NY Times Discontinues Manga Best Seller List

by arsonal
Jan 26, 2017 11:31 AM | 30 Comments

The New York Times announced on Thursday that it is discontinuing several of its best sellers lists, including the list of manga best sellers. The notice was delivered today in the February 5 edition of the advance best sellers list, whose subscribers are typically professionals in the publishing industry.

The newspaper launched the graphic novel and manga best sellers lists in 2009 to coincide with the theatrical release of Watchmen, based on the American comic book series of the same name. At the time, the Times declared in its announcement, "Comics have finally joined the mainstream."

In a statement made available to Publishers Weekly, the Times elaborated that although the lists are being discontinued, it will "continue to cover all of these genres of books in our news coverage (in print and online). The change allows us to devote more space and resources to our coverage beyond the bestseller lists."

Publishers Weekly reported earlier this month that unit sales of comics and graphic novels increased 12 percent in 2016 compared to the previous year. It was one of the few fiction subcategories which did not see a decline in sales last year.

News of the discontinuation has sparked discussion in the comics community on social media on how the success of a comic book can be communicated to the market in the future. According to Publishers Weekly, there is an effort to ask publishers to request the Times to reconsider its decision.

Source: Publishers Weekly, Comics Beat, Comichron

Manga Sales

20 of 30 Comments Recent Comments

Nickienator said:
Oh no, now we can't see OPM on first place again because it sold 8 volumes in a week. If manga has anything to do with the 12% comic sales increase it would be because going from 75 to 84 total volumes sold isn't so hard.

If any manga market outside of the US would be even slightly interesting to track outside of Japan it's probably France or something. Definitely not the US.

Hyperbole much? US manga market might not be as big as it's in France but it's also not as small as you think.

And 12% increase is pretty huge considering Naruto finished in 2015.

Jan 28, 2017 3:02 PM by Z4K

Well it was mostly a tokyo ghoul and one punch man best selling volumes lol

Jan 28, 2017 12:31 PM by Shishou_23

Oh no, now we can't see OPM on first place again because it sold 8 volumes in a week. If manga has anything to do with the 12% comic sales increase it would be because going from 75 to 84 total volumes sold isn't so hard.

If any manga market outside of the US would be even slightly interesting to track outside of Japan it's probably France or something. Definitely not the US.

Jan 28, 2017 5:06 AM by Nickienator

Mkim said:
What I really want tho is a place where they list more than the top 10 so I can see how the series I actually care about are doing

Agree. I always wanted to know what was below the top 10. It'd be cool if a company would list the top 25 or 50 or even 100.

Jan 27, 2017 8:58 PM by TFO1013

The only happiness I ever had with that was scream about Zelda and MonMusu

What I really want tho is a place where they list more than the top 10 so I can see how the series I actually care about are doing

Jan 27, 2017 8:44 PM by Mkim

arsonal said:

SchwingBoner said:
So is there an alternate source for top selling manga (weekly or monthly) in the US?

Not for manga specifically. Nielsen BookScan publishes a list for graphic novels overall. Here's an example of Tokyo Ghoul's ninth volume being listed among Nielsen BookScan's top 10 list.

It's also worth noting that BookScan only counts in-person bookstore sales, not online or ebook sales and so on like the NY Times tries to, so even if they did keep track of manga separately it wouldn't be as accurate.

Jan 27, 2017 8:44 PM by Miporin

Somewhat disappointing but can we please calm down? Trump likely won't be good as president but he clearly had nothing to do here.

Jan 27, 2017 8:38 PM by EvenJellyOn

MihoWittmann said:
Of course it's worth tracking what's popular! Bestseller lists aren’t for you if you're looking for the best in a medium or genre. They are if you want to keep up with what's popular, or especially if you're someone in the industry who wants to see how the market as a whole is doing—including how the competition's books are selling, if you're at a publisher. So yeah, not having any comprehensive public listing of bestselling manga in the US could be a loss.

