Highest first-3-weeks light novel sales of all time

This data provides a way to compare the top volumes at their initial releases, before they get distorted by monthly/yearly rankings (for which a series released at certain times of year have significant advantage), how long they happen to stay on the rankings for, or whether or not they get lucky reappearances on the rankings well after the initial release. On the other hand, 3 weeks should be sufficiently long to not be strongly affected by the day of the week that the volume came out (although there could still be a difference of around 5% between a Monday release and a Saturday release).

This data can be used, among other things, to better reflect the change in a series’ popularity over time than looking at the total sales data can tell you. Obviously it would have been more useful with more volumes listed, and I’m starting to wonder whether or not I should have included more, or used a figure threshold rather than a rank one. It’s too late to do that now, though, and I don’t see myself getting around to adding more any time soon. Maybe when the requirement to get in reaches 180-200k or so (I was originally expecting it to be in the 140-150k range for the top 40 at the end).

I’ve been (very) slowly working on this since January, and finally got around to finishing it. It was created for inclusion on the light novel sales thread, and will be included in there shortly. You may also want to use those rankings (on post 3) in comparison to the figures below.

The data used consists of the oricon weekly light novel sales data the period of 31st March 2008 to present, with 2 weeks missing in 2008 and 7 in 2009 – in other words, all the weekly sales data that I have access to.

If a volume has multiple releases, then any sales within 3 weeks of the initial release/initial ranking (whichever is sooner) will be counted. Any after this, including rereleases, are not.
If a volume ranks for the first time on the week of release, but there are sales before this point of <1000, these have been ignored; if there are sales of >1000, these are counted as the first week.

Rank – Sales figure for first 3 weeks – title – volume #

*1    471364    biblia koshodou no jiken techou    4
*2    405113    suzumiya haruhi series 10
*3    358724    biblia koshodou no jiken techou    5
*4    348891    biblia koshodou no jiken techou    6
*5    348325    biblia koshodou no jiken techou    3
*6    264435    sword art online    12
*7    256354    sword art online    13
*8    255379    kagerou daze    5
*9    254338    sword art online    14
10    251311    sword art online    15
11    243505    sword art online    11
12    237754    sword art online progressive    3
13    236696    sword art online progressive    2
14    218728    kagerou daze    3
15    213749    sword art online progressive    1
16    213072    shinyaku toaru majutsu no index    2
17    206513    boku wa tomodachi ga sukunai    7
18    203814    kagerou daze    4
19    198238    shinyaku toaru majutsu no index    3
20    195361    ore no imouto ga konnani kawaii wake ga nai    8
21    194714    mahouka koukou no rettousei    16
22    194201    kuroko no basket replace    4
23    193869    koimonogatari
24    190210    ore no imouto ga konnani kawaii wake ga nai    12
25    188383    boku wa tomodachi ga sukunai    8
26    183267    tsukimonogatari
27    181255    ore no imouto ga konnani kawaii wake ga nai    10
28    179139    mahouka koukou no rettousei    15
29    179008    mahouka koukou no rettousei    14
30    179000    baka to test to shoukanjuu    6 pt 1
31    178424    ore no imouto ga konnani kawaii wake ga nai    9
32    171708    onimonogatari
33    171217    koyomimonogatari
34    171076    boku wa tomodachi ga sukunai    6
35    169972    shinyaku toaru majutsu no index    1
36    168820    ore no imouto ga konnani kawaii wake ga nai    11
37    167712    otorimonogatari
38    165554    owarimonogatari    1
39    165493    shinyaku toaru majutsu no index    4
40    163639    kagerou daze    6

All volumes on the rankings above have 3 weeks’ of ranking data included.