It’s that time again! Before I unveil the Top Ten, let’s go over a few of the ground rules, shall we?
1) This list only tracks sales through AMAZON. It does not keep track of sales through Barnes and Noble, face-to-face or anything else!
2) This list only tracks PRINT sales. We do not currently track e-books. Exactly how Amazon calculates these things is mostly a trade secret and they vary wildly from day to day. If I checked this tomorrow, the list could be very different. This list reflects sales ranks as of Tuesday morning November 19, 2013. Please read that part about sales RANKS. I am not tracking actual sales, as I don’t know those figures. A sales rank of 40,000 means that there are 39,999 books selling better at that moment on Amazon. You want to have a low sales rank, which means you’re closer to # 1.
3) In order to keep the focus on new releases, eligible works must have been published within four months of the current date. So, since this list is being done in November 2013, I’m only looking at books published since August 2013. Please keep that in mind before complaining that Title X is not listed. Also, keep in mind that for the most part, I’m tracking sales from smaller press publishers who actively publishing New Pulp material. I don’t generally track sales from Simon and Schuster or places like that — they have the New York Times Bestseller List for that. If one of the major publishers starts doing The Shadow or something, I’ll track that… but I’m not tracking Hard Case Crime or similar publishers any longer. The playing field is simply not level enough.
4) I am no longer tracking pre-release orders. Some publishers never actually release their books and when they do, it’s months after they were supposed to be released. Everything listed in the Top Ten is currently for sale.
5) Like the name suggests, we’re tracking “New” pulp — I’m not tracking sales rankings for reprints of classic material. In order for something to qualify for this list, it has to be at least 50% new material that has not been printed in book form before.
6) I am human. I make mistakes. If you are aware of a title that should be listed below (keeping in mind all the rules above), please let me know and I will make sure to remedy the situation.
7) I get most of my information from All Pulp, New Pulp, the Pulp Factory mailing list and a few other sites. If you think I might miss your release, let me know in advance — drop me a line and tell me when it’s being released.
Without further ado, here’s the completely and totally unofficial New Pulp bestseller list as of right now (title, then publisher, then release date, then sales rank):
1) Doc Savage: The Miracle Menace by Will Murray (Altus Press, September 2013) – 37,780
2) The Worlds of Edgar Rice Burroughs by Various (Baen, October 2013) – 43,050
3) Ron Fortier’s Brother Bones: Six Days of the Dragon by Roman Leary (Airship 27, November 2013) – 366,781
4) Liberty Girl by Barry Reese (Pro Se Productions, October 2013) – 715,392
5) The Bone Queen by Andrea Judy (Pro Se Productions, October 2013) – 774,056
6) Ravenwood, Stepson of Mystery Volume Two (Airship 27, August 2013) – 1,019,147
7) The Crimson Mask Volume One by Various (Airship 27, October 2013) – 1,092,718
8 ) The New Adventures of Jim Anthony, Super-Detective: The Death’s Head Cloud by Josh Reynolds (Pro Se Productions, September 2013) – 1,198,768
9) Sisters of the Shadows: The Cagliostro Curse by Rick Lai (Hollywood Comics, October 2013) – 1,361,112
10) The Spider: Extreme Prejudice by Various (Moonstone Books, September 2013) – 1,391,318
Just missing the list were: Zeppelin Tales by Various (Airship 27, November 2013) – 1,414,004, Shadow Legion: New Roads to Hell by Thomas Deja (Airship 27, September 2013) – 1,592,036, The Queen of Escapes by Curt Fernlund (Airship 27, October 2013) – 1,614,626, Six Guns and Spaceships by Various (Pro Se Productions, September 2013) – 1,669,988, New Adventures of the Green Ghost by Various (Pro Se Productions, October 2013) – 1,997,616, Skorpio by Mike Baron (Wordfire Press, October 2013) – 2,001,323, Black Fedora by Various (Pro Se Productions, September 2013) – 2,283,109, , , The Bagman vs. The World’s Fair by B.C. Bell (Airship 27, August 2013) – 3,131,930, A Week in Hell by J. Walt Layne (Pro Se Productions, August 2013) – 3,651,425 and Fight Card: Barefoot Bones by Bobby Nash (Fight Card Productions, October 2013) – 4,565,898.
A major drop in sales ranks. After several weeks where we were seeing 8-9 titles with ranks under a million, this week we see only five. There’s a big separation between #s 2 & 3, then down to # 4. Doc Savage bounces back in a major way, with the Burroughs anthology continuing to hang in strong at the second spot. Pro Se’s female driven titles continue to clump together at the fourth and fifth spots, which is interesting. After that we have mostly old heroes in new stories, as Ravenwood, The Crimson Mask, Jim Anthony and The Spider all pop onto the list. In fact, all of this makes the success of The Bone Queen even more impressive since virtually every other character in the top ten is at least a decade old.
My Rabbit Heart reissue, despite no promotion, would have placed at # 8. Alas, it doesn’t qualify under rule # 5 above. Never let it be said that I don’t play fair. 🙂
From a publisher standpoint, we have six publishers represented. Airship 27 and Pro Se have three titles each, followed by Moonstone, Hollywood Comics, Altus and Baen, who have one each.
Just as a side note, THERE WILL NOT BE A BESTSELLER LIST NEXT WEEK. I’ll be busy with holiday stuff. The list will return on December 3, 2013.
Take it all with a grain of salt, folks.
I’m not going to go in-depth as to why these guys have influenced me since in many ways, it would be hard to nail it down. These are authors that have been favorites of mine and are ones that when I read them, I consciously go “Wow, look how they did that! I want to be able to do that!”
