark Tower – , [1220.3] ::
8. ↓-1 (7) : Fruits Basket – Tokyopop, [1148.8] ::
9. ↓-4 (5) : Bone – , [1056.5] ::
10. ↔0 (10) : League of Extraordinary Gentlemen – , [1048.3] ::

[more]

Top Publishers
Number of titles ranking in the Comic 500:

Viz Shonen Jump 61
DC Vertigo 42
DC 35
Tokyopop 33
Marvel 32
Viz Shonen Jump Advanced 29
Viz Shojo Beat 26
Del Rey 23
Dark Horse 23
Yen Press 14

[more]

[awww… isn’t that cute? They’re running µTorrent together…]

So. The 15in. laptop in the back is a 3 year old Dell Inspiron 1501, the noble brick that has been my one and only computer for longer than my last four blogging gigs and which has duly served (and will continue to serve for a while yet; not enough scratch in the ol’ grouch bag to buy the replacement — looking at a Dell Studio 17 with like $500 worth of extra RAM for that) as the behind-the-scenes engine, platform, and interface for RB. (well… besides the web hosting, natch; I pay professionals for that)

Her name is Minerva, because she’s so shiny. Minerva has been an excellent computer, and when we do have to part ways (it’s not you darling, it’s me, I’ve… grown. We’ve grown apart. But can you continue to keep house for at least a couple months until I find someone new? You will? Oh, you’re a gem, doll. I love you.) I’m going to do my level best to find a new, good home for her, a place where she will be appreciated—dare I say, loved. I’ve a particular non-profit in mind, and though they currently have absolutely no idea, my gal Minerva is going to show up unannounced at their front door one day soon, dolled-out in the sexiest open source software you’ve ever seen: fully-loaded, unlocked, cocked, and ready to rock. She’ll blow their minds.

The little guy is staying with me, even after Minerva leaves and the Dell Shipyards in Round Rock, TX, finish the commission on the new RocketBomber Mothership. The Mini was meant to be an add-on, bought after the fact (that is to say, after sinking $1750 or so on the new laptop) but life being what it is and internet sales obeying no one’s schedule, there was an opportunity to grab a Dell Mini 10 for less than $300 last Friday evening, and I took it.

[with the intervening days being not only a weekend, but a Holiday weekend and all, I’d say I’m satisfied with the turn-around on this]

This isn’t a brand-new Mini 10, I don’t think. (Dell seems to be doing something new with the plastic case…) And honestly, I’d have preferred a Mini 12 with a slightly bigger screen — in fact, the screen on the ’12 is the same resolution (1200×768) as the older Inspiron 1501 pictured above — but that’d cost me an extra two bills right now. The Mini I bought is fine — the screen is just 2/3 or so of what I’m used to; it’s like running an application in a window, actually, a bit tight but not unworkable — and it’s not like I’m going to use the new Mini as my only computer, or even my primary computer.

The thing is, with the upgrades to processors in the last three years, and particularly to the Intel graphic chips/software solutions in the interim, the new netbooks are at least as much computer as the $600-800 laptops of just a few years ago. This post was written on the Mini, and the photos transferred from my digital camera via the included SD card port, and then edited using the Gimp 2.2 (running at the same time as a mp3 player and the browser this post was written in) — other than the slight disadvantage of the keyboard, this netbook might be a viable alternative for light computing needs.

The trackpad is going to take a long time to get used to, though. Currently, I hate it. It’s the worst thing I’ve discovered so far about the machine (even over the puny 10” screen) and I think what I hate most is not having mouse buttons. The lower corners of the pad do in fact work as buttons, but they also are still working as the trackpad, so if you have fat fingers the odds are not good when it comes to actually clicking on what one is aiming at. I might get better with practice (same as with my first laptop — hated the trackpad initially on it as well)

but for now I’m most happy that I still have an old USB trackball knocking around. (The USB numeric keypad is nice too, but unless I’m playing games like Civ4 on this thing — and I doubt I will be — it’s a tad superfluous)

(Plants vs. Zombies, tho? That runs fine.)

