Sales Charts

by Mark-Oliver Frisch -- Three months into the wholesale makeover of DC's line of superhero comic books, the direct-market numbers suggest three main things: One, the "New 52" relaunch was extremely successful at mobilizing comics specialty retailers; two, this success doesn't seem to be affecting, for good or ill, any other comics beyond the initial 52 titles; and three, the number of new comics readers the "New 52" has brought into comics stores seems negligible, overall. Retailers continued to adjust their orders for the "New 52" titles in November, and this time, the downward correction was more noticeable. On average, sales of new DC comic books dropped by nearly 10,000 units or 19.2% in November, versus 10.4% in October. The average drop on the third issues of the 52 new superhero titles was 18.8%, versus 5.2% for the second issues. Animal Man (-8.0%) and Detective Comics (-9.7%) were the "New 52" books with the smallest drops in November, while Blackhawks (-29.5%), Mister Terrific (-29.7%), Blue Beetle (-29.9%) and Captain Atom (-30.0%) were at the tail end of the spectrum. In contrast to October, when all but one of the "New 52" debut issues made the chart again with significant re-orders, only two of the #3 issues -- namely Batman and Aquaman -- charted again in November. On balance, the drop-off on those titles is still better than average. The fact that the larger drop came in November and the lack of more #2 re-orders both suggest that customer interest in the "New 52" peaked early, however.

With FEAR ITSELF wrapping up, Marvel had several major releases in November - the POINT ONE one-shot, the relaunches of UNCANNY X-MEN and FANTASTIC FOUR, and the first issue of new ongoing title AVENGING SPIDER-MAN.

We've also got the epilogue of FEAR ITSELF, the start of BATTLE SCARS, and a bunch of other "Regenesis" tie-ins from the X-books.

Marvel found itself behind DC for the third straight month in November, though the gap is growing closer. DC led by 40% to 38% in unit share, and 35% to 33% in dollars. And of course, it should be remembered that DC's extra sales don't appear to have come at Marvel's expense; if DC's relaunch has brought any new or lapsed readers into the market, then in theory, that's good for other publishers too - it brings them into everyone's potential market.

Thanks as always to ICV2.com for permission to use these figures.

5. POINT ONE
11/11  One-shot - 113,352

Marvel's top selling comic of the month! Or is it? This book was massively overshipped, with retailers receiving twice the number of copies they'd actually ordered, at no extra cost. Those copies are presumably included in this number - that certainly appears to be Diamond's standard practice, given the odd sales spikes that we've seen when this strategy has been used before.

If that's the case, then the actual orders of this book would be 56,676 - which would have placed the book at number 29 between AMAZING SPIDER-MAN and AVENGERS. Considering the solicitation ("You CANNOT miss this. Catch a tease of the biggest change to the Marvel Universe in over 35 years!") that number would surely have been disappointing, even allowing for the six dollar price tag. The wisdom of pricing a teaser book that high must also be open to question.

Some online sales data for 12/25 and 12/26 from IBM, a Top Ten list from Amazon's Kindle graphic novel page, and a surprising discovery! Read on!

Comics Alliance has run this amazing infographic by Tim Leong, based on the year's NY Times graphic novel bestsellers. This is a topic ripe for study since it has contained many many surprises -- like appearances by DAVID B. on the list? Awesome sauce. What is not a surprise is that WALKING DEAD and SCOTT PILGRIM have dominated the charts for most of 18 months. The future of comics is masterful, multi-volume media tie-ins that speak to contemporary life, it seems.

Here is a listing of the current comics bestsellers on BN.com, scanned at 11:20 AM this Tuesday, December 20, 2011.

Marc-Oliver can tell you how the actual sales levels of the DC relaunch are, but let's take a look at a slightly different metric: how do the relative popularity of the "New 52" compare to the way that retailers initially ordered them? With November's sales estimates, we see orders where the retailers had a chance to see how the #1's moved and potentially the #2's in some cases, before the cutoff dates for adjusting orders.

The November chart analysis is up around the net and it was an interesting month. John Jackson Miller has an overall analysis and the GN sales have him scratching his head -- they surged in November but it's not clear why:

ICV2 has released it's sales estimates for November (you know the drill, actually sales should be bumped somewhere by 10-20%, split the difference and call it 15%), and it's shedding a little light on a few things. What Happened To Shade We have a little better idea why Shade might be on the verge of being in trouble.

