Originally Posted by
responsarbre
I think you're sort of misinterpreting the idea of those ST essays. It's not that other forms of sales are completely ignored by Marvel (a company that cares about penny-pinching and the bottom line as much as they do definitely look at every single dollar that comes their way), but they tend not to figure into most of their important decision-making like whether or not to cancel a book because they do that way ahead of time. I guess the idea is that they usually just estimate trade and digital sales based off of the Diamond orders. That's how you get in situations where Iron Patriot was cancelled into a miniseries before the first issue even came out.
I think it's plainly false to assume that they completely don't count any sales besides Diamond pre-orders because of all the series they keep alive despite low sales on the Diamond chart: Ms. Marvel has dipped below cancellation numbers on the Diamond chart, but it's in Marvel's interest to keep producing Ms. Marvel TPBs since they sell big numbers (and it's easy to imagine it has sizable digital sales as well), Squirrel-Girl and Moon Girl reportedly sell great through the children's markets in collected editions (hence the production of a SG graphic novel alongside the main series), and most recently, it seems that Wasp and Iceman got revived on the strength of secondary sales.
In any case, considering your original question, there's more than enough reason to think your sales are counted by Marvel with the rest of their preorders. There's no reason for Diamond to exclude international numbers in their reports to publishers, and Marvel is definitely well aware of how much is ordered overseas because they have to print enough to export after they get the orders. Kieron Gillen even made a helpful instructional video showing his fans how to preorder comics at his local (British) comic shop. If preordering in the U.K. didnt amount to anything, why would he do that?