Recent Newsletter and online reports on wrestling-related book sales figures

While interesting, recent reports on wrestling-related book sales figures have contained inaccuracies that make them misleading. Reporting Bookscan's weekly sales figures is a fine attempt at countering the idea that Amazon's ranking system gives a true sense of how books are doing (it doesn't), but those numbers also need interpretation and clarification.

Unfortunately, there were real factual errors, and one perceptual error in what follows, a "news" item that's been reprinted a number of times in the past few days. (Here's a copy of what's been written, with the problem-areas highlighted:

"Outside of WWE's publishing, sales haven't been strong anywhere. "Vince Russo: Forgiven" (released November 2005, at least couple years too late) sold only 1,145 copies. "Hardcore History: The Extremely Unauthorized Story of ECW" (released March 2006) sold 2,615 copies. "The Cowboy and The Cross: The Bill Watts Story" (released January 2006) had sold only 929 copies. As for the very latest non-WWE releases, "World Wrestling Insanity" (released May 28) sold 537 copies in its first two weeks, behind "Mysteries of Wrestling Solved" (released June 6) with first week sales of 1,367. The weakest seller this year is "Bang Your Head: The Real Story of The Missing Link" (released April 1, 2006) with sales of 78 (yes, less than 100)."

First, these figures appear to be based on the Bookscan sell-through numbers for America. Bookscan is a sales tracking service that ties directly into a good number, but not all of the bookstores in the US. Their accuracy is anywhere between 60 and 85%--by their own admission. For wrestling-related titles it's more in the 60% range. Many online retailers, folks like Highspots.com, are typically not accounted for.

Second, publishers like Sports Publishing and, certainly, ECW would argue that sales of Hardcore History and World Wrestling Insanity have been very strong--stronger perhaps than for any of our other titles. At the same time, for both of these presses to compete with two major WWE/Simon&Schuster titles, with all the WWE's marketing power, in the same two-week period (see accurate figures below) is something pretty remarkable.

Third, and no matter how much I wish this wasn't true, Mysteries of Wrestling: Solved did not sell 1,367 copies in its first week. That figure is now 1388 Bookscan-tracked copies for the life of the book, since June of 2005.