For browsing and email and other web-based apps, and related light computing needs… maybe one could get by with just a netbook.

Left and right side ports — On the left: power, 2 USB ports (one in use), and the SD card slot (in line with the wrist rest; not pictured because the SD card is actually in the camera at this point)

On the right: ethernet, VGA monitor port, USB, audio line-in and headphone jacks.

Conclusions: If this post can be taken as any sort of indicator, the Dell Mini 10 works just fine as a mobile blogging platform. The keyboard is small, but usable; the trackpad sucks, but one can default to keyboard shortcuts or add on a mouse (at home) or just make do; the Atom is enough of a processor for most of the applications of years past (and quite a few of today’s handier items) and while I know the single gig of RAM is a serious drawback, I haven’t hit that wall today.

The screen, while small, is nice and bright — so bright that at its higher settings it’ll drain the included 3-cell lithium-ion battery in just a couple of hours. Audio playback is adequate, but I’m not ditching my dedicated mp3 player yet.

Overall, it’s at least as much computer as I bought 3 years ago, just smaller and at less than half the price. If you’re considering a netbook as your only laptop, definitely look for a 12in (or 14in model — but is it still a netbook at that size?) —otherwise, consider what you’re willing to give up (screen, RAM, battery life, keyboard and track pad usability) for a $200-300 extremely portable backup computer.

This is for email during my lunch breaks at work, maybe some writing on-the-go (it’s nice to have that option, though it will be a long while before I relish typing on this keyboard) but mostly as a mobile platform for writing and blogging at conventions. I like that it works so well with my camera (and likely your camera as well, so long as you’re using SD cards) and all in all, I’m happy with it.

Re: the commentary to date on the posting ‘The Seven Types of Bookstore Customer’, see also the first follow-up, the second follow-up, the third (and I had hoped) last time I revisited the topic, and also the recent posting (incl. reader comments) The Eight Types of Bookseller.

Reader Spiff was asking (and I’m paraphrasing) “If you didn’t want to reap the whirlwind, why did you sow the wind?”

and so:

if any of it really bothered me, I could delete the negative comments, or even go so far as to delete the original post.

I’m pretty thick-skinned, actually, and I’ve a fair sense of humor, and am mostly agnostic about it all.

Obviously, I invite comments (since there is a comment function) but the beautiful thing about the web is that one can also comment to one’s own space, with a link to material. — in fact, the vast majority of readers first discovered this blog by reading about it [with commentary, both good and bad] on someone else’s site.

What surprises me is the number of people who feel compelled to comment here, like I posted this to a public forum or on their website. The original post, and this one, constitute My Opinion on these topics and if I’m so inflammatory or offensive or outright wrong — then why did you read it?

There must be something true in it, or no one would have linked. None would have commented. No one would have bothered to read the post all the way to the end. (and certainly, if the overwhelming response was all negative, that’d be one thing, too, but what of those who posted in agreement or support?)

I’m guilty of bias; I suppose I’m guilty of posting flame-bait, too. Fine.

But the internet is all about bias and flame bait — which internet have you been reading?

My objection to negative comments is like a host objecting to guests pissing on the carpet: sure, there’s nothing wrong with the behavior per se, it’s fine in context — but there is a forum for that sort of thing and most people do it behind closed doors, & at home.

One could slander my character and rebuff all my points and arguments or tear apart my ‘arguments’ as plainly false on their face and question my suitability for my job (or any job) or even wonder aloud how long it will be before my neighbors band together to remove me as a blight to the community —

I’d just ask that you not do it on my blog, and to me that’s just as sensible as a host asking people to stop pissing on his living room rug.

The proper html is <a href=“http://www.rocketbomber.com”>THIS GUY SUCKS ASS!</a> (or your own pithy commentary) and you can post it to a web forum, or a social networking site, or to a blog of your own devising, where you pay the registration fees and hosting out of your pocket.

Just stop asking me to pay for and support your negativity. Just because it’s the internet doesn’t make it free, and I get the bill for this site.

