Essential Reading: Heidi MacDonald on Graphic Novel Bestsellers

If you've ever wondered just how many copies of Black Bird or Sailor Moon sell in a give week, check out the new Publisher's Weekly Graphic Novel Bestseller List. The list notes each title's current and previous chart position ' a standard practice ' as well as weekly and year-to-date sales figures ' a new feature.

Looking at the list for the week ending May 27th, it's astonishing how small those figures really are, even for top-performing titles. Volume five of Sailor Moon, for example, sold just 1,031 copies during the week ending 5/27/12 ' and it's the second-ranked title on the list, right after Batman, Vol. 1: The Court of Owls (The New 52). Volume nine of Black Butler, ranked fifteenth on the chart, sold 405 copies during the same period, while the first volume of Puella Magi Madoka Magica, ranked sixteenth, sold 395 copies.

Those low weekly numbers aren't the full story, however. Manga remains an important presence on the chart, with Kodansha, VIZ, and Yen Press titles claiming eleven of the twenty-five slots. Several series ' including Black Butler, Naruto, and Sailor Moon '  are posting solid year-to-date sales figures that are on par or better than the DC, Marvel, and Image titles on the list. The best-performing volumes of Sailor Moon and Naruto, for example, have sold 16,398 and 12,963 copies, respectively, since the beginning of the year, while their latest installments have sold 7,200 and 6,348 copies, respectively; only volume fifteen of The Walking Dead (19,843 copies) has outperformed them.

Heidi MacDonald, who will be providing commentary on each week's list, acknowledges the flaws with BookScan's data collection process. 'BookScan numbers are generated via POS at approximately 80% of book-selling outlets,' she explains. 'They do measure Amazon but not libraries or book fairs or several other outlets that sell lots and lots of books.' In other words, BookScan's data is incomplete but useful for gauging the popularity of a title and the size of its audience, just like Nielsen ratings offer an incomplete but helpful measure of American's television-viewing preferences.

Note that the list is normally behind a firewall; after this week, it will only be available to PW subscribers. I hope MacDonald continues to write about manga sales figures at The Beat on a regular basis, however, as concrete discussion of the industry's health is badly needed.