New Wednesday! New comics! The shipment’s a bit light this week but three of the four titles are some of my favourite currently running series – Sailor Moon (Vol.03), Arisa (Vol.06) and Afterschool Charisma (Vol.05). Huzzah! You can see the full list of titles and read a bit about the volumes over at my On The Shelf article at Otaku USA.

This week some places also got shipments of Yen Press‘s big batch releases for the month. Diamond Comics is still behind on their shipments from Yen Press but you’ll see their slew of titles on next week’s list including the first volume of their new series, Durarara!. Look forward to it!

A rather small list of titles out this week but the book count remains about the same (if not more) if you account for two more big box sets out from Viz Media. This week’s releases are posted in my On The Shelf article over at Otaku USA.

After doing this article for a few months, it’s been interesting seeing the patterns that emerge when it comes to how and when books come out. The two biggest descrepencies in information, meaning those that vary the most between what the  sites says and my bookshelf indicates, are from Digital Manga and Kodansha, while Viz Media is often the most reliable (if you don’t include back orders anyway!).

Digital Manga lists release dates that only their own in-house supplier, Akadot, gets books for so they’re usually off by a month or two for anyone else (including Amazon and bookstores). Kodansha Comics predomiantly gets its books out to bookstores and online retailers on the days they indicate but Diamond Comics notoriously ships them from 2-3 weeks late from the release date. This differs a lot from Viz Media and Dark Horse titles, which always seem to be consistent between sources (excluding publisher push-backs).

Yen Press and Vertical Inc sit on the fence – usually on time but random titles arrive 1-2 weeks late from Diamond Comics. Oddly there rarely seems to be rhyme or reason to which titles arrive (or don’t) to individual stores despite ordering manifests and regardless of what titles are on the main Diamond Comics shipping list that week. Their titles do however have a tendency above others to arrive early sometimes.

Seven Seas hasn’t had enough physical releases in the past few months for me to notice a trend but that could change in 2012 based on the increase in titles we’re seeing.

Alas that at the end of the day noticing these trends doesn’t make coming up with a list that’s right for everyone any less difficult. Take this week for example, where online and chain store retailers have Sailor Moon (Vol.02) but Diamond Comics doesn’t yet have it listed as available. Frustrating both as a reader and an article writer. Patience, patience, patience…