It’s been a great ride, kids. 60,000 readers (and counting) and I know out of that, at least a couple dozen will stick around and become regulars — so long as I can update on some sort of regular schedule for the ‘regulars’ to follow.

The Seven Types of Customer are now a part of the internet (no take backs) and even if I retracted and rescinded the post now, well it’s far too late.

As an antidote to my sarcasm, let me just note here that Seth Godin thinks You Matter.

I’m still pretty sure that You Suck.

I can’t keep up with this mess forever. I’ve responded, twice in full posts and have tried in limited fashion to also keep up with the comments on each post. It’s not that I have better things to do but I’ve definitely other things to do and this fleeting adventure with internet popularity (however limited) has stalled a lot of projects.

The original posted two weeks ago. In ‘net terms, that’s like, forever. Thank you for stopping by and reading (especially if you’re still reading) but there are other things I’d like to talk about now.

The way some others do it:

Rankings reflect sales of graphic novels, for the week ending May 31, at many thousands of venues where a wide range of books are sold nationwide. These include hundreds of independent book retailers (statistically weighted to represent all such outlets); national, regional and local chains; online and multimedia entertainment retailers; university, gift, supermarket, discount department stores and newsstands. In addition, these rankings also include unit sales reported by retailers nationwide that specialize in graphic novels and comic books. An asterisk (*) indicates that a book’s sales are barely distinguishable from those of the book above. A dagger (†) indicates that some bookstores report receiving bulk orders.

This is from the Arts Blog of the Gray Lady, the venerable New York Times. They’ve been posting a Graphic Books Bestseller Chart for three months now; the pull-quote above is from the footnote to a recent list, after the jump and all the way at the bottom, and then offset by formating the paragraph in italics so your eye will just glide over it on your way down to the links and the comments appended to the end.

“It’s just a technical note, don’t worry your pretty little head over our methodologies.”

The problem, of course, is that a “New York Times Bestseller List” is like the “Dow Jones Industrial Average” — sure, each is just a listing of top performers compiled for the benefit of a newspaper using a decades old secret formula; but the impact of the whole is so much more than just a top 10, or top 25, or the estimated value of an imaginary, arbitrary portfolio of 30 near-randomly selected stocks, the components of which are swapped out at whim — it’s designed from the get-go to seem authoritative while cherry-picking what they’d care to track. I’m not sure why the Dow continues to get press, other than the fact that there is no good alternative, and tradition and inertia lend the Dow a gravitas that no new index (or mere average with obvious, independently verifiable inclusion standards and a larger data pool) can match.

And ‘Bestsellers’… For an author and publisher, the New York Times Bestseller imprimatur is money in the bank. They proudly emblazon said status on the cover of the book, and the lucky wordsmith will forever bear the sobrequet of “New York Times Bestselling Author”.

In the publishing world, this is a big deal.

Other papers-of-record (The USA Today list, for example, which is not only longer but more inclusive and — on it’s face, at least — much more democratic) and even major retailers also maintain bestseller lists, but they’ll never be able to conjure the same magic as the New York Times. Something about old New York’s status as a publishing centre, and the close to 70 years that the NYT has published their charts, are what make their bestsellers ‘the’ bestsellers, but even Wikipedia can point you to older charts, and the controversy surrounding the term, and the different ways the term ‘bestselling’ is used depending on context, region, and even things like the format of the book and the venue in which it is sold.

It’s all hokum and snake oil. Hell, any wonk with a blog and too much free time on his hands can compile a chart. [*ahem*]

In this case, I can one-up the Times — I am proud to present: Transparency.

Here’s the method and methodologies, sources and scores, how I weight the data and why, and in way more detail than anyone really wants.

I don’t care if you want it or not; it’s not so much that my inclusion of this information makes my chart better or more accurate than Neilsen Bookscan, or USA Today, or the New York Times, or ICv2, or a slate of retailers. (Retailers, for example, know exactly how many copies they’ve sold, and similarly Publishers know exactly how many books they get paid for — and none of that data is forthcoming.) My numbers are still just estimates; my sources are online retailers and who knows? they could be lying to us. It’s not about ‘proving’ my numbers are better — this is a good faith effort to share with you [and the rest of the uncaring internets] exactly what it is that I do. You are invited to make your own value judgements as to what it’s worth.

