comixology-demographics.jpg

During New York Comic Con, comiXology released an infographic with some of the funnier details from their recent user survey. While the exact numbers and results weren’t released, some nuggets slipped out about who exactly their digital comic customer is.

A new customer is emerging: She’s 17-26 years old, college-educated, lives in the suburbs, and is new to comics. She prefers Tumblr to Reddit. She may have never even picked up a print comic.

Along with the above which was reported by TechHive, it was also reported that comiXology’s female readership has increased from 5% a year ago. Geek Mom who was at the presentation reported:

Of buyers new to ComiXology in the last three months, 20% are women. That’s up from less than 5% when they started the app, and it’s a number that Steinberger says is changing rapidly.

With that little information above, we can assume that their customer is somewhere more than 5% and less than 20%. So, do the numbers from Facebook back that up? The answer is, yeah, pretty much.

I decided to look at digital comics as a whole, not just comiXology, other terms like Marvel’s digital service, generic “digital comics” were used, so it’s more than just comiXology.

What I found was interesting. Yes, the results were in the percentage(s) I was expecting for women, but there was vast differences when it came to the results within the United States and those worldwide (for that I’m limited to 25 countries).

Out of the 88,000 likes in the United states, women accounted for 9.55%. Out of the 340,000 likes globally, they account for 19.41%. That’s a BIG difference between the two! But it also falls in line with the little the data comiXology did release in their presentation.

US Digital Comic Fans

us gender 10.14.13

Global Digital Comic Fans

global gender 10.14.13

Comixology has also said that men between the age of 27 and 36 is the majority of their fans. My breakdown of age isn’t exactly the same, but you can see how our stats line up with the limited data released. We unfortunately can’t break it down even further by recent fans.

US Digital Comic Fans

us gender age 10.14.13

Global Digital Comic Fans

global gender age 10.14.13

Overall though, I think this shows similar results from their survey and gives us an idea in how the Facebook demographics line-up with real world statistics. You can check out even more of the data pulled over at Graphic Policy.

 

 

10 COMMENTS

  1. Also, what Comixology thinks of its clientele: Digital comic readers don’t have sex. They’d rather read comics.

    At least they didn’t throw in a “Comics aren’t just for kids anymore!” graphic, or a “BAM! POW! WOW! Digital Comics!” headline. . .

  2. Two thoughts:

    First: however interesting the data from the reader survey may be, it’s worth keeping in mind that it’s intrinsically skewed toward the population of readers who care enough to take the survey. There’s a reason many of these kinds of polls and surveys are noted as best taken for entertainment purposes rather than as hard-and-fast data reflective of an entire population.. (That said, some of the other figures quoted here sound like they might come from Comixology’s overall data, which might be more insightful for certain purposes.)

    Second, as a visual presentation quibble: those two charts showing male/female percentages over different age groups might better have been presented as a stacked bar chart instead of a line graph…

  3. If 25% of users spend $400+ a year, how is it possible that the average user spends $100? Wouldn’t that only work if the 25% spend exactly $400 and the other 75% spend nothing? I guess if they’re not using arithmetic mean as the average that could be possible, but it’s the type of average that makes the most sense in that context. It would be kind of an unusual distribution if they’re using the median.

  4. Pretty tired of Google reading my cookies and then showing me digital comic ads on any and every website I visit. Google should increase the quality of their snooping and they’d find me to be a paper and ink guy.

  5. I fall within those statistics above, so I believe the accuracy of the data. I do read most of my digital comics on the toilet, but also right before bed. I spend less than $100 a year, but probably almost that.

    Although with comixology’s new recent makeover, they’ve rendered my ability to download comics on my kindle fire HD moot at this point. Until they fix the bug, my spending is zilch. And I wish there were other comparative alternatives to download digital comics. If there were, I’d go there in a heartbeat. My print comic consumption has dropped by 75%. Why spend 3 to 10 bucks for a comic, when I can pay 99 cents to $5 for the same thing in an easier to store manner? Plus the quality of the artwork is so much more vibrant on a tablet.

  6. I would not be surprised if many digital readers are rural; living further from where physical comics are sold. And perhaps digital sales skewing generally more female than buyers of physical comics, as females are often not made to feel welcome in comic stores. Online, it is just a transaction, with lots of choices and no stigma.

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