Bear Alley: Comic Cuts

BEAR ALLEY BOOKS

AVAILABLE NOW!
The Bill Kellaway Quartet by Gwyn Evans
Click here for details and payment options.
"The narrative is packed with action and I think readers will have a lot of fun with [Hercules, Esq.] and there are some genuine moments of laugh out loud humour. I can understand why the film rights for this book were snapped up and even today I could envisage it being a very enjoyable one-off TV series." — Cross Examining Crime.
"Although there’s some criminous stuff going on and Bill often finds himself vying against or working with various lawbreakers, the stakes are never really life and death in this book ... There is some slam-bang action, though, as well as a smart, really likable protagonist and a lot of really clever plot twists, but what really makes HERCULES ESQ. work is Evans’s style, which is consistently breezy, fast-paced, and funny." — James Reasoner, Rough Edges.

Saturday, January 10, 2009

Comic Cuts

The best-sellers charts continue to reveal a strong showing for annuals now in the sales. Although The Official Doctor Who Annual and Beano Annual both dropped out of the charts (perhaps not surprisingly as most of their sales would have been in the pre-Christmas run-up), giving some of the other annuals a chance to slip into the charts. And I've actually got sales figures rather than the guesswork I've been reduced to the past few weeks.

So... the Top 7 selling annuals for the week-ending 3rd January (sales figures in brackets):

22 Disney High School Musical Annual 2009 (9,992)
23 Hannah Montana Annual 2009 (9,453)
27 Match Annual 2009 (7,872)
31 WWE Annual 2009 (7,618)
37 Dora the Explorer Annual 2009 (6,743)
39 Star Wars Annual 2009 (6,650)
41 Horrid Henry's Annual 2009 (6,565)

For fun, I've also put together a list of my own "best-selling" books. As I've no idea what the actual sales are, I'm having to rely on Amazon.co.uk's positions for this—how that equates to how the books are doing in Waterstones, Borders and other book shops I've no idea. So this is the Top 10 as of Saturday afternoon (with sales rank in brackets):

1 Up And At 'Em! War Picture Library Vol. 3 (5,554) pre-orders!
2 Aces High: Air Ace Picture Library Vol. 1 (12,188) pre-orders!
3 Against All Odds: War Picture Library Vol. 2 (12,639)
4 Let 'Em Have It!: Battle Picture Library Vol.2 (16,702)
5 The Best of Boyfriend (27,186)
6 Death or Glory (47,126)
7 High Noon (51,767)
8 Rick Random—Space Detective (59,948)
9 Unleash Hell (92,545)
10 Love on Ward B: Hospital Nurse Romance Library (96,138)
11 Frank Bellamy's King Arthur and His Knights: The Complete Adventures (125,251)
12 Frank Bellamy's Robin Hood: The Complete Adventures (238,182)
13 The Fleetway Picture Library Index Vol. 1: The War Libraries (319,768)
14 Sci-Fi Art: A Graphic History (512,430) pre-orders!
15 The Mushroom Jungle. A History of Postwar Paperback Publishing (638,525)
16 The Trials of Hank Janson (788,625)

16 books in the top million! I'm not sure if that's something to be proud of or sad about. And the top two are books that aren't even out yet. Not a problem to me—if the pre-orders are good, hopefully Carlton will get me to do some more.