I didn’t declare that it is overall growth for the market (as a whole) — just within that 750 items I’ve had access to.

Assuming that I continue to get the full list next year, THEN I’ll be able to determine something about the BookScan reporting venues overall growth.

“your conclusions about art-comics sales — a conclusion so thoroughly contradicted by the facts on the ground that one has to wonder about the factors that your analysis misses”

One of the reasons I write this thing each year is to try and get a better idea of what those factors are or might be.

I’m still less than assured that the “facts on the ground” say what you think they say (since they currently sit at “anecdote” stage, rather than facts, in my opinion), and I put an email into Eric to try and sort out some of the answers; once I’ve gotten his response, I’m going to pitch the same to both the Chris’, and we’ll see what we see.

-B

Actually, a statistician would call it “sampling” and a sample of size 750 is quite large (even assuming an infinite population) for estimating something like a growth rate. Of greater concern would be the possibility that the population of retailers that report to Bookscan is different than the overall population of retailers.

Again: You’ve first taken the top 750 out of some 13,000 units sold in bookstores last year, compared it to the top 750 out of an unknown number of books sold the year before — and declared a 2.3% overall growth for the market. That’s indefensible math solution #1.

You then compare this to Diamond’s yearly top 100 list, which — again — doesn’t give one anything remotely resembling a complete picture of the Direct Market. Brian, this isn’t “LITERALLY the ONLY comparison that CAN be made,” it’s a comparison that shouldn’t ever have been made to begin with.

Look, aside from the bit discussed above and your conclusions about art-comics sales — a conclusion so thoroughly contradicted by the facts on the ground that one has to wonder about the factors that your analysis misses — I’ve largely restrained myself to demonstrating that different conclusions can be drawn from the same circumstantial evidence, in as entertaining a fashion as I can. This isn’t a fight to the death, Brian. It’s a debate over what an analysis concerning information of limited reliability can actually tell one about various markets. That other people are arguing with your conclusions is just par for the course, not an attempt to castrate you in public. Calm down.

On the “75%” thing, outside of the introduction where I AM EXPLAINING BOOKSCAN’S FLAWS, it only ever gets mentioned ONCE, in like two sentences talking about the possible size of the Long Tail that BookScan isn’t tracking. Two sentences out of more than 11,000 words. Jinkies.

Further, RE “other numbers suggest 65% is closer to the fact”, only suggests that in terms of Dr. Phil diet books and Ben Franklin biographies — we have no ON THE RECORD source that has ever said any such thing in relationship to COMICS. In point of fact, I have more than one OFF the record source that tells me that BookScan is equivalent to NINETY percent of their bookstore sales. Given the lack of ON THE RECORD sources, I’ve chosen to go with Neilsen’s Official Party Line, because there really ISN’T any credible evidence otherwise…

On the “Top 100″ thing, there may be a miscommunication here because there are two different Top 100s — the monthly ones, and the end of the year one.

The end of the year one is ABSOLUTELY USELESS as a metric of ANYTHING. Why? Because it isn’t indexed to anything — there’s literally no way of telling anything about most of the books that appear on the year end.

The MONTHLY Top 100s *are* indexed, and can give specific numbers (within their remit)

The comparison to Diamond’s figures, and Diamond’s yearly growth in the book category (which, I should underline, is not *MY* calculation, but one performed by BOTH Comics Chronicles and ICv2… and they match!), is THE SUM of those twelve monthly Top 100s. In other words, there’s something on the order of 1100 data points. It is still WOEFULLY incomplete, yes, of course, but it is the ONLY set of data points that one can POSSIBLY reference.

I’ve never disagreed that it is NOT a “apples to apples” comparison, but it is LITERALLY the ONLY comparison that CAN be made, because of the way Diamond reports.

Either way, four-to-six sentences out of 11,000+ words.

Hope that makes some of this clearer?

-B

I am just suggesting that Brian should add a note about the flaws in his calculation process as well.

I don’t quibble with the difficulty in measuring the market for comics because everyone involved in publishing and distribution has a vested interest in not releasing the hard numbers. To anybody. Last week, I congratulated Willingham on the fact that the first FABLES trade went into a seventh printing and he had no idea. It was in a Diamond update to the retailers, but the creator had no idea. Or, one publisher does not want another publisher know how well they are doing with a licensed book, etc.

In my humble opinion you should compare like numbers in terms of the width of your survey. As in compare Top 100 numbers to Top 100 numbers. (Not Top 100 to Top 750.) Or when you take BookScan as representing 75% of retail sales when you reference that other numbers suggest 65% is closer to the fact. By taking different starting points, you tilt the prism you are looking through to see the market.

It’s a little like saying that they are apples and oranges but we are going to keep going because I like fruit punch.

Bill

True, but I can’t imagine that these numbers were all “part of the business plan” for the Minx line. Personally, I was hoping Minx would do better, especially with all the money they had budgeted for advertising.

Plain Janes: 6049
Clubbing: 4264
Confessions of a Blabbermouth: 3174
Re-Gifters: 3008
Kimmie66: 2717
Good As Lily: 2417

Now, if you hit an (easy) target number as a DM retailer, you could return unsold copies, but knowing what I know about traditional DM “open returns” percentages, I’m going to guess that they got back maybe 2-300 copies of Plain Janes, and it went down from there.

-B

Considering I’m an opinion columnist, with a (clearly stated and double-underlined) DM focus, I’m not sure how the former is a surprise. I outright say that I am biased, and that my analysis may be flawed and that I’m very interested in any other analysis of the data involved.

As for the latter, I’m only discussing what metrics there are — if you have better metrics I can use, I’d be happy to do so. I don’t think the comparison is THAT “faulty” however — the DM charts linked to are the sum of the Top 100 charts for the twelve months of the year, not just the year-end Top 100, so there’s a data set of (at least partial sales) on roughly 1100 items involved…

Trust me, I’d LOVE to have a better/more comprehensive/more accurate report for the DM side of things, but there is no such beast that I am aware of.

-B

If this is the case, was separating them out from the comics — especially the manga — a bad idea? Who comes up with where to put these books — the store or some sales sheet from DC? Is racking up comic material with text material — even if for the same audience — a bad idea?

Wow. And how much did they say they would spend on advertising? Score one for the direct market. I mean, that’s where I got my copies of Plain Janes, Re-Gifters, Clubbing, and Good As Lily.