Granted, the NY Times bestseller lists probably (their method is trade secret) don't do as good a job of tracking online sales and sales through specialty stores (although the latter may not matter much in the big picture) as big-box sales. But at least it's something, and NY Times bestseller status even with the proliferation of specialty lists still has cachet. I can only imagine that a few niche titles hitting the NY Times list contributed to publishers like Seven Seas and Fantagraphics licensing more.

finnaly a sensible post... no, i don't like how predictable US taste is... however, information we got for it is what important...

Jan 27, 2017 6:54 PM by Kuma

Okami1 said:

Sakuyasama1000 said:
For sure trump is behind this

Yep soon our anime will be behind a wall and we won't even be able to watch it.

eheheh 😤😤😤😤😡😡😡😡😡

Jan 27, 2017 2:52 PM by Sakuyasama1000

SchwingBoner said:
So is there an alternate source for top selling manga (weekly or monthly) in the US?

Not for manga specifically. Nielsen BookScan publishes a list for graphic novels overall. Here's an example of Tokyo Ghoul's ninth volume being listed among Nielsen BookScan's top 10 list.

Jan 27, 2017 12:30 PM by arsonal

ThaNinjazTube said:
They were tired of it being a weekly Tokyo Ghoul list.

hahahah

I'll miss the feel of "Oh Noragami is on the list this week yes!" or "Nice to see Monster Musume on the list, Prison School etc."

Jan 27, 2017 8:05 AM by MrEpicMichael

Sucks they are discontinuing it, I did check it out from time to time at least.

elkensteyin said:
Yup, just shows how stupid the people at the New York Times are - sales grew by 12% in 2016, yet their discontinuing their lists. They probably need the area to post more fake news to try to convince people to hate Trump.

Im pretty sure people don't need the New York Times to convince them to hate Trump. Trump is capable of doing that all by himself.

Jan 26, 2017 11:18 PM by Dredd

It's almost as if something of value has been lost.

Jan 26, 2017 11:17 PM by Nanaca

Yup, just shows how stupid the people at the New York Times are - sales grew by 12% in 2016, yet their discontinuing their lists. They probably need the area to post more fake news to try to convince people to hate Trump.

Jan 26, 2017 8:15 PM by elkensteyin

Of course it's worth tracking what's popular! Bestseller lists aren’t for you if you're looking for the best in a medium or genre. They are if you want to keep up with what's popular, or especially if you're someone in the industry who wants to see how the market as a whole is doing—including how the competition's books are selling, if you're at a publisher. So yeah, not having any comprehensive public listing of bestselling manga in the US could be a loss.

Granted, the NY Times bestseller lists probably (their method is trade secret) don't do as good a job of tracking online sales and sales through specialty stores (although the latter may not matter much in the big picture) as big-box sales. But at least it's something, and NY Times bestseller status even with the proliferation of specialty lists still has cachet. I can only imagine that a few niche titles hitting the NY Times list contributed to publishers like Seven Seas and Fantagraphics licensing more.

Jan 26, 2017 4:47 PM by Miporin

Sakuyasama1000 said:
For sure trump is behind this

Yep soon our anime will be behind a wall and we won't even be able to watch it.

Jan 26, 2017 4:39 PM by Okami1

For sure trump is behind this

Jan 26, 2017 4:14 PM by Sakuyasama1000

While the best sellers list wasn't all that useful, "oh the same 8 series are still dominating for their 30th week straight?". It's a shame to lose the closest thing I know of to say how well a series is doing.

Jan 26, 2017 3:50 PM by Retolee

its the New York Times just cost cutting? do they have decrease in profit?

Jan 26, 2017 3:00 PM by deg

Never cared for this list, without numbers it was pretty worthless, "popular things are popular", less clutter for MAL's news.
There was one list floating around that actual numbers for Yen Press releases but I forgot who published that.
Found it: https://www.dropbox.com/s/o95cw82hnrq7tp6/Bookscan-15-Top-750.xlsx?dl=0#
It's from 2015 and has both novels and manga.

Jan 26, 2017 2:16 PM by Paulo27

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