Some will have multiple copies. Chicago has 3. San Francisco has NYC has 25 copies. Likely over Possibly significantly over At Papercutz we have series that have sold 1,, copies that show up in Bookscan with 60, units sold. These are Bookscan numbers for books that we think are similar to the book being pitched. But good luck finding the right comp there! This seeds doubt among the sales reps, lowering our announced print runs, and then the spiral.
We really need an alternative ASAP. Oh, and I thought my list of things I love about Jim Ottaviani, my favorite comics writer, was complete. Then I learned that he footnotes his blog comments. Love that guy! Grow up, you ass. BookScan only covers the US, for starters — many books will have a substantial life outside of that territory.
So there are publishing areas where BookScan is less useful: craft books, some travel categories, anything that gets picked up in large numbers by non-traditional retailers like those books in Starbucks , and, yes, graphic novels.
The smart publishing people who work in the areas that are less well covered by BookScan know that and complain about it, of course, since it makes their jobs harder , and they make allowances for those other markets. In the case of the DM, relatively accurate numbers are available separately from Diamond, so anyone looking to sign up a comics project with any hope of hitting a comics-shop audience would have to be an idiot not to check the numbers in that channel.
I think what Colleen Doran has really unearthed is that there are stupid, badly informed people — some of them at least momentarily in positions of power at publishing houses. Since BookScan does not, and has never claimed to, include sales figures in the DM, her numbers are vastly more inaccurate than in the genres that BookScan was made for.
The underlying assumption in the analysis was that a competitor title would be represented proportionally across all outlets as our title. Probably fairly reasonable for consumer computer publishing at that time, but as Jesse Post points out above, not at all reasonable for other segments in other times.
Andrew: Thanks for this. Just repeated. As mentioned above, my books are not particularly DM-oriented. I think Colleen and Jesse would say the same about many of their titles as well. Articles routinely state that BookScan tracks about 75 percent of book sales, but some say that BookScan is used by about 75 percent of book vendors.
Nielsen BookScan, which monitors the English-language book industry worldwide, gathers point-of-sale book data from about 12, locations across the U. E-book data providers include all major e-book retailers. Meanwhile, there were reportedly about 2. Twenty-five percent of 2. Dean — Exactly right: the ratios between two publishers will always be different, depending on the title.
The Archie units Bookscan reports could have been ,, while the 5, Marvel units were actually 6,; and then, maddeningly, the next two compared titles will have a different level of inaccuracy. Comics suffer the same potential for misrepresentation as Stephen King novels. And, as Jim points out, not every graphic novel dominates in the DM.
As a representation of our general trade sales, it fails. Thanks, Synsidar. I should have tried to find that myself. And thanks for the compliment, Dean! Even if their numbers are wrong for e. But unlike above, where I talk about numbers I have a lot of confidence in, I am making a bunch of guesses and assumptions here, so join me out on this limb at your own risk!
Juvenile has 8 types for each. It may be higher — I tried to be conservative here. Or am I wrong? Or, you could say that I made a math error, which is what really happened. Sorry about that, and the resulting confusion! Some of those remaining books were sold to libraries, which you wisely prompted me to correct for. Not really. Never mind calling out the specific retailers they name. How is a passerby to know the difference when researching sales figures? I actually think ICv2 numbers are super helpful and a model of how Bookscan should work.
Brian — School and Library would be the other big channel for an average GN if by average you mean straight-up literary fiction and narrative nonfiction GNs, then they have the same sales opportunities as prose, plus the beautiful bonus provided by DM comics experts. Mass market friendly media tie-in GNs also have the drug and grocery channel, on which Bookscan is mum. My quest began with determining the formula for getting a book onto the NYT Bestsellers lists which can be quite the task.
This led me to Bowker to see if I could get an accurate count of how many new titles were registered in the graphic novel category each year. This led me to the Book Industry Studies Group, and the Association of American Publishers, neither of which has graphic novels officially recognized as a category. Even when I was at Diamond we had pretty good data but we were also aware of gaps in information coming from the traditional book trade market-especially when it came to the educational market.
As you have all figured out by now BookScan is a marketing tool run and promoted by Nielsen and since they are the only reporting source covering big box retail, they dont seem to have any problem ignoring challenges to the accuracy of their data. As for the way DM figures into the math, in general, traditional publishers pretty much overlook comic shops as channel because they are viewed as a niche market that speaks a totally foreign language. They, as Jim and Colleen have shown, hold the overall numbers close to the vest.
I also canvass the booth personnel to see how strong their knowledge is. So for me, I study the Diamond reports, Amazon, BookScan and also take into account stories in the book trade publications that talk about overall sales or initial print runs for books like Smile, Bone, Diary of a Wimpy Kid-even the print runs for GNs by James Patterson and Stephanie Meyer help to inform the picture as their successes create more of the Me Too reaction by the traditional houses.
I want it to thrive, and to be there next month. Do I need to go on? Anyway, if your doctor told you the above, would you trust any subsequent information you were told, much less a diagnosis?
These ARE sales, no doubt, and they yay! As a for example, I recently posted the top ish books of for Comix Experience. I also discover things that gasp! Diamond never even carried in the first place. Other retailers have also told me they do the same when they see the data like that. The primary service provides unlimited searches and downloads of print book sales data, as an annual subscription.
Print data subscribers can also add an ebook sales upgrade , which tracks ebook sales reported by hundreds of publishers on a monthly basis. For more limited data needs, most Publishers Marketplace members can now enroll for a monthly data package , tracking sales on up to 5 ISBNs a month. The new BookScan platform, launched in , provides more features and data analysis than ever before.
Book sales are shown week-by-week since publication, and tabulated by year-to-date and lifetime as well. Powerful new graphing features let you visualize that data, and even compare up to 10 titles against each other.
For more granular data, you can see—and map—book sales across different regional markets. Enhanced bestseller lists let users select and save a vast range of custom weekly or year-to-date lists across multiple formats and over subject categories, and even build lists by publisher.
Plus, all of the data is easily downloadable. According to Bookscan, it has sold copies in hardcover. What a bummer! This is accurate as of yesterday. Except I got a royalty statement on this thing. And according to my royalty statement, this book sold copies by end of the accounting period, which was last summer.
As of now, it has sold over 10, copies in hardcover. Respectable numbers. Not tearing up the charts, but enough to issue a new edition.
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