Diamond has just released their November chart toppers, and DC led again by by a considerably smaller margin than the ass-whoopin' they gave Marvel in October. DC led by 2 points in units and a mere single digit in dollars. JUSTICE LEAGUE, BATMAN, and ACTION led the periodicals, while Marvel had three books in the top 10. BATMAN: NOEL, a clever and much needed "Batman does Christmas Carol," led the GNs. Sales overall are up for 2011, mostly thanks to a big boost from periodicals. GNs are down 10% year to year; however, they were up 30% in November, due to, perhaps, a more attractive product mix.

Buffy continues in the top spot, while a double-shipping Walking Dead takes second and third places. Turtles creeps back up to fourth, and Star Trek/ Legion of Superheroes gets off to a very promising start. Further down, Orchid benefits from a rock star contributor, Garth Ennis & John Byrne launch new titles and a remarkable success story finishes off the month.

This month everyone wants to know how DC’s New 52 has affected the sales of everyone else’s books. It’s a little too early to tell, the re-charting DC books have pushed a lot of indies off the charts, but while the indie publishers have a lot less titles charting this month, their market and dollar share have only dropped a little, suggesting that sales are up overall. The next three months will show the effects far more clearly.

Only 87 indie books charted this month, down from last month’s high of 127 and again the number 87 book sold around the same as the number 87 book last month. The bottom book sold 5,167 compared to last month’s 3,341. In total those books sold approximately 921,878, well down on last month’s 1,053,116. That said, last month the average sales were 8,292 per book, this month it’s 10,596. As usual, UK and European sales from Diamond UK are not reported in this chart.

A look over the sales seem to suggest that the better-selling books have weathered okay, but a lot of books further down the charts have suffered serious drops, with retailers maybe choosing to spend their re-stock money on DC books rather than indies.

This month Image were the number three publisher, with 4.49% dollar share and a 3.98 market share thanks to two issues of

Every month, AppData releases a list of the top-grossing apps for the iPad, and once again comics apps lead the pack for the book category. Predictably, comiXology is at the top, but it's followed closely by DC, Marvel and The Walking Dead. The chart represents purchases made THROUGH an app, not sales of an app.

October was a first litmus test for the good "New 52" relaunch numbers, as it was the first month that allowed retailers to react to customer feedback on DC's "New 52" initiative in a meaningful way. As a result, Marvel won a little less of the market share than usual got really spanked by DC in October, which took the Top 6 spots, along with a whopping 17 out of the Top 20 (and 32 out of the Top 50, and 60 out of the Top 100), as well as 50.97 percent of the unit market share and 42.47 percent of the dollar share. DC's average periodical numbers were down a bit from September and are now in the exact same area as right after the line-wide "One Year Later" event in May 2006, which had been DC's high-water mark before the current relaunch. Back then, the average new DC comic book (not counting the now-defunct WildStorm) sold an estimated 50,519 units, the average new DC Universe comic book 59,505. In October 2011, now, it's 51,280 and 59,146, respectively. These numbers don't suggest we need to build a new ball park quite yet, but DC certainly did a great job of filling up the old one in a way that hasn't happened since, well, 2006. While a slight drop-off from September was to be expected, it turns out to be very slight indeed, because 16 of the "New 52" titles didn't drop at all, but rather increased in sales. They're led by Animal Man, which, on the back of good reviews, saw an impressive second-issue increase of 16 percent. And even most of the rest of the bunch displays much slighter drops than we're used to, for that matter. Only 16 of the percentage drops are in the double digits, and only four of those -- Action Comics, Men of War, Superman and Blackhawks -- are in the area you'd usually suspect. As a result, the average second-issue drop for the "New 52" is a tiny 5.2 percent -- a dream figure by any standard. (Also, it's worth noting that many of the books with the bigger second-issue drops came out in the last week of October. Technically, this means that they were disadvantaged, because all subsequent re-orders slipped into November. On the other hand, the first issues of those titles shipped in the last week of September, too, of course, so it should have evened out. In any case, we'll get a clearer picture of what's going on with the November chart.)