Sales Charts

Last month someone asked me if there had been more "indie" titles in the top 300, or if the high cut off rate for...

Buffy looks like it will hold on to its position as top “indie” book until its season 8 run finishes early next year. Meanwhile...

For your infographic entertainment, we've just posted Diamond's raw info in our popular "Sales Chart" category. We've also posted the top 50 Indies, Top...

Diamond has released their November basic data dump, and no sales rebound sight, with overall sales down 8.28 percent from a year ago and down 6.64 percent from November. However, graphic novel sales surged 14.84 percent since last year, driven by sales of THE WALKING DEAD trade collections. John Jackson Miller already has his preliminary analysis up. Diamond has recently started releasing much more information on comparative sales -- I'm told this is because the partial figures they were releasing were giving rise to inaccurate projections by such folks as Miller. We have a lot more data to go on on how the market changes from year over year; let's be judicious in how we analyze it. Overall, the comics market is down 5.66 percent YTD in dollars and -4.18 percent in units from 2009. While that isn't a great number, considering the economy, it could be worse.

Author/historian/statistician John Jackson Miller used his holiday very productively: to put some of the missing years of comics sales stats up at his...

September was a fairly low-profile month for DC's comic-book business. In terms of new releases, there were the debut of the Freedom Fighters series, a Justice Society of America Special and a bunch of one-shots reviving the company's old war titles. Still, thanks to a handful of returning DC Universe and Vertigo books that had missed their release dates in August, average and overall periodical sales slightly recovered, as expected. WildStorm published a few one-shot specials tying in with the Red film and reviving Wetworks, of all things, with less than spectacular results.

by Paul O'Brien Marvel's biggest release for September was the relaunch of the Wolverine titles, in an attempt to undo the damage caused when the...

September may not have seemed to create any records for sales, but if you look more closely at the charts you’ll discover some interesting...

Comics writer and armchair statistician John Jackson Miller was very, very excited by Diamond's decision to release year-to-year comparisons for their sales charts. While such maths make us go catatonic, in a blog post, he explains that this missing info has enabled a much more accurate view of comics' long tail -- and it's a healthy tail. In an email, he writes:

Diamond just released the top ten and market share reports for October and added comparative --monht to month and year to year -- charts for the first time. Paging Paul and Marc! The comparisons are not comforting but actually show graphic novel sales up 13% from a year ago. Superman Earth One was a big hit, and The Walking Dead Effect is supplanting the Watchmen and Scott Pilgrim effects.

A couple of developments in the ongoing pamphletpocalypse/sales adjustment. § At long last John Jackson Miller has appeared with comforting words to explain why September's sales figures weren't cause to jump out the window. This may be just our interpretation, but it appears that the plunge isn't so much that all periodical sales are shrinking as top periodical sales are slipping. Miller explains that the tail-end of the long tail is actually HEALTHIER than ever.

Every Friday, The New York Times presents its "graphic books" best seller list. It's compiled from BookScan, Diamond, and, as far as we can tell, magic juju algorithms of some kind. It is, like all best seller lists, probably a little subjective and magical, but it certainly reflects a stable metric of what books are selling briskly that week. Given all that we've talked about this week in terms of superheroes and literary comics and manga and what not...let's see exactly what is selling THIS week in American comics, with my own commentary.