The Haruhi Suzumiya Series

[ultimatemegax]

Volume 10: The Surprise of Haruhi Suzumiya (First Part)
JP cover art/Eng. paperback art
Volume 11: The Surprise of Haruhi Suzumiya (Final Part)
JP cover art/Eng. paperback art

The second and third of a three novel story. These two novels were originally planned to be one novel released in 2007, but due to unstated circumstances, they were delayed until the first part of novel 10 was released in 2010 with the remainder to be released that year. The two novels were delayed 6 months in order for Kadokawa to release the novels on the same day in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and South Korea in their translated languages. The first pressing was a record 513,000 copies and also included a 64 page color booklet with a short story in it. A common edition was sold a month later.

[ultimatemegax]

Discussion of the uncollected short stories (not released by Yen/any other international publisher) go here.

[bored@lazy]

If only all of that would get animated...

[Hououin91]

I can't help but find the gap between the 9 and 10 novels pretty large. Anyway is incredible how it got bigger in that time, just goes to show the haruhi phenomenon .

I'm interested in the short stories, I hope they get released in the future.

[touma]

Thank you for starting this thread.
I hope that I can think of something to contribute, but even if I do not I really appreciate having all of this information in one place.

[ultimatemegax]

In addition to the short story included in the new Ito artbook Haruhi Hyakka, it was announced (but not tweeted) that there will be an additional new short story included in the S.WHITE anthology released next summer. Appears that the title will be 「？？？」. With the previous streak of short stories not being released internationally, I have my doubts Yen will get either of these.

Also, the short in Hyakka will be about Haruhi wearing a long-sleeved kimono.

[kijakusai]

Light novelist Tsuchiya Tsukasa has attended a Kadokawa Sneaker Bunko event at UDX Theatre in Akibahara on December 8th and has guessed that 「？？？」 will be a Haruhi short short story. (Later he has said that it is not a settled matter, however.)
Since he has heard that Haruhi seems to be going to wear a gorgeous kimono in the short story in Haruhi Hyakka, he has conjectured that the story will be set in the winter when she is a first-year student.
　

[ultimatemegax]

Originally Posted by kijakusai

Light novelist Tsuchiya Tsukasa has attended a Kadokawa Sneaker Bunko event at UDX Theatre in Akibahara on December 8th and has guessed that 「？？？」 will be a Haruhi short short story. (Later he has said that it is not a settled matter, however.)
Since he has heard that Haruhi seems to be going to wear a gorgeous kimono in the short story in Haruhi Hyakka, he has conjectured that the story will be set in the winter when she is a first-year student.
　

Why yes, that is the report that we are basing said information on. The speculation means nothing however because nothing else about the story is confirmed. We have one Sneaker Bunko tweet that confirms the kimono part but nothing else.

[ultimatemegax]

One of the interesting portions of the Haruhi Suzumiya light novels is just how many times it's been printed. I mentioned in the Melancholy subthread that it has been printed over 1 million times, the first/only time a light novel (not paperback) has been printed that many times. Overall, the series has 8.5 million copies in print in Japan (as of May 2012), accumulating an average of 772,727 copies per novel, the highest for any light novel (Index is at 451,613 for comparison). Internationally, the series has 16.5 million copies in print all around the world including manga printings (as of April 2011). But how many of those are counted in the English market? I was curious myself and came across Edelweiss, a database that compiles data from book publishers in the US, including first printings. So while we won't know the entire print runs, I can at least quote what each novel will initally start off with.

Name/paperback 1st printing/hardcover 1st printing/total
Melancholy/50k/10k/60k
Sigh (not stated)
Boredom (not stated)
Disappearance/30k/20k/50k
Rampage/35k/20k/55k
Wavering/25k/5k/30k
Intrigues/25k/15k/40k
Indignation/20k/10k/30k
Dissociation/20k/20k/40k
Surprise/15k/10k/25k

We started with a 60k first pressing, maintained around 50-55k, and are at a 40k first pressing 4 years and 9 novels later. I'd consider this to be a pretty good successful franchise just looking at how it's still at 50-67% first pressings after all this time. Later novels tend to have lower printings since they're 1. newer and 2. require reading the first ones (especially in the case for this franchise), so it's not surprising to see these figures. I'm quite pleased.

Edit: updated with numbers for Surprise. Lower print runs likely due to the higher price/page counts.

[Damius]

Originally Posted by ultimatemegax

I'm quite pleased.

Indeed! Definitely some nice numbers you found. In addition of the total, which is more than I thought obviously, I find interesting that for the first time with Dissociation, the 1st printing for paperback and hardcover is exactly the same.