Err… no. A rōnin is a masterless samurai. Yōjinbō means “bodyguard”.

As a point, if I like and support a title then I continue to support it by buying it, showing friends, showing customers (since I work at a store), and basically doing everything I can to support that book in any way possible. If I see a book selling poorly that I like, I work twice as hard to do the same thing.

I’m passionate about these things. I love the stories and I respect the hell out of every creator that’s posted in here. But ultimately, I think you’re absolutely mistaken on this point. Real fans will do everything they can to keep the book alive. If they’ll drop it *just* because they’re expecting it to be cancelled, then it hasn’t hooked them enough.

Like I keep saying and as John Jackson Miller pointed out above…the estimates are representative of a percentage of the sales within specific markets inside a specific period. I think the only people who are taking them as absolutes are…well, you guys. And I think you’re both overstating and misinterpreting the effect of them, in the end.

Relax. As I said in my first post, if your sales keep going up, regardless of the charts, then isn’t that really the important thing?

Obviously the author of this report didn’t do his research, since the current “All Hail Megatron” series by IDW is in fact *NOT* written by Simon Furman. In fact, IDW pulled the rug out from Furman, forced him to wrap his several years’ worth of ongoing plots in 4 one-shots, and then brought the talentless Shane McCarthy on to write the uninspired “All Hail Megatron”. What this report should be pointing out is that IDW -DID- do something wrong: they took Simon Furman off of the main Transformers book.

if they cared so much about the nude photos of them being accurate, then yes.

“a potentially damaging picture that can falsely lead readers to decide a book is dead in the water and that they should abandon ship.”

You’re reading way too much into this. If people really cared about the book, then they would want to get as many issues as possible and try to encourage other people to buy it if its sales are down. I don’t know… maybe the comics buying audience IS as shallow and stupid as you seem to think.

http://blog.comichron.com/2009/03/diamond-charts-primer-what-they-are-and.html

In a nutshell, publisher purchase orders, creator royalty statements, print runs — all manner of other information about comics sales regularly available to some in the industry may be found to never coincide with the Diamond tables. There’s a reason: what Diamond is reporting, and what those sources represent, are simply different groupings of comic books. Here’s what’s NOT included in the Diamond tables:

1) Diamond’s sales outside North America. UK sales tend to add something like 10% when it comes to units. These are reported disparately to some publishers, but may not be divided out in other available publisher information. A print run of a book that sold out in a single month, for example, will invariably be higher than the Diamond estimate because overseas copies are not in the Diamond totes.

2) Newsstand sales, if the publisher has them, as well as any sales through other distributors, direct sales, or subscriptions — again, if the publisher has them.

3) Trade paperbacks through Diamond’s returnable bookstore program — or anyone else’s. The Diamond book trade data is kept separate.

4) Any comics shipped by Diamond outside the exact period being reported. This means you likely get NO reorders on Week 5 books in the tables, but almost whole month’s worth on Week 1 books. All sales are still reported — and so the aggregate totals are unaffected when you look at the whole year — but a Week 4 or Week 5 title will have a smaller relative fraction of its total sales with its initial entry. It’s this, not just the issue number, that causes the decline you usually see when multiple issues of a weekly ship in the same month. It’s not necessarily that sales are trailing off — just that the earlier issues have had more weeks in which to gather reorders.

(The above is one reason I place more emphasis on the aggregate figures when it comes to studying the historic health of the industry — and relatively less on the internal trendlines of individual titles. Month-to-month comparisons become complicated when a book ships at different times in the months being compared. I know people are interested in articles like these, but this is why I’ve never really done them. The measurement noise is more perceptible at the title level than at the aggregate level.)

Reliability of the estimates is another matter, discussed in more detail on the blog post — but basically the tables before 2003 reported preorders, and there was quite a lot of difference between the monthly numbers publishers saw and the Diamond chart; external estimates tended to vary more. After 2003, Diamond went to final order reporting, and all the estimates by me, Milton, Mayo, and others converged tightly together. Independent observers using similar Diamond reports received by different publishers arrived at the same “magic number.”

So since 2003, the estimates do appear to be reliably reporting the numbers behind the Order Index Numbers — the comics, Diamond says, that it shipped to North American accounts in the shipping month. They are based on data that Diamond has itself provided publishers, corresponding to the period indicated, and that the publishers have provided analysts. But those numbers are NOT the sum total of comics a publisher sells, or even sells through Diamond, or even sells through Diamond in a single month. No royalty statement, no boardroom report might ever match the numbers in the table. It does appear to report what it says it reports — but we have to remember what it says it’s reporting. When it comes to reporting the health of the comics market, it is a clue — an important clue, in a field where there are not many available — but not the whole story.

Would it be incorrect to think the creators involved on this would prefer that no one gather, analyze and discuss the data at all?

That would be a real shame. The DC and Marvel columns are very interesting and this one seems like a worthy addition.

It would be interesting to hear Milton Griepp’s perspective on the matter.

And remember, these are SALES ESTIMATES made by Milton Griepp and NOT OFFICIAL DIAMOND NUMBERS.

Does that mean they are valueless? No. But It is definitely something to consider whether to make this a regular monthly feature or not.

Sounds like the creators, publishers, etc. who have a problem with this kind of column should take up their grievance with Diamond for making the information available in the first place. Wouldn’t that be more effective than just going around and complaining when the data is collected by third parties?

sure, and when people run photoshopped nude pictures of actresses on the internet, those actresses should reply with real nude photos of themselves.

people’s careers and livelihood can be damaged by lists like this.”

If the numbers are THAT incorrect and THAT damaging, then perhaps the appropriate response would be to demonstrate their inaccuracy by providing the correct numbers on a regular and consistent basis.

Then creators come here and complain that the numbers aren’t correct, which we already know. C’mon, guys, lighten up.

Besides, based on the above comments, rather than encouraging people to jump ship, this article is exposing readers to books they otherwise may not have heard of.

Lets not get so melodramatic over these number charts, okay? Despite what some would like to claim, the numbers are fairly accurate and provide a decent picture of initial sales into the Direct Market.

it’s as simple as that. the numbers serve no good purpose and a hell of a bad one.

people’s careers and livelihood can be damaged by lists like this.

I was referring to the Northlanders bit in the DC listing which started the whole thing. I should have been more specific, but honestly I was multitasking (RE: writing in here while at work…at a comic shop, no less) and likely ended up rambling because of that.

No issue requiring contact. I was just expressing legitimate puzzlement as to what your actual issue is with the numbers, beyond the fact they aren’t 100% accurate as you seemed to be pretty venomous about it.

Thanks for putting this together, Steve. I particularly like the (relatively) in-depth analysis you gave each book. I didn’t realize, for instance, that The Boys had been optioned.

Since trade-sales seem to be solid across the board, would it be possible to include those numbers if they’re available? Maybe as a percentage comparison in the 6 month/X years section? Or as an addendum to this or as a supplemental list or something?