Never Safe For Work
This is a fantastic article, a translation of a blog post/lecture by the Takekuma Kentaro, co-creator of Even A Monkey Can Draw Manga on the differences between Tezuka’s anime and manga, and Miyazaki’s anime and manga.
This is the sort of thing that the internet is for.
– Chris
I had no idea.there was a Moomin anime. I knew it was popular in Japan, but… neat-o! Thanks to JH for the tip-off.
Edit: More Moomin at Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/results?search_type=&search_query=????&aq=f
– Chris
We’ve just put up most of the TCAF Events that will be happening in Toronto surrounding the Festival. We’re nailing down the dates on others, but yeah, it’s pretty outstanding, if I do say so myself. You can check it all out at http://www.torontocomics.com/tcaf, or if you’re more of an RSS person, all future updates are going to also be made via the blog on the front-page of http://www.torontocomics.com.
I am pretty proud of all of this I gotta say.
– Chris
Yay!
– Chris
In the comments section of my last post on the New York Times Graphic Book Bestseller List, a commenter named Tommy Raiko comes to different conclusions about the list than I did. It’s a thought-provoking response:
“If we assume that the NYT is indeed getting actual sell-thru data from comics stores to form the bestseller list, we still don’t necessarily know which stores form those reports. Maybe the stores that reported their sales had exceptional success with this promotion, actually using it to sell dramatically more copies of the book to customers. That’s gotta be possible, right?” – Tommy Raiko
The reason I had initially discounted this possibility–the thought did occur to me–is that prior to about two years ago, there was almost no method of reporting sales data from individual comic book stores. It’s really only been in the last 5 years that direct market comic book stores have moved, in a major way, towards digital inventory tracking and control. I know that Hibbs has been chronicling that change at his various writing outlets. When I think to myself “What possible data could they be using?” it never even occurred to me that they might have access to DM sell-through data, because historically, they didn’t. No one did. Many comic book stores didn’t (don’t?) even have paper tracking methods (generally referred to as “cycle counting”), let alone weekly digital inventory counts that they could pass along to The Times.
Let alone a centralized hub for that sell-through data to be collected and disseminated, let alone Diamond having that data…
But in responding to Tommy’s message, I allowed that the possibility did exist… however small.
“That’s an excellent rebuttal, and you could be right. In fact, a few hundred comic stores are now using Diamond’s proprietary sales tracking software, and perhaps its the sales of those hundred stores that are being submitted as comic book store data. Sure.
“But the appearance of specific books on the top 25 (I don’t want to name them because singling out books in a negative way, in the context of this discussion, isn’t really appropriate), not to mention Occam’s Razor, lead me to believe my conclusions are closer to the truth…” – Me!
Over the past few days, I’ve been thinking about it. Diamond has been slowly rolling out a proprietary sales tracking software (ComicSuite) last year, that works with Microsoft RMS (Retail Management System). The sales data of stores with this software is now, I believe, automatically being reported to Diamond. I’m not 100% convinced that it’s really “a few hundred stores” using this software, and I don’t believe Diamond has announced how many people have bought in. But yeah, Diamond is collected accurate sales data from a limited group, so it is possible on some level that this could be based on existing sales.
Why this still doesn’t matter: If all of this is true, an alternate theory to the one in my last post, it still means the reporting method at the NYT is broken. Why? Here: The sample size of sales is still small. Probably very small. It’s also limited to stores that can afford to drop a few grand on this software, plus pay a yearly fee for life. It’s also comprised of early adopters, folks who are generally a little more hands-on with their business, and that usually translates to ordering habits that go outside of the Marvel/DC areas. That weighs the number. Like any first-year statistics student will tell you, voluntary surveys are already biased towards people that are willing to take a survey.
So yeah, even if they’re using sell-through data from Diamond’s incredibly small, biased survey group, and then extrapolating it out to all 3000-ish Diamond accounts? It still corrupts the overall list, Bookscan is measuring a (debatable) 70% of the bookstore market. At best the Diamond numbers are 10% of the comic store market, and clearly being given a lot of weight. It’s why we end up with Dark Tower at #1. It don’t make sense.
—
Edit: Brian Hibbs says some interesting things in the comments to this post:
“For what it is worth, ComicsPRO is working with the NYT to get more stores involved in reporting their individual numbers to the list.
