Sales Charts

Greetings, sales charts fans! It's time once again to look at DC's sales figures. After last month's Futures End 3D cover extravataganza, things return to normal in October. DC continued their freely-orderable variant cover program, with the theme this month being Monster covers. The comics with variant covers are still selling higher than they would have without them, but at this point the month-to-month effects are largely subsumed by regular considerations such as creative team changes, crossovers, and standard attrition. October saw the debuts of several DCU titles, to varying effectiveness. Deathstroke by Tony Daniel and several Batman-related titles did relatively well, while a couple of supernatural-theme books (Trinity of Sin and Klarion) did less so. October was also the debut of the highly-touted revamped Batgirl, which saw the comic jump up to a top-twenty title. DC's third weekly title, Earth 2: World's End, debuted in October. Here are the first month sales of all three weekly series (plus the most recent issue for BE & FE):

BY JASON ENRIGHT — Hello Sales Chart Analyzers! In October, there were a lot of books. So to start, let’s break down the numbers a bit. An interesting trend to look at this month is how variant numbers affect the sales. Several titles benefitted from being included in one or more of Marvel’s themed variant programs this month. In October, Marvel had 3 variant themes, the Anti-Bullying variants, Deadpool 75th anniversary variants and Hasbro toy variants. Many of these issues were in the middle of an arc and normally would have suffered standard attrition of -1 to -3%, but due to these variant programs they got a nice +3 to +5% sales boost. Variants are one of many incentive programs that companies use to boost sales. Recently Marvel and DC have been doing these themed variants across multiple books and they definitely seem to be working. Whether or not, they are actually good for comic sales in the long term is another question entirely. What do you think of variants? Let’s discuss it in the comments below. For now let’s dive into the numbers.

This month has some fun new comics added to the roster headed by George Perez’s Siren from Boom! Studios. Of course Image had its fair share of new titles, with Copperhead and Roche Limit having stellar debuts. While Marvel had a title overload last month, in September DC had a special month with special and regular editions for the N52. All that means that there were only 105 indie titles charting in the top 300, which is still a bit down from last month’s 126. Understandably, overall indie title sales were down at 1,315,225 compared to last month’s 1,766,686 for average sales of 12,52, a slight decrease from last month’s 14,021. Overall there 12 titles went up, 72 titles went down, with the rest made up primarily of new issues and a few specials.

Out with the old, in with the new? As we've been reporting, October comics sales were pretty damn massive. It's the culmination of a year that started a little rocky but has blossomed as new trends blew into town behind a strong trade wind. Multiversity's David Harper has the much needed big think piece on what's happening complete with CHARTS. First he points out that The Big Two are still the big two:

October smashed all comics records from the last decade-plus again, with a thousand new comic books, graphic novels, and magazines hitting the market. Based on Comichron's analysis of data released by Diamond Comic Distributors, comics shops in North America ordered more than $56 million in printed product during the month. Seven comic books had orders of more than 100,000 copies. Click to see the sales estimates for comics ordered in October 2014. Highlights of the month included Diamond's Halloween ComicFest, its fall counterpart to Free Comic Book Day — and topping the charts again, we have a comic book whose sales were greatly inflated by a single order from the pop culture subscription club, Loot Crate. Image's Walking Dead #132 far outdistanced other comic books offered in October, with estimated orders of more than 326,000 copies.

John Jackson Miller's preliminary October sales analysis is up and the month was a Doozy. In my earlier piece I didn't not that sales...

The Walking Dead #132 topped the October charts, helping Image lands a 9.77% dollar share and impressive 12.28% unit share, according to figures just released...

by Jason Enright September is always an interesting month because DC does its big line-wide event with crazy covers and Marvel has to find a way to compete. The answer this year was Death of Wolverine, which shipped two issues this month and landed the number 1 and number 2 spots. DC still won overall market share, but Marvel still managed to make a few headlines themselves and capture those top two spots. Beyond those books, there is a lot of standard attrition this month and a lot of books ramping up for AXIS which is likely to lead into several new series and rebooted series over the next few months. Below is a breakdown of some of this month’s stats which includes a rise in the number of $4.99 books, which is very interesting.

by David Carter Greetings, sales charts fans! It's time once again to look at DC's sales figures. As has been their wont for the past few years, DC marks the September anniversary of The New 52 with a publishing stunt. In September 2012 it was Zero Issues; in September 2013 it was Villains Month with fancy 3D covers, weird X.1 numbering, and allocations. And in September 2014 they return to the 3D cover well with Futures End one-shots. This year DC avoided last year's allocation falderal by having retailers get their orders for the Futures End one-shots in a couple of months early, with creative teams announced only a couple of weeks before orders were due, and initial orders only (no Final Order Cutoff). (Retailers were also allowed to order up front as many 3D and standard covers that they wished for each title.) This caused no end of problems for retailers as they had to judge how many to order of these one-shots with no real clue as to how they would sell. Would there be as much demand as there was last year with the highly-publicized 3D cover shortages? How many customers would want to get the fact 3D covers, regardless of whether they were buying the regular titles? How many customers would want 3D covers over standard covers? How many customers would just sit out the one-shots all together?

It's a rite of autumn —The Walking Dead's new season debuts on AMC, and Walking Dead graphic novels start selling like crack again. Here's the feed from the Amazon graphic novels best seller's list. Note that The Oatmeal has sold a gazillion copies, and Roz Chast is back in the top ten following her National Book Award shortlisting. Per the usual pattern, Walking Dead GN sales will slow when the 8 episode season ends, and pick right back up when it returns next year. I know Robert Kirkman has made a buttload of money from the hit TV series, but he, Charlie Adlard and Tony Moore have also made a buttload from the books alone, given the Image deal. (BTW, for long term Amazon trend analysis I refer you to Beat contributor David Carter's weekly blog on the topic, which someday I will feature here every week. Lots of other interesting things on his site, as well.)

Ever wonder what categories are the most popular in graphic novels? Think it's all manga and superheroes? Well, as you can see on the chart to...

While most comics fans started New York Comic Con on Thursday, the die-hard industry insiders and watchers began their "con crush" on Wednesday. ICV2.com...