Sales Charts: Wimpy Kid sales decline

The “comics are dying” narrative that we’re all talking about usually applies only to periodical comics in comics shops, because as we all know sales of manga and comics for children are soaring.  Dog Man sells an unholy number of copies, and the comics adjacent Wimpy Kids series is wildly successful.

However, even for these runaway bestsellers, sales can be slippery. Over at Publishers Weekly, Jim Milliot delivers a weekly analysis of Circana Bookscan’s statistics on book sales, and sorry,  you must be a subscriber to read it! But this week’s column had a nice helping of doom and gloom, if you’re into that kind of thing. I normally don’t make a habit of reposting these numbers, since they are exclusive to PW, but periodically it’s interesting to take a look inside.

Milliot notes that book sales are down, as they have been all year, since the Pandemic High. For the first nine months of the year, sales were down 4.1% from 2022, which is definitely down but not a plummet.

However, for the week ending November 5, sales were down 8%, which is definitely not great. Celebrity bios, including Britney Spears, Henry Winkler, and (tragically) Matthew Perry were among the best sellers, but sales were generally down. Yearning for another Colleen Hoover, adult fiction was down 9.8%, however, the WORST fall was in….juvenile fiction!

The juvenile fiction segment had the worst week, with sales falling 14%. Jeff Kinney’s newest Wimpy Kid book, No Brainer, was number one, selling almost 79,000 copies, but that was about 22,000 fewer copies than his Diper Overlöde sold a year ago.

If Wimpy Kid sales are falling, maybe we really have reached Ragnarok.

To be fair, you need to keep two things in mind. First, this is the 18th Wimpy Kid book and it still debuted at #1 overall last week. That is a success by any measure.

Also, Diper Overlöde is just a great name for a book and a Heavy Metal song.

Anyhoo, I did a little digging into the sales trajectory of Wimpy Kid, which, God Bless Jeff Kinney, releases a new book every year at the end of October, just in time for the holidays. Old Reliable! Here’s how This year’s book sold:

1

Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Book 18 Jeff Kinney, Author Amulet Books, $14.99 (224) 978-1-4197-6694-7

Oct 2023

142,854

And Diper Overlöde from 2022:

2

–

1

Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Book 17 Jeff Kinney, Author Amulet Books, $14.99 (224) 978-1-4197-6294-9

Oct 2022

173,214

AND #16 from 2021.

1

–

1

Big Shot (Diary of a Wimpy Kid #16) Jeff Kinney, Author Amulet Books, $14.99 (224) 978-1-4197-4915-5

Oct 2021

211,354

Every book debuted at #1, but as you can see, sales fell by about 30,000 for each one. I feel justified in invoking the spirit of Marc-Oliver Frisch and declaring “Standard Attrition.” So I wouldn’t call this a calamitous decline, just a very long-running series sort of finding its level. And how many years will Kinney keep doing it?

As long as we’re looking at numbers, a few manga made the Adult Trade Paper list (the first number in the right-hand sales column is that week’s sales, the second is total sales to date.)

12	2	2	Spy X Family, Vol. 10 Tatsuya Endo, Author Viz Media, $11.99 (200) 978-1-9747-4067-3	2000	5,730   25,070
13	11	4	Chainsaw Man, Vol. 12 Tatsuki Fujimoto, Author Viz Media, $11.99 (200) 978-1-9747-4058-1	2000	5,505   58,442

These are solid numbers.

And while I don’t often reproduce the entire Publishers Weekly/Circana Bookscan Comics sales chart, which comes out once a month, since we’re suffering from such a devastating drought of sales numbers, just this once here you go, numbers for October.

The Last Ronin must have sold a hell of a lot of copies!

And for comparison, October 2022:

And now, are you ready to have your mind blown? Here’s the top ten from October 2019!

You can clearly see how manga absolutely dominated this category in the Pandemic Era. Sales are down in ’23, but still healthy. It does make me a little sad not to see any US comics in the current top ten, but ICv2 also has Bookscan charts, and they break things down a little differently, with one chart for manga and another for “Superheroes” (which includes Nightmare Before Christmas, but okay) and another for authors. I don’t have access to the actual numbers on ICv2 – for that you can subscribe for $10 a month, which seems pretty reasonable, hint hint hint. Anyway I won’t run the entire ICv2 Superhero list, but here’s the top 5.

The Author’s list goes like this:

As long as we’re surveying charts, the New York Times also has a monthly comics bestseller list, and their November list, based on similar data and their own number crunching, looks a little different.

1. CHAINSAW MAN, VOL. 12 by Tatsuki Fujimoto

2. THE MYSTERIES by Bill Watterson. Illustrated by Bill Watterson and John Kascht

3. STACEY’S MISTAKE by Ann M. Martin. Illustrated by Ellen T. Crenshaw

4. LORE OLYMPUS, VOL. 5 by Rachel Smythe

5. TWENTY THOUSAND FLEAS UNDER THE SEA by Dav Pilkey

6. SPY X FAMILY, VOL. 10 by Tatsuya Endo

7. INVESTIGATORS: ALL TIDE UP by John Patrick Green

   I ran this list all the way to #7 just so I could point out that my dear friend John Patrick Green has a NY Times Bestselling series. Congrats, John!

The other generally consulted bestseller list is USA Today’s. They don’t break it down by genre, but Wimpy Kid #18 is the #2 book this week and, interestingly, Chainsaw Man #12 is all the way down at #71, below a couple of comics compilations by Stephen Pastic and even My Dress-Up Darling #10. 

No round-up of sales charts would not be complete without a shout out to heroic librarian Dave Carter, who has been doing weekly Amazon comics bestseller rankings every Friday for many, many years. (Carter also did the monthly sales charts here at the Beat back when we had such things.) This week’s chart isn’t up as I write this but the November 3 one is and here’s the top 10:

1 (N). Ultimate Universe #1 (Kindle)
2 (-1). The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse
3 (N). Superman #8 (Kindle) *
4 (-2). The Far Side 2024 Off-the-Wall Calendar
5 (N). Fantastic Four #16 (Kindle) *
6 (N). Fantastic Four #15 (Kindle) *
7 (N). X-Men #28 (Kindle)
8 (-5). Berserk Deluxe Volume 1
9 (+29). Five Nights at Freddy’s Graphic Novel Trilogy Box Set
10 (-5). Demon Slayer Complete Box Set

Carter supplies a little commentary each week and this one is interesting:

• Suddenly and without warning, the Kindle single issues return to the Amazon comics chart. TBH we’re agnostic about whether they should be included or not, we just wish Amazon would make up their minds and stick to it. In any event, Ultimate Universe #1 clocks in at the top spot this week, leading the charge of eleven Kindle single issues this week.

That Amazon includes Kindle digital comics alongside books and box sets makes this listing quite…..maybe quirky is the word we’re looking for, but as we like to say, it’s all a metric.

Did you like this spin around the sales charts? Would you like it as a regular feature? Are you a number cruncher who would like to write your own sales analysis? Sound off in the comments and have a great weekend reading some good books.