Tag: Books

Brian Hibbs has posted his annual Bookscan analysis—charting actual sales of books that report to Nielsen’s Bookscan sales charts. while Bookscan numbers are not...

Graphic novels were one of only two print fiction categories whose sales were up in 2014 (westerns were the other), according to Publishers Weekly's Jim Milliot in a piece called The Hot and Cold Categories of 2014. GNs were up 13% according to Bookscan. The article also includes a chart of all categories, and reveals that 8,669,000 graphic novels were sold in 2014, up from 7,659,000 in 2015. For comparison, 33,524,000 general fiction books were sold in 2014.

Disclosure: Todd Allen is a long-time contributor to this site, so read the following as advanced log-rolling if you will. That said, the book he kickstarted over the summer, Economics of Digital Comics is out. I have an early digital copy and this is really a book everyone in the comics business should read, especially people going into various digital models, from crowdfunding to subscription to pay what you want. Allen casts a cynical eye on most of this stuff, and runs numbers to show what works and what doesn't. But he also looks at print costs, and the economies of other channels to give a strong overview of what we talk about when we talk about selling comics in 2014. The book has new interviews with digital players and statistics on what webcomics earn from advertising, how much it costs to print books, what the big players take out of various delivery methods and more. All footnoted. And an introduction by Mark Waid, who has become something of the spokesman for Generation Digital.

Well, this will come as little to no surprise to anyone but....the group of people who buy the most print books are the oldest...

Via PW, word that Antonin Baudry, who wrote the GN Weapons of Mass Diplomacy and happens to be the the cultural counselor of the French Embassy is opening Albertine, a French language bookstore in the building that houses the French consulate in New York, a historic building located across from the Metropolitan Museum of Art designed by the great Stanford White, with the embassy’s cultural services division at 972 Fifth Avenue, across the street from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The store will house "14,000 volumes of fiction, nonfiction, art, graphic novels, and children’s books in both English translation and French."

By Alexander Jones The Death-Defying Dr. Mirage Issue #1 marked an important change in the history of Valiant Comics. The publisher finally opened up their...

Fresh off winning a MacArthur Genius grant, and a months-0ong residency at an Umbrian castle, Alison Bechdel has also announced the subject of her next graphic novel. The Secret to Superhuman Strength will be published in 2017 by Houghton Mifflin. Having explored the psyches of her father in Fun Home and her mother in Are you My Mother, Bechdel turns her laser sight on her self:

// Post by Alan Moore. According to the FB post from his daughter, Leah, Alan Moore has finished the first draft of his long gestating...

Just as soon as you recover from SPX, you'll be drinking in the comcis events at the Brooklyn Book Festival, the annual literary love-in which will be held Sunday, September 21st this year. Not only is there a full slate of comics panels, with Brandon Graham, John Porcellino, MariNaomi, Mike Dawson and MANY MORE, but there will be a signings, a screening and parties galore. You can check out the totally excellent (I will steal their theme) Tumblr jsut for BBF comics and graphic novels, but here is the whole schedule for posterity:

Okay this isn't "The Comics Diversity Times" but, issues of diversity and identity seem to be the most pressing ones these days. And so to cleanse the palette, here's a transcript of Gene Luen Yang’s speech at the 2014 National Book Festival this weekend. With American Born Chinese, Boxers & Saints and now The Shadow Hero, Yang has become one of the best selling and most important graphic novelists and he's also one of those heroes I was alluding to earlier, standing up for people who don't have as big a voice.

By Matthew Jent The Fairy Tale Remix panel, moderated by author Shannon Hale, brought together more than half a dozen authors of young adult and...

One of the top graphic novels of the first half of 2014 is surely Roz Chast's Can't We Talk about Something More Pleasant?: A Memoir; the long time New Yorker mainstay has penned her FIRST (amazing) graphic novel and it's a true classic even though the subject matter sounds grim. The book follows Chat's experiences with her aging and increasingly vulnerable parents, a sad topic but a part of the human experience that a lot of us are going to have to deal with from one side or another some day. This being Chast it's also full of laughs, as she limns her eccentric sometimes annoying parents in rich comic detail. Anxiety and love mingle, as they do in real life.