While bored and rereading a bit of Monster Musume no Iru Nichijou, I noticed that a while back, one of its volumes ended up as #1 (again) on the NY Times bestseller list. I looked up some more info to come across a few articles, and I'm happy to see that it's been given some positive feedback + has made some good success, especially as it happens to be both a harem-comedy and a monster girl kind-of-story (two very specific characteristics/genres that obviously aren't for most readers...).
http://sharkpuppet.com/the-strange-success-of-monster-musume /

I'll do some more "research" when I get the chance, but I'm wondering if anyone may know off the top of their head:
>What other series have been (preferably #1) on the NYTimes Bestsellers List that haven't had a massive ego/following from the get-go like Monster Musume?

And as a curious question:
>What "not-so-popular" series would you like to see get on the list, that has never been on it?

Harem/(hard-)ecchi as Musume aren´t that rare on the NY Times bestseller list and have fun with all the copycats that started to come out of the woodwork. It is also the 7th ranking manga on m~park so i could have predicted the success too. I am way more surprised that it outsold Nisekoi but monster girls became a trend just around that time thanks to the Pony´s as your number are from 2013. Sure vol. 6 also went to be no.1 after a bit of dip and vol.10-20 will too but the market now has it´s monster girls manga for the decade so 12 Beast/Nurse Hitomi are toast.

Expect to read something similar about Kangoku Gakuen soon as it will come out the same time as the anime. Watamote is also pretty big for what it is and that one was due to 4chan so online piracy can make you. Or break you as in Vinland Saga´s case which is selling like shit and nearly got canceled in the US this year.
The related vol.1 of Berserk has been the no.1 manga on amazon for a few weeks now thanks to the first movie coming to Netflix / the Guts vs Nigtmare youtube showdown / Bloodborn while being the definition of mass market unfriendly and old too so one can never know what will sell or when. Bestseller list entries are further utter write-offs 85% of the time as i look @ them due to my job and you all will have to trust me that the world of publishing makes zero sense.

What i would like to know is how much copies these "bestsellers" actually sell. Vol.1-5 of Musume sold 900.000 combined for example which is good for 2014 but hardy impressive as Tokyo Ghoul is selling the same and just think about how big Tenchi (aka. the harem franchise) used to be in the 90s so all these successes are nothing unless we are talking about One Piece which finally started to settle down. Todays printing market is in a pretty deep crisis though from which it will never recover so the pond is getting smaller and smaller. I may be able to boast that Miura´s baby is a "bestseller" (for seinen standards) in the US but it also went out of print multiple times so what does this even mean?
My conclusion is this: Mass market is selling less and less in the printed form but printed specialty publications are staying steady so expect some CRAZY looking bestseller lists in the next few years.

Someone should have license Nana to Kaoru though (as it is in germany) in 2013 to then ride BIG the SM craze but they didn´t so that train has left .
Idiots and i may have a talent for publishing (but i also went to library school).

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