“For what it is worth, I believe that more DM stores are using MOBY than using ComicsSuite from Diamond (probably by a factor of two or more)
“And IF ComicsSuite is reporting sell-through to Diamond (and I doubt it is), Diamond has not disclosed that, and, so, that would probably be illegal.” – Brian Hibbs, Retailer, Comix Experience
So is that confirmation that individual stores are reporting sales to the NYT? Fascinating. I still feel like it could only be an incredibly small sample-selection as it stands, but I’m heartened to hear that someone, somewhere is selling the books that make it onto the list. I’m also glad to see my theory about Diamond reporting sell-through data shot down, it was a little ‘big-brother’, even for me.
Now back to the end of the post:
—
And here’s another thought I had. I know it fits into my last theory/post, and I feel like it does here, but I’m not entirely sure how. I know it’s true though, so here goes: The NYT Graphic Novels Besteller List clearly favours comics and books that are exclusively orderable through Diamond; books for which Diamond has a direct-market exclusive, AND books which are distributed to bookstore by Diamond. But why? Because as Brian Hibbs pointed out in the response to my PREVIEWS LIVEBLOG a few weeks ago, many, many of the books in the Previews catalogue are available cheaper through other sources, other distributors. Smart retailers are figuring this out, and moving their orders elsewhere. Except in cases where they can’t, where Diamond is the Only Source. So if the Bestseller charts are based on Diamond sell-in, and not sell-through, and extrapolated out and weighed equally with reporting bookstores, then books only available through Diamond are going to have a huge advantage; those sales are going to be reported wheras comic store sales of books ordered from Ingram or Baker & Taylor or any alternate distribution source? Those don’t get reported through bookscan, and they wouldn’t get reported through Diamond under my scenario… Unless the NYT lists are taking Ingram and B&T sales into account, and I don’t believe they traditionally have (because that would measure sell-in, and not sell-through, and we’re back to where we started).
Anyway, that’s where I’m at with this. I think the New York Times Graphic Novel Bestseller list? It’s nice as a promotional tool, but I’m utterly unconvinced that the list means much at all. Much like every other half-assed piece of data we have, it’s at best a tool for measuring popularity over the long term. Watchmen’s on the list for every week? It’s probably a best-seller! A children’s graphic novel from a Diamond-exclusive publisher debuts on the list and is never seen again? Probably doesn’t mean a whole lot, sales-wise.
– Christopher
Amazon’s “adult materials” policy (I didn’t even know they had one) is thus:
“In consideration of our entire customer base, we exclude “adult” material from appearing in some searches and best seller lists. Since these lists are generated using sales ranks, adult materials must also be excluded from that feature. – Amazon.com”
Which is annoying nanny-state garbage that disinclines me to use their site, but fine. However, it seems that some patrons of Amazon have noticed differences in the way this policy is applied, and that it tends to classify many books with gay and lesbian themes that aren’t necessarily explicit as “adult”, while keeping many heterosexual explicit works in the public eye…including a graphic novel:
We would like to hear the rationalisation for allowing sales ratings for explicit books with a heterosexual focus such as:
–Playboy: The Complete Centerfolds by Chronicle Books (pictures of over 600 naked women)
–Rosemary Rogers’ Sweet Savage Love” (explicit heterosexual romance);
–Kathleen Woodiwiss’ The Wolf and the Dove (explicit heterosexual romance);
–Bertrice Smal’s Skye o’Malley which are all explicit heterosexual romances
–and Alan Moore’s Lost Girls (which is a very explicit sexual graphic novel)Yet the following books, which have a gay or lesbian focus, have been classed as “adult books” and stripped of their sales ratings:
–Radclyffe Hill’s classic novel about lesbians in Victorian times, The Well of Loneliness, and which contains not one sentence of sexual description;
–Mark R Probst’s YA novel The Filly about a young man in the wild West discovering that he’s gay (gay romance, no sex);
–Charlie Cochrane’s Lessons in Love (gay romance with no sex);
–The Dictionary of Homophobia: A Global History of Gay & Lesbian Experience, edited by Louis-George Tin (non-fiction, history and social issues);
–and Homophobia: A History by Bryan Fone (non-fiction, focus on history and the forms prejudice against homosexuality has taken over the years).Please tell us, Amazon, why the explicit books with a heterosexual focus are allowed to keep their sales ratings while the non-explicit romances, the histories and the biographies that deal with LGBTQ issues are not. – Petition against Amazon’s policy
I like Lost Girls as much as the next guy, but how is that not an “adult” work when a non-fiction history of Homophobia is? Maybe it’d classify if adult if someone told Amazon about all the hot lady-on-lady or man-on-man action?
