Dark Horse and Digital Manga have upped the ante on first printings for their best-selling manga line.  After Trigun #1 sold out a first printing of 35,000 and then a second printing of 15,000 (see 'Trigun Manga Sells Out in a Flash'), the publishers decided on an initial printing of 40,000 for the Hellsing manga. 

Although the new line of manga titles co-published by Dark Horse and Digital Manga has been selling well in comic shops, the major action is in the bookstore market, where sales are over three times higher than in comic stores.  Waldenbooks buyer Kurt Hassler is seeing strong sales on Hellsing, the most recent DH/DM release.  'I can report that Hellsing is (predictably) off to a stellar start with over 500 units sold in my stores since the weekend -- 95 sold just yesterday,' he said.  'Suffice it to say that for my purposes it is on track to come in behind Rurouni Kenshin at #2 for the week....Hellsing is one of a select handful of licenses that fans have been holding their collective breaths for in anticipation of a good translation.'

Each of the previous three titles co-published by Dark Horse and Digital Manga this fall has gone through multiple printings.  A 15,000 copy third printing of Trigun is due to ship on New Year's Eve (bringing the total for this title to 65,000), while Berserk's first printing of 17,500 sold out quickly, necessitating a second printing of 10,000 copies.  A first printing of 20,000 copies of the manga adaptation of The Ring also sold out and a second printing of 10,000 will ship at year's end.  All four of the manga volumes published by Dark Horse and Digital Manga are in the Japanese format and read from right to left.