Today on CBR, it was reported that the first issue of Dan Slott and Humberto Ramos’ Amazing Spider-Man (vol. 3) has already received preorders that have topped 500,000 units.  This comes from initial retailer orders, not purchases from customers.  This number, based on Diamond estimations, would make the issue the highest ordered issue in the last decade.

These numbers don’t actually reflect the number of issues that will eventually sell, they could sit on shelves, but right now it appears that demand is rather high.  These numbers could also be bolstered by the Custom Variant Retailer Covers that encourage the stores to order more copies so they can get rare and exclusive variants to sell at a high price to their customers.  For example, every 50 copies of the book the store orders they get a Marcos Martin cover and for ever 300 copies they order they get one Alex Ross sketch cover.

This can quickly bump up the sales of a book and leave tons of copies floating around the store, though this could not be the case for this particular book.  Either way, it is good news for Marvel of a successful sales plan and a potential huge launch for Amazing Spider-Man (vol. 3).  500,000 books is a incredibly large amount of sales for a modern title, but doesn’t approach the top-selling book of all time, X-Men #1 at 8.1 million copies.

In other news, the preview that was recently released also seems to assert that a woman was also bit by the same radioactive spider as Peter Parker.  Do I smell some serious retconning?