This is pretty gross. I realize the world is filled opportunity for outrage these days, but if you could muster some against a policy which will very, very likely be changed with enough attention, I’d appreciate it. Head over to:
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/in-protest-at-amazons-new-adult-policy
and sign up.
EDIT: If you’re looking for more on this story, Jezebel has a great write-up, more examples of books stripped of their standing, and what it all means. Check it out at: http://jezebel.com/5209088/why-is-amazon-removing-the-sales-rankings-from-gay-lesbian-books
– Christopher
“Last week, Marvel’s 2007 adaptation of the Stephen King fantasy epic appeared, as if by magic, atop the hardcover list, unseating Watchmen. Although I couldn’t find an obvious reason for the book’s performance, I was willing to accept that the upcoming release of The Dark Tower: Treachery hardcover or another miniseries might’ve renewed interest in the original. (Or did I completely miss a new edition or reissue?)
“But this week The Gunslinger Born is nowhere to be seen. Watchmen again rests comfortably upon its hardcover throne, followed by a trio of Batman-related books.
“It’s as if last week never happened.” – Kevin Melrose, Robot 6 @ CBR
Sorry, I didn’t realize that no one had addressed this.
It’s pretty clear that the NYT Graphic Novel Bestseller lists are equally weighing all of Diamond’s direct-market sell-in with all of the other sales channels’ sell-through. What this means is that every book shipped by Diamond to a comic book store counts exactly the same on their list as every book actually sold by a bookscan-reporting store. It means that, on the week that comic-store-favourite graphic novels get released, their positions on the bestseller list will be abornomally high… but they will most likely never be heard from again. Unless their reorder velocity in a given week is incredibly high… maybe if that item was put on a sale or something?
So how did we end up with Dark Tower: Gunslinger Born on the list? That’s tricky. Marvel is a very litigious company, and has all sorts of warnings about reproducing their private personal information in public. Blah blah blah. So, let’s talk about me instead, because I doubt even Marvel would be able to argue that retailers aren’t allowed to talk about their own businesses. So: There was a time period last month where I ordered Dark Tower: Gunslinger Born and received a higher-than-average discount on that book, and for every copy I ordered, I got another copy of the book for free. I did this, it happened, and I am talking about my actions as a retailer (litigious!). So the week that all of those discounted copies and free copies of Dark Tower that I ordered shipped to me, the book ALSO appeared on The New York Times Graphic Novel Bestseller list. Do you see the correlation there?
I don’t think Marvel tried to game the system with this maneuver; Diamond Comics also reported the first Dark Tower collection as being the top-seller for the month, likely because of this promotion. Apparently according to Diamond, something that sells at a reduced price—even if that reduced price is zero—is still a sale, and when they report data to the NYT? A sale is a sale.
Basically, in the larger bookselling community, the “end customer” is the reader, the consumer, because bookstores can return unsold product to the publisher (or distributor), and so a sale is really only final once it leaves the store. But in the Direct Market of comic book stores, the “end customer” is the retailer–the comic book store owner–because the comic book store owner can’t return the books; the final sale is when the books arrive at the store. Worse than that, comic book store owners are expected to front-load their orders–order heavily up front with no immediate promise of further availability–to secure a better discount from Diamond as a supplier, which further weights the Diamond’s numbers on the day-of-release.
So two largely incongruous sales systems are being merged–pretty badly it looks like–to generate a list that has books with little long-term sales spiking on release and never appearing again, and heavily prone to being thrown entirely out of whack by promotions, sales, discounting, and… hell, just giving stuff away for free! It’s one of the many, many problems of the apples-to-oranges sales systems that we have in comics. And yeah, it’s why The New York Times Graphic Novel Bestseller List is Broken.