In a way, everything is also verifiable; though the sticky wicket is that my chart relies on ephemeral data that posts to the internet once, before being replaced by a more current version — so short of exactly duplicating my data collection method, there may not be way to call me on it — but sources are clearly identified, both here and in each post. Go look at the same websites, wallow in the same data set. Get a feel for the overall geist of online sales in the same way I have. Instead of closing off my sources, and hiding my process in a footnote, here is a great-gobsmacking-big invitation to share with me. Follow along with the home game version. A couple times a year I even post my entire spreadsheet, with 3 or 6 months worth of data. Dive In, Math is Fun!

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Two months ago (at the time of posting: April ’09) I made the decision to change from just a manga chart to a bestseller list for all graphic novels. And I’m still trying to cope.

I’ve hit the limit of what one dedicated person can do on a part-time basis. In fact, we’re past that limit as I’m far less than ‘dedicated’ and will occasionally take a couple of days off to watch a set of newly acquired anime DVDs, or read through a half-dozen manga of a given series, because I am a loser fan boy first before I am a blogger or math nerd.

So. The charts post sporadically. As I get more details for this new listing nailed down, my weekly time commitment will also decrease, slightly, and so I should be able to settle back into a regular posting schedule, but this one minor (on the face of it) adjustment has thrown my overall progress back a year. Maybe more.

Enough editorial…

Hi, my name is Matt. This is RocketBomber.com, and this is where I post a bestseller chart for Graphic Novels.

The Core of the Charts is made up of data from three sites: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Borders.

Once a week, I visit each site to check their Graphic Novel categories, and I sort the search results by ‘bestselling’. The links above will pull up exactly that.

I then click through, page after page, and type the titles into a spreadsheet in the order that they are ranked on the sales site. [this is the hard part]

And once I have a full list, I assign points to the books depending on how highly they rank. Add up the points each title earns (and add on similar data from a half-dozen second-tier sales sites) to get a composite score, and there’s your ranking.

In concept, it’s that simple.

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In practice, because the sites themselves can update as often as once an hour, after I load up a website & sort the search results, I then click open each new page in a new tab until I have 20-100 tabs open, representing a snapshot of the full sales (top 900-1200 titles) of this particular sales site over a relatively short time-frame (10-15 minutes). And then I start the data entry.

For Borders, which handily allows 50 titles to a page, I only have to open 20 or so tabs. For B&N, which can support 100 titles to a page but maddeningly restricts some searches to a mere 10 titles a page with no option for more, I load up 95 tabs. And even though Amazon defaults to 12 a page — a default that no one can change, and currently, a default that one must navigate by clicking ‘next’ on each and every page — I also load up 95 tabs (1140 titles) because even though I only want a top 900, Amazon search results include so much ‘noise’ I know in advance that I’ll need to skip between 175-200 titles because they aren’t graphic novels.

Dear Amazon, Newsflash: Just because Gaiman wrote it, doesn’t make it a comic.

Let’s go back one half step: the top 900 titles.

To compile my charts, for the top three sites (op cit. Amazon, B&N, Borders) I look up the First 900 graphic novels listed. Yes, I skip a few; as noted, not everything coming up on a search is a graphic novel. I intentionally skip some others.

[currently: I skip most kids’ ‘picture books’ and adaptations of classics and material in the public domain. — I ♥ the classics, and also love the comic adaptations as much as the next guy (or more), but with up to 5 different versions of a book, all from different publishers, my spreadsheet (and my poor brain) can’t track them all — does one consider the source (i.e. Huck Finn) or the imprint (i.e. Papercutz Classics Illustrated) as the ‘series’ in this case? On the one hand, all versions of the source book should be the basis for a title ranking — on the other hand, the consumer presumably would be looking for all adaptations under a particular imprint. There is a third case of course: it’s my chart and this makes my brain hurt so I just skip ‘em]

Matters of inclusion aside…

That was the top 900 titles. Here’s how I score them:

#1 gets 100 points.

