Thanks, all.

I believe you are right. Sales to book fairs and to book clubs (the Book-of-the-Month club kind of mail order book club, not the kind of book club where friends get together to discuss a selected book) and what’re called display marketers don’t factor into Bookscan numbers.

Comparatively few books get any exposure in those sorts of markets, but books that do get into such venues can indeed move an impressive amount of units.

Lord knows how many of these books make it into the hands of readers, but I’ve been paying attention to my fan mail, especially those that mention where they got the book from. I get on average one fan mail every few days, and I’ve been noticing that since October, I’ve been getting mail from people who bought “The Dreaming” v1 at a book fair. Over half of the fan mail are from people who got the book at a book fair, and that’s only among people who mention where they got the book from. So I suppose book fairs account for at least some numbers?

“Libraries AREN’T represented in Bookscan.”

–ATK

Graphic novel sales in each of those markets is, perhaps, a larger factor than they would be for typical non-graphic-novel books.

Taken together, those non-trivial markets can add up to a big ol’ non-trivial bunch of graphic novel sales that Bookscan doesn’t reflect.

Bookscan has some notable lapses, but as Heidi says, it’s the best we’ve got now. (And for what it’s good at, it’s VERY good.)

Those with access to Bookscan numbers and publisher’s actual sales figures, can probably work out some sort of relationship between what Bookscan reports and what reality is, at least in broad strokes. But, to John Jakala’s observation, I think that trying to reconcile Bookscan’s actual sell-through numbers with a publisher’s (legendarily unaudited) announced print runs might be more an exercise in frustration than in useful analysis.