Tag: Sales Charts

Three pretty interesting posts on book sales and Amazon which, if you triangulate them, give you a good look at where the publishing business stands this Monday morning as Winter turns into Spring 2013:

Between "Death of the Family," "Throne of Atlantis" and "Rise of the Third Army," any DC title selling 60,000 units or more in January took part in one of the three current major crossovers, which means all 10 of the company's Top 25 books. In other words: Scott Snyder and Geoff Johns are running the DC Universe right now -- and not much that's not within their reach is working all that well.

Walking Dead sees a big rise as expected, while Saga and Buffy sandwich the new Star Wars book, and Invincible’s one hundredth issue. Elsewhere, it’s a good month for all-ages comics, and Image have their usual batch of debuts. Dynamite have a poorer month than usual for sales drops, but a round of relaunches are on the horizon.

Marvel topped both units and dollars in February, while DC reclaimed the top comics spot with Justice League of America #1 by Johns and...

Industry analyst John Jackson Miller has taken the Bookscan numbers posted by Brian Hibbs, and added them with the Diamond year-end sales charts, and then triangulated them with a cosine angle, trapped the outlines in their own layer, tossed the results with a bit of olive oil and garlic, and presented it all for you to read. The above infographic gives a visual representation of sales for each product (GNs and periodical) in various channels; as Miller points out, library and digital sales are not included and the Bookscan numbers are very low, but the end result is a combined comics market of more than $700 million, which Miller notes, is the first time comics sales have reached this level since 1993 or 1994, the high times of speculation and chromium covers.

It’s pretty much as you were in a fairly quiet month for new books. Boom’s dollar-book Deathmatch and the return of Hellboy, alongside a new Adventure Time spin-off and Brian Wood’s new book Mara are the notable debuts. Walking Dead, Saga & My Little Pony top the chart again, elsewhere the Image Firsts reprint programme features strongly, and a few long running licensed books end ahead of relaunches.

It's my FAVORITE day of the year, when Brian Hibbs posts the year-end sales from bookstores via the Bookscan chart. Now we know these numbers are significantly low, but as I always say, they present a metric. The huge take away? Well, we all knew The Waking Dead was a juggernaut,—sales in this franchise would have made it the #3 publisher all by itself—but after that it's kids comics all the way, led by the maybe-comics of Dork Diaries, but following by Big Nate, Ninjago, Ursula Vernon's Dragonbreath, Drama and so on.

This month's DC sales column is not being hosted at The Beat. However if you speak German you can read ithere. The column will return in an English language version next month.

The second month of Marvel Now titles arguably makes for more interesting sales data than the first. We're starting to get a sense of where some of the books that had huge launch numbers in November are actually going to settle down. And we're also seeing how the second-tier Marvel Now books are going to fare, with this month seeing the launches of CABLE & X-FORCE, THUNDERBOLTS and AVENGERS ARENA, as well as the relaunch of AVENGERS itself.

As always, Amazon’s best seller lists are only rolling snapshots, but it’s always interesting to peek into what’s selling. The Kindle isn’t known as an ideal comics reading platform, but the top 20 free and paid comics has both the usual suspects and some surprises. The paid list has the warhorses—Walking Dead, Big Nate, Geoff Johns—but the free list is a total mishmosh.

Walking Dead is only the number three indie book this month, as IDW’s My Little Pony, and Dynamite’s Masks take the top two spots on their first issues. Saga, Spawn & Adventure Time all see good jumps, and there are decent launches for Judge Dredd, Shadowman and Clone. Elsewhere it’s relatively quiet. There are a clutch of new books launching, notably Great Pacific, which is getting great write-ups, and the final series of Locke & Key, hitting new heights.

While Marvel keeps rolling out its latest round of relaunches, DC is sticking to its guns in November. There's the "Death of the Family" crossover that continues running through various Batman titles. There's the "Rise of the Third Army" crossover that continues running through the Green Lantern books. There are three minor crossover storylines running through various other titles. And there are, finally, the Before Watchmen and "digital-first" lines of books, both of which continue to expand in November.