ICv2 has the June sales figures and the top 100 graphic novels from Diamond. The news is good for those who like their comics in big chunks:
Graphic novels sales in comic stores grew by 33% in June versus sales in June of 2006 marking the end of the strongest quarter for graphic novel sales since ICv2 began tracking comic book and graphic novel sales in 2001. During the second quarter of 2007 graphic novel sales rose 48%, while sales of periodical comics managed just a 7% gain.
Since these sales numbers are largely drawn from comics stores, manga ranks rather low on the top 100, with trade paperback collections of the capes-and-tights crowd filling the top of the list.
Here are the top selling manga, with the rank on the list in parentheses and the number of copies sold following the title.
1. (9) Death Note, vol. 12, 4,951
2. (15) Bleach, vol. 20, 4,031
3. (33) Blade of the Immortal, vol. 17, 2,851
4. (34) Yotsuba&!, vol. 4, 2,846
5. (36) Tsubasa, vol. 13, 2,662
6. (39) MPD-Psycho, vol. 1, 2,559
7. (49) Ai Yori Aoshi, vo. 16, 2,229
8. (53) Inu Yasha, vol. 30, 2,137
9. (72) One Piece, vol. 15, 1,574
10. (77) GTO: The Early Years, vol. 4, 1,515
11. (80) Ouran High School Host Club, vol. 9 1,472
12. (83) Gunslinger Girl, vol. 4, 1,412
13. (84) Tenjho Tenge, vol. 14, 1,390
14. (86) Negima, vol. 14, 1,326
15. (89) Absolute Boyfriend, vol. 4, 1,298
16. (90) Sgt. Frog, vol. 13, 1,293
17. (92) Witchblade Takeru, vol. 1, 1,282
18. (97) Brave Story, vol. 1, 1,223
19. (98) Love Recipe, vol. 1, 1,223
20. (99) Othello, 1,212
Since this is the direct market, the readership is skewing a little older than the USA Today charts, with titles like Absolute Boyfriend, Blade of the Immortal, and Gunslinger Girl. And while it’s no surprise to see the much-anticipated Yotsuba&! or the much-hyped MPD-Psycho on the chart (although the contrast is kind of fun), I was surprised to see Brave Story, which I hadn’t heard much about.
Manga really is pretty sparse on this chart. The top selling graphic novel for June was vol. 9 of Fables, a DC title, which sold about 12,168 copies, or two and a half times as many as Death Note. Both manga and graphic novels in general seem to be top-heavy, with a few titles selling a lot of copies and the rest having much more modest sales.
The numbers for periodical comics are way higher; the top seller in June was World War Hulk #1, with 178,408 copies sold.
Also present and worth noting on the sales chart is Re-Gifters, the latest entry in DC’s Minx line of graphic novels for teenage girls, which clocked in at number 29 with respectable sales of 3,008 copies, better than most of the manga.
I’m pretty sure The Plain Janes got a place on the chart last month too. Though I think the ICv2 charts reflect orders rather than actual sales. It’s funny, but I don’t recall seeing a Minx title in a chain bookstore as yet. Maybe I’m looking in the wrong section? The local comic shop has ordered shelf copies of each title that’s come out so far, which kind of surprised me.
I bought my copy in the teen section of Barnes & Noble. I haven’t seen it in the manga/graphic novel section at all, but they have an almost random selection of manga in the teen section, and Plain Janes was in there.
Ah, okay. I’d kind of skimmed the teen section at the local B&N, but it was really disorganized, so I didn’t look very hard. It might have been in there somewhere.
i was SO SHOCKED that GTO made the top 10 sales!!!! OMG! even though the content is graphic, the underlaying message is touching…sort of. Inu Yasha is popular, as always, but i am sort of shocked it didn’t make it higher though…HS Host Club i thought was OK, BUT WHO KNEW THAT IT WAS THAT POPULAR? the plot was sort of a lower-middle rank for me, & the art is OK, but my,my, it is pretty popular! Absolute BF made the top 15 most popular manga! SUCH ANOTHER SHOCKER!! i LOVED IT when i started reading it from Shojo-Beat the magazine, but after a while, the plot JUST WAS GETTING BORING/UNSATISFYING….YES, IT WAS DISAPPOINTING TO SEE IT NOT LOVED BY ME AS MUCH AS I did….
MAN!, SO MANY MANGAS THAT AREN’T VERY that GOOD ARE BEST-SELLERS! MAYBE MY TASTE IN MANGA IS WEIRD IN SOME WAY…..(hmm…)
Hm.. My favorite manga One piece in 9th place..
good.. May I know this top manga chart in what country???
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Where’s Naruto?
Can you put 1-100 on here? And I don’t get what the parenthasies are… or the entire thing for that matter. If Bleach sold more than Death Note, why is it below Death Note? And you said the ranking was in the parenthasies but what about the first number… ARGH! I’m so confuzzled!
Diamond provides a list of the 100 best selling graphic novels each month. Diamond is the comics distributor that serves most local comics stores, so this list doesn’t cover sales in chain bookstores. Anyway, what I did was go through the list and pick out the manga. There are only 20 manga on my list because there were only 20 in the top 100. The number in parentheses is the book’s ranking on the overall graphic novels list. So, the top selling manga in June was vol. 12 of Death Note, and that placed ninth on the overall graphic novels list, i.e., there were eight non-manga graphic novels that sold better.
There was no Naruto becuase, most likely, there was no new volume of Naruto that month.
Thanks for reading this, TC, and I’m sorry to be so confuzzling!