– Christopher
Because Fantagraphics’ FLOG RSS feed is kinda broken, I see the same blog posts by them 5-10 times in my feed reader. Because I saw this post by Eric Reynolds 5-10 times, I finally thought enough about it to post. Essentially, Eric found an interview with Chris Oliveros from 1996 that was about periodicals versus graphic novel collections. Here’s a quick quote:
Q: Do you think it’s possible that there could be more work in the future where the artist could sit and draw for two years, and release the entire story… [?]
Oliveros: I think the periodical approach is a good thing. In order for comics to be released in book form, where an author would take two or three or five years to complete this novel, the medium would have to attain this sort of popularity you have in general fiction…
Which is, you know, ha-ha, things are graphic novels now, and even with the popularity of the medium as compared to 10 years ago, very few people are getting those $50,000 advances. But the thing is, Oliveros wasn’t wrong. Like Eric says, it underscores a lot of the issues facing the market today:
1. Particularly with first- or second-time authors, the majority of graphic novels are being ordered by all retail outlets entirely blind, because serialization offered months and months of “previews” of the material to readers before it was in graphic novel format.
2. There are a ton of graphic novels being produced, and even if you read only stuff that’s, you know, good, I feel like that’s still 10+ graphic novels a month at this point. It’s very difficult for any work to stand out, let alone rise-above. It’s why you see people (like myself) getting behind books in such a strong way. STREET ANGEL or SCOTT PILGRIM or MONSTER or whatever really are solid books, but with 300+ graphic novel releases a month, you kind of have to keep banging the drum to make people aware of them before they get entirely buried—and those are three genre comics with mass-market appeal!
3. And that’s before we get to all the crap that’s being released. Unnecessary collections of superhero periodicals. Awful, awful fucking movie pitches masquerading as ‘graphic novels’ to give them an undeserved legitimacy. Self-involved, self-indulgent, pseudo-literary garbage. Vaaaaaaaaaaaaaaanity projects. The merely mediocre.
I’m just like ranting here, but yeah. It’s really, really hard for a graphic novelist to lock themselves up for a year or two, with little-to-no feedback and an ever-dwindling advance, and crank out a book. Back in the old days, the serialization of Louis Riel or Berlin or Optic Nerve provided feedback, interaction, and occasionally periodic injections of cash, all of which made it just a little bit easier to be a graphic novelist. Er, comic book artist. Cartoonist? Illustrator? What did people call themselves in 1996? I was still in highschool.
ANyway, it’s one of the things that I really like about the web, that a smart cartoonist can figure out a way to serialize their work (or even just produce it for the web), making money along the way, and then releasing collections (“graphic novels”) and enter a different market. I think the web is big enough for more comics… It was one of the things I wanted to get into a little bit more on the panel Tuesday, but that wasn’t really the place for it. I also really, really think that the current web-model doesn’t suit every creator.
But I think that, getting back to the point, a more consistent presence in the public eye before a graphic novel release is a very good, important thing. And if we’re really going to let the pamphlet-format comic die, then we need _something_ to take it’s place, and I don’t think we’ve seen it yet. I am happy to be proven wrong though. If the future of periodical comics is out there, please send a link my way.
– Christopher
Last night was our event Graphically Speaking: Webcomics, as part of Toronto’s Keep Toronto Reading month! We had a great turnout, well over 100 people (and I only knew like 10 of them!) including journalist Matthew Braga from Blog.T.O., who just put up a short article on the event:
“While the evening was a superb way to learn more about the burgeoning community of webcomics, both in Toronto and on the web, it won’t be the only chance for fans to interact with some of their favourite online authors and artists. Both the Toronto Public Library and The Beguiling will also be hosting the Toronto Comic Arts Festival (TCAF) this May, where most of Tuesday’s panelists should be in attendance.” – BlogT.O.
A superb evening AND a TCAF plug. Hoo-ray!
– Christopher
Hey there, everyone trying to get a hold of me! My e-mail filled up (unbeknownst to me) last night at 5:18pm, and didn’t get cleared until about 1pm today. So if you sent me something, resend, I didn’t get it.
If you need a backup address, please use the 2009@torontocomics address.
And if you’re waiting for an answer from me for something, it’s going to be another 24 hours.
Sorry.
– Chris
P.S.: The webcomics panel went fantastically well! Thanks again to Kate Beaton, Willow Dawson, Emily Horne, Brian McLachlan, and Ryan North!