So nice to be drowning in data once again.
If one were to go to the most recently updated Manga Rankings [by clicking the HTML link in the left sidebar of the appropriate archive.org page] one might notice a subtle change to the usual headers.
Actually, you wouldn’t notice because hardly anyone actually goes to my carefully curated archived charts, having gleaned all the information you really wanted from the top 10 summaries I post to the blog. So I’m going to pull it out and rub your face in it explain to the masses just what changed:
Instead of my self-imposed data diet (trimming back to just the 3 main web sites — B&N, Borders, and Amazon — a necessary step I took back in May else I would never have caught up to date on these damn things) I’m now back up to 8 web sites — nine sources if you consider I count Amazon twice.
Each website works differently, and the subjective quality of the data I’m able to scrape from each means that I treat them all differently. But that’s part of what makes the hobby so interesting.
All current sources for the rankings, from 14 August and for the foreseeable future, are:
Barnes & Noble, Borders, Books-a-Million, Buy.com, Chapters, Hastings, Powells, Amazon’s Graphic Manga Category Listings & their Manga Hourly Bestsellers
Please note: these aren’t necessarily the best web sites for manga (I personally shop from an actual store, but when shopping online I often use RightStuf.com) but all have one thing in common: a manga category that can be sorted, data that can be mined & added to my massive steam-powered clockwork spreadsheets that spit out the weekly charts.
I still need to update the charts FAQ, but wanted to drop this to the main blog first.