Perfectly straitforward. And that’s my benchmark: #1 on Amazon, or B&N or Borders, is worth 100 points and everything else (lower ranked on one of these sites or appearing on a different site) is worth less; some fraction of 100. I only belabour this point because from here it gets messy:

#2 gets 99.7 points, and we proceed down the charts by increments of three-tenths through 234 titles (#234 scores 30.1 points) and then shift to increments of one-tenth (#235 scores 30 points, #236 29.9, and so on) through the next 200 titles and then we switch to increments of five-hundreths of a point…

…yeah, I know. Here, look at this:

#1 gets 100 points. Everything below that only scores some fraction of 100. By the time we’re ⅔ of the way through the source chart, that fraction is the nominal one tenth of a point (not quite zero, but close) and I keep scoring titles until I get sick of looking at the website, or I hit 1000 titles, or both. In practice (and in the chart above, and for all my GN rankings as posted to date) I’m going to push until I hit 900 titles and then (gratefully) stop — but one tenth of a point isn’t going to change anything and so long as the data looks good I reserve to right to keep on going. A lot of the “long tail” in my posted manga charts (5000+ total titles at the end of ’08, the last 300 or so only appearing once or twice in sources all year) came from this kind of extended data entry.

Why all the decimals? I discovered early on (back in ’07) that if I posted nice round numbers it didn’t matter how I introduced, qualified, or explained the chart someone would mistake my score for an actual unit sales number. The simple solution (at the time) of dividing by ten — inserting a decimal point — instantly changed that. Since then I’ve modded the spreadsheet to incorporate the fractions.

So, that’s three charts that form my core, and the ‘fancy’ math I use to approximate sales.

[Note: scoring methods changed slightly starting with the charts dated 19 July; there is an explanation here. The chief upshot is a ‘fatter’ curve that reflects a greater emphasis on midlist and backlist titles, but the top of the chart does not change — #1 still equals 100 points — and everything else is still just scored at a fraction of that. A full accounting will be presented in the next update to the FAQ; until then please remember that while some of the arbitrarily assigned scores may be different, the Theory and Reasons behind the chart as presented below are still valid]

I also check one other bookstore’s site: Books-a-Million, but given their lower sales volume I discount their results slightly, and also delve less deeply: I check a top 300 (with #1 scored at 30 points, and decreasing by a tenth of a point down a straight line) with the addition of another 100 ranking titles at 0.1 points each, similar to above but stopping at #400.

Then there are a lot of top 100 charts from various sites (buy.com, Powell’s, overstock.com, deepdiscount.com, Tower, half.com) and also Amazon’s hourly top 100, which is different from the Graphic Novel ‘bestseller’ search results, oddly enough, and which I check 5 times a week — roughly once a day.

The ‘number ones’ at each of these sites score 10 points, and down the list by increments of 0.1 points until we get to #100, which scores a single tenth of a point. (Tower and half.com are proving to be of marginal utility; I may have to discount them further, i.e. #1 = just 5 points, or in the case of half.com just drop the site entirely, but as of June ’09 they are still components in the rankings)

That’s where all the numbers come from: After looking at ten different sales sites and doing all the data entry and scoring 15 different source charts (with its hourly bestsellers, Amazon gets checked a total of six times) of varied lengths and value — and then doing it again, as each set of posted rankings pulls from two weeks of data, we have just started.

Now that we have data we can run them through the spreadsheet. The trick, of course, is teaching a spreadsheet how to grok book titles, and how to discern what books are part of which series. [It’s a matter of careful formatting more than anything else — the spreadsheet knows how to put things in order, and how to add, and it can also compare two line entries to see if part or all of the line is the same. Using these simple tools, it’s possible to compile a chart of rankings — if you’ve set the sheet up correctly.]

