Theos-Talk Archives (December 2002 Message tt00164)

Hey,

As a quick and dirty measure of the comparative sales of Leadbeater 
and Blavatsky titles published by TPH, I looked in Amazon.com and 
found that CWL's top selling title is The Chakras, which has a 
cumulative sales ranking of 80,719. His The Astral Plane is 
139,160. Turning to Blavatsky, I find no TPH titles in the top 10 
sellers with that keyword. TUP's Secret Doctrine ranks #1 in that 
listing, cumulative sales ranking being 33,909. The highest ranking 
TPH title on the Blavatsky list is #15, Michael Gome's abridgement of 
Isis Unveiled, cumulative ranking 306,738.

Note that the subject or keyword sales rankings are for a short 
period, perhaps the previous week. My TMR is currently #3 under 
Blavatsky yet is much lower in *cumulative* sales ranking than #4 
Madame Blavatsky's Baboon (and somewhat below the Isis abridgment). 
A book with big initial sales will always have a higher ranking in 
cumulative sales but the keyword/subject rankings change frequently 
according to recent sales history. (You have to select ranking by 
sales as opposed to "featured items to see this.)

Point: HPB is the bread and butter of Pasadena book publishing, but 
CWL is more popular for Wheaton. Their current generic New Age 
titles are presumably the most popular, but for the explicitly 
Theosophical stuff, CWL is way ahead of HPB.

Paul