Sales Charts

If we're reading this right, hitting "popular" on the Apple bookstore page for comics reveals what's hot at that very instant, and based on the placement of AVENGERS #1 and WALKING DEAD, we'd guess this has some relationship to sales velocity—not necessarily numbers, though.

By Paul O'Brien

Perhaps it's a side effect of the decision to trim the line, but Marvel seem to have gone back to the days when each month had a small number of new launches that they could focus on properly. This month's sole new title is SCARLET SPIDER, and the only major new miniseries is WOLVERINE AND THE X-MEN: ALPHA & OMEGA. There's also WOLVERINE #300, and the second issue of the AvX lead-in mini AVENGERS: X-SANCTION. DC's resurgence continued in January, as once again Marvel faced a fight to be the top publisher in the direct market. In terms of market share, it's really too close to call; DC led in units, by 40% to 38%, while Marvel led in dollars, by 36% to 34%. On the other hand, DC swept the top ten with the fifth issues of their regular titles - some of which are selling in a different league from anything in Marvel's range. It's been a long time since AQUAMAN was outselling the entire Marvel line. Thanks as always to ICV2.com for permission to use these figures.

Although we're used to those strategic "print run sellout" press releases coming from publishers at a steady clip, it's less often that comics publishers tout topping the BookScan sales chart, which tracks sales in bookstores, and other non DM outlets, for the week. However, Dark Horse notes that Avatar: The Last Airbender—The Promise Part 1 "soared" to the top of the BookScan chart last week. This is the Gene Luen Yang-penned bridging story between the popular TV show and the eagerly awaited sequel, Legend of Korra. The art is by the Japanese team Gurihiru.

It's our favorite day of the year! The day retailer Brian Hibbs posts the complete BookScan chart for the previous year, with his own analysis. You can download the entire chart for your own edification in the first link above, but we'll just cut to the chase. Here are the top 20 GNs for the year:

By Paul Mellerick --

Walking Dead, Buffy and TMNT again dominate, but a rare appearance of Aspen’s Lady Mechanika is the third best-selling indie book this month. Dark Horse and Dynamite have a couple of promising launches, but apart from them it’s mostly downhill for the rest of the chart. If you ever wanted an indie charts drinking game, try taking a shot everytime I say drop or dropping, you’ll be smashed before you’re halfway through.

126 indie books charted this month, slightly up on last month with less Marvel or DC books charting this month. The bottom book sold 3,105, way lower than last month’s 4,330. In total those books sold approximately 1,067,927, a bit down from last month’s 1,099,699 with more titles. Average sales are 8,475 per book, down from last month’s 8,940. As usual, UK and European sales from Diamond UK are not reported in this chart.

Sales of the "New 52" books show no sign of stabilization, four issues into DC's big relaunch. The average "New 52" title dropped by 17.4% in December, versus 19.6% in November and 5.2% in October. The only "New 52" titles with single-digit drops in December are Aquaman (6.0%), Teen Titans (9.6%) and Batman: The Dark Knight (9.7%). The three "New 52" titles with the biggest fourth-issue drops are Static Shock (28.2%), Mister Terrific (29.0%) and Men of War (30.0%). Overall, there are 18 "New 52" titles with drops in excess of 20% in December, down from 22 in November. The lack of re-orders on the chart also suggests that the sheen is off the "New 52." Whereas 51 of the debut issues made the chart again in October, only two of the second issues charted again in November. In December, none of the third issues made the chart again. The average drop-off in first-month sales since issue #1 for the "New 52" books is 36.4%, as of December. The three titles with the smallest overall drop-off are Animal Man (7.4%), Detective Comics (13.5%) and Nightwing (17.6%). The three titles with the largest overall drop-off are Blackhawks (58.0%), Mister Terrific (56.7%) and Men of War (55.6%). Only 7 of the "New 52" titles display an overall drop-off of less than 20%, while 9 of them have already lost more than 50% of their debut first-month sales.

by Paul O'Brien

-- This month, the slow build to AVENGERS VS X-MEN begins with the AVENGERS: X-SANCTION miniseries; and DEFENDERS is relaunched. Both are wisely given a pretty clear run, without other Marvel launches competing for space. Elsewhere, the X-Men, Hulk and Fantastic Four relaunches continue to bed down. And down at the bottom end of the chart, the cancellations continue to mount up. Normal service is resumed, kind of, as Marvel had the largest share of the north American direct market, albeit by a fairly narrow margin - 39% to 38% in units, 34.4% to 33.7% in dollars. But bear in mind, this was a five-week month where DC more or less sat out week five.

A snapshot of graphic novels bestsellers from BarnesAndNoble.com, taken at 3 PM, Monday, January 15, 2012.

Over at Publisher's Weekly, I was writing about how Marvel has trouble keeping their books in print and had some retailers tell me how Marvel's sales suffer for it. Now with Diamond's 2011 year-end sales charts coming out, WOW, do things look odd.

Courtesy of Diamond, we've been posting their top sales charts for 2011 today (more are coming) -- but one question keeps coming up. Diamond releases charts for both "Indie" publishers and "Small" publishers. What is the difference? When you see Random House -- the world's biggest publisher -- on Diamond's "Small" chart, it seems paradoxical. Well, Diamond has provided us with some definitions.

Diamond has released its year-end figures for 2011 and Marvel eked out a win over DC despite the New 52 surge at the end of the year. Image was #3, with Dark Horse and IDW in a near-dead heat for #4 and #5. Dynamite was a clear #6

Although we'll be posting the entire list in a page view. Diamond also released the top ten comics and GNs. DC won nine of the top comics spots, despite one Marvel appearance for the "Death of Ultimate Spider-Man" issue.

In the graphic novels, WALKING DEAD ruled the roost, although, predictably, Batman and Alan Moore made an appearance. Less predictably, so did Nick Spencer's MORNING GLORIES collection.

ICV2 has their December 2011 Diamond sales estimates up and the downward correction would appear to be continuing. The big debating point here would be DC returnability. IIRC, Diamond's been adjusting the numbers to allow for returns (10%?), but relatively few people believe that retailers are returning that much, when taken across the industry. So anything returnable is probably a little under-reported.