ICv2 does an interesting piece of analysis on Diamond’s October direct market sales: Instead of looking at the top-selling comics and graphic novels, they compare how the books in the middle and bottom of the lists sold compared to those in the same positions last year, and they found that you have to sell a lot more copies to make it to the bottom of the list in 2007.
The graphic novel at the number 50 spot on the October chart sold 2,467 copies, up 30% from last year’s 1,904. At the bottom of the list, in the number 100 slot, the growth was even more pronounced: 1,482 copies this year versus 1,092 last year, a 40% jump.
The pattern was even stronger for pamphlet comics, with the number 300 comic selling 103% more copies than its 2006 counterpart. The effect tails off as you go up the list, with the number 25 comic doing slightly worse than last year’s number 25, and sales at the top of both charts are comparable to last year’s numbers. Thus total sales are up over last October—6% for graphic novels, 17% for the overall market.
Just for fun, let’s pull the manga out of the Top 100 Graphic Novels chart. I’ll list them in order, with the rank on the overall graphic novels chart in parentheses before the title and the number of units sold at the end.
1. (6) Naruto, vol. 20 (5,175)
2. (7) Naruto, vol. 21 (5,107)
3. (12) Bleach, vol. 21 (4,370)
4. (22) Oh My Goddess, vol. 27 (3,625)
5. (24) Naruto, vol. 19 (3,558)
6. (31) Yotsuba&!, vol. 5 (3,204)
7. (35) Ghost in the Shell 1.5: Human Error Processor (2,971)
8. (58) Return to Labyrinth, vol. 2 (2,204)
9. (63) xxxHolic, vol. 10 (2,106)
10. (64) Appleseeed Hypernotes (2,046)
11. (66) Ai Yori Aoshi, vol. 17 (2,016)
12. (68) InuYasha, vol. 31 (1,993)
13. (72) Samurai Heaven and Earth (1,865)
14. (77) Tsubasa, vol. 15 (1,745)
15. (83) Street Fighter II, vol. 1 (1,692)
16. (96) Vampire Knight, vol. 1 (1,504)