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Let’s assume that the same titles are all ranking in the same order on every sales site. Watchmen is number one everywhere, for example. (It sounds ridiculous, I know, but let’s go with this model.) If that were the case, and using the scoring method above, we’d get a top 900 titles that would score like this:

I’d posted a similar chart earlier in the teaser (actually the same chart, scaled differently) and in the comments JRBrown said, “To me this graph looks pretty similar to those charts of Amazon’s overall book sales that were so shocking 5 years ago, only a lot more compressed (with the top 100-150 books accounting for maybe half the sales?).”

Yes, exactly.

What I didn’t tell you is the chart above doesn’t represent actual sales, it’s only a model. This is what my approximation of online sales looks like in my monstrous, steam-powered difference engine computational works. And since I use weighted scores in comparing titles, this is why the Manga and Comics 500 are often referred to as online sales estimates. No one is giving me actual sales numbers, and these are the lengths (and depths, and bredths) to which I’ll resort to figure this out.

If we take the model and plug in the real data (the actual rankings found on online sites) along with a little ice, some lime juice, bar mix, triple sec and tequila and hit frappé, the graph looks a little more like this:

For all titles found and scored (2,725 over the two week period, 4 May to 17 May, charted above) at the ten sites currently tracked, with #1 (Watchmen) scoring close to the theoretical maximum number of points.

This is where the scores lead us. And it all starts with #1 @ Amazon = 100 points.

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Using the sales estimates (and occasionally, a smidge of extra math) I can then sort, bend, fold, spindle and mutilate the ‘main’ chart into a number of secondary charts:

• The Top 50 Series chart uses the same scores assigned to books for the Comics 500, but with a sprinkling of extra math: A weighted score is determined using the points from the top two ranked volumes of a given series as a base, and only adding one tenth of the scores for all other books in the series. [read more]
• The Publisher’s Scorecard is the most straightforward of the lot (provided I’ve entered the publishing info for the titles) — just look at the Top 500 and count: so many for DC, Marvel, Viz, so many for Tokyopop, Dark Horse, IDW, etc. Actually, I get the spreadsheet to count them for me, but that’s the gist of it.
• New releases and preorders are almost as easy: once the publishing data for the books has been updated, a simple sort by date pulls up the requisite info for the post.
• The “Midlist 500” is a re-ranking of manga volumes after excluding all non-manga, and also the books from the top 5 manga Series: At the time of this posting (13 Jun 08) the top 5 series are Naruto, Fruits Basket, Vampire Knight, Bleach, & Death Note; all together this represents some 150 books of which at least 100 are clogging up my manga chart. After excluding these volumes I then re-run and re-number the Midlist chart with the books that are left.

Actually, The Midlist 500 is the reason I set up the spreadsheet and do the rest of the math.

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See also: The Old Faq (last updated 7 Mar 09)

Archived Lists:

Reconstructed 2007 Manga Chart
2008 Winter — unavailable; the charts were on hiatus 6 weeks through Jan/Feb while the spreadsheet was retooled.
2008 Spring [manga only]
2008 Summer [manga only]
2008 Autumn/Annual Summary [manga only]
2009 Winter [manga only] (coming July)
2009 Spring [finally, we’re posting all GNs] (coming July/August)

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boilerplate anti-©:

Graphic Novel estimated online sales rankings compiled by Matt Blind for the benefit of the Comics Fan, Creator, and Publishing Communities and posted in the rankings category at RocketBomber.com. Derived from publicly available information; if you feel your intellectual property has been infringed upon then I’d advise you to chill, consult your lawyers again, maybe grow a thicker skin, and then also recognise that you’re getting a free, weekly link directly to your lovely offerings [right at the top of each post, in case you missed it] on a blog that specifically caters to fans of the medium. Maybe you should be sending me money, or free manga, as opposed to getting your boxers/panties in a bunch over imaginary copyrights.

All data as posted released back into the public domain (be free, little numbers, go frolic and prosper) with merely a humble request that you link rather than steal, and that any derivative works include an attribution and also remain free to all.

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If you have questions, corrections, or concerns that should be addressed in the body of this post, please send an email to matt [at] rocketbomber [dot] com. Questions, corrections or concerns placed in the comments below will be addressed in a more casual manner after I’ve downed a few beers and am feeling saucy.