Periodically (pun intended), it’s useful to take a look at where the sales of a publisher’s titles are clustered. It helps widen the picture of how things are going. Things get a little different when you get into the independent comics world. The sales tend to be clustered in a subset of shops, with high sales there and minimal to no presence in the rest of the market. Here are the publishers who had at least 1 issue selling over 10K in February
And now the numbers:
| BOOM! | Dark Horse | Dynamite | IDW | Archie | |
| 20K-29K | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| 10K-19K | 4 | 2 | 1 | 5 | 1 |
| Below 10K | 4 | 8 | 7 | 16 | 2 |
Indies are different than the world of DC and Marvel in that 5K-7K sales are perfectly respectable. And this chart is ever so slightly deceptive in that the high end sales action has some crossover publishing with DC. BOOM! has Planet of the Apes / Green Lantern at 22.7K. IDW has Batman/TMNT Adventures at 24.9K and Star Trek/Green Lantern at 14.5K.
IDW is the leader by Volume for February. What really separates Image from the rest of the indie pack (besides Walking Dead) is their ability to put out more books selling over 20K and their overall volume. Dark Horse will some titles each year that pop out higher, but that 20K-29K band seems to be the ceiling for most independent titles these days.
- DC Comics Sales Band Report For February 2017
- Marvel Comics Sales Band Report For February 2017
- Image Comics Sales Band Report For February 2017: Steady As She Goes
- DC Vs. Marvel Vs. Image Sales Band Comparison For February 2017
Want to learn more about how comics publishing and digital comics work? Try Todd’s book, Economics of Digital Comics or try some fiction.
I don’t think it’s exactly accurate to say that “5K-7K sales are perfectly respectable”. They’ve sadly become “typical”, which is a very different thing.
Any reason Valiant wasn’t included? Would love to see them with this group.
Valiant didn’t crack 10K on anything in February.
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