Tag: Sales Charts

Publishers Weekly reports that E-book sales were up sharply for February, with TRIPLE digit growth, up 202.3% with $90.3 million in sales, the leading segment as reported by the AAP. Thanks to ebook readers given as gifts over the holidays, ebook sales now equal trade paperback sales.

by Marc-Oliver Frisch

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Unit and dollar sales of DC Comics' periodical business remained at the lower end of the spectrum in February, despite a slight recovery from January's all-time low in average unit sales. However, the direct market as a whole has seen better days, and so DC still managed to snatch the three top spots of the chart and six out of the Top 10 in February, regardless of the company's lackluster sales.

For the publisher's mainstream DC Universe line, the absence of major titles Batman Incorporated and Batman: The Dark Knight continued to be a problem, while the hangover from the discontinued WildStorm imprint kept dragging down the average. Average comic-book sales of DC's Vertigo imprint were still hovering above the 10k mark, meanwhile.

See below for the details, and please consider the small print at the end of the column. Thanks to Milton Griepp and ICv2.com for the permission to use their figures. An overview of ICv2.com's estimates can be found here.

Okay, so comics sales were kinda crap in March, based on year-to-year comparisons, although better than February. Plus, the top book popped its head above the 100,000 mantle. But ICv2 reports that GN sales were even more problematic:

February sees Marvel's "Point One" programme get under way, with issues of AMAZING SPIDER-MAN, WOLVERINE and IRON MAN. The Age of X crossover starts in X-MEN LEGACY and NEW MUTANTS. And there's a new ongoing series, IRON MAN 2.0. As usual, Marvel had the largest share of the North American direct market. It's a pretty wide margin over DC this month - 45% to 31% in unit terms, 41% to 28% in dollars. Thanks as always to ICV2.com for permission to use these figures.

Diamond has released the figures for March and things are looking up -- at least from February, with comics up 17.13 percent and graphic novels up 13.86 percent. But sales in the first quarter were still down from 2010: Comic sales declined by 8.57 percent and GNs declined by 7.24 percent. Marvel led the month ins dollars and units. PR and charts below. BUT, see John Jackson MIller's analysis:

Every once in a while, Diamond releases a chart...and every once in a while, The Beat runs it. This is the list of the top-selling reorder and advance reorder products for the week of 3/14/2011-3/20/2011. By itself, it's nothing but a bunch of factoids, but it does give some idea of "sell-through" and what retailers anticipate will sell -- the fact that Daniel Clowes' 11'year-old DAVID BORING tops it is probably because a new book is coming out (MR. WONDERFUL) or perhaps because it had been out of print and became available.

As he posted in the comments yesterday, Russ Maheras has run some numbers showing that despite millions of comics selling in the '50s/'60s and 1000's selling now, the industry as a whole is way more profitable now -- say $600 million as opposed to $236 million. John Jackson Miller hosts the figures and breaks it down:

Sales charts estimates for February were out today and the top seller, GREEN LANTERN, set a record for lowest total ever, writes John Jackson Miller. However, the titles lower on the charts showed STRONGER sales:

DC kicks off the year with a new sales record: Average numbers of the DC Universe line dropped by 21% in January, to 24,321 -- the lowest number in the history of these charts, by about 4,000 units. Traditionally a weak month in the comic-book market, January 2011 was even more of a downer than usual for DC. With only five titles selling above the 50k mark, average comic-book sales of the company at large fell to 21,922, the lowest figure since March 2009, while average Vertigo sales clung to the 10,000-unit mark, as they've done for the last three years. The poor January performance of the DC Universe line comes thanks to three different kinds of erosion. First up, DC failed to get Green Lantern, Batman Incorporated and The Flash out of the door, three of its major titles, while a fourth one, Batman: The Dark Knight, was still late from December. Second, DC is looking at a whole range of failing titles: Out of the 43 ongoing monthly DC Universe series currently on sale, eight have been marked for cancellation and won't be around come June 2011. That's almost 20% of the imprint's regular output. And there are eight more -- Doc Savage, The Spirit, T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents, Jonah Hex, Booster Gold, Power Girl, Zatanna and Gotham City Sirens -- that look less than healthy and sell fewer copies than some of the ones that have already been axed. At the tail end of the spectrum, finally, six former WildStorm titles were absorbed into the DC Universe line in January, where they end up being the six lowest-selling books and dragging down the average. (If WildStorm were still around, this would be another new low for them: The six books, one of which missed the charts altogether, have average sales of less than 4,000 units.) So, for better or ill, 2011 is set to be a year of transition for DC, with some heavy lifting in the company's periodical line. See below for the details, and please consider the small print at the end of the column. Thanks to Milton Griepp and ICv2.com for the permission to use their figures. An overview of ICv2.com's estimates can be found here.

January wasn’t all bad news in the comics industry as Image had a strong month. Spawn #200 sold a crazy amount of issues thanks to its many variant copies, while The Walking Dead continues to rise and the new weekly reprints did fairly well. The biggest launches were a Darth Vader miniseries from Dark Horse, and IDW’s zombie crossover series Infestation.

by Paul O'Brien

Let's be blunt: January was a pretty terrible month for the direct market. Compared with January 2010, comic book sales were down by 23% in units and 22% in dollars. The picture for graphic novels wasn't much better. In part, it's because of a lack of really big titles; but to be honest, there seems to have been a lack of titles across the board. The number 300 title in January was LADY MECHANIKA #1, with estimated orders of only 1,291. That's extraordinarily low. In December, it took more than three times that many sales to make the chart.

As usual, Marvel had the largest share of the direct market, and the margin was bigger than normal - they led DC by 39% to 26% in dollars, and 42% to 32% in units.

The big release this month, of course, is FANTASTIC FOUR #587, with the death of the Human Torch. There's also INVINCIBLE IRON MAN #500, the AGE OF X ALPHA one-shot and a handful of new minis. But it's a quiet month.

As always, thanks to ICV2.com for permission to use these figures.

It’s one of The Beat’s favorite times of year: Brian Hibbs’ annual BookScan analyses! Not only has he broken down reported sell-through for the graphic novel category, he’s made the raw data available for us all to have fun with. In past years Hibbs used this data to talk about the importance/supremacy of the direct sales market for comics material, and I had cause to disgaree with some of his conclusions. This time, all he does is analyze the numbers, because they kind of speak for themselves. And he's done an amazing job. I urge you all just to go to the link and read the whole damn long thing. But for those who have pressing matters, here’s my own edited take on a few conclusions: (And a lot are similar to what I said last year! And also to what I said about the Diamond year-end figures.) But it bears repeating: