Without going into all the is it a comic or a book arguments, let’s just agree that Jeff Kinney’s Wimpy Kid series is incredibly successful. The newest volume, #7 in the series, came out on the 13th and in its first week sold 362,217 copies, according to Publishers Weekly’s BookScan lists. It’s been the #1 book on Amazon for a few weeks and shows no sign of slowing down following a 6.5 million copy first printing.
The Wimpy Kid books recently went digital on comiXology, with The Third Wheel available for digital pre-order.
Speaking of PW, they offered this illustrated interview with the author a few weeks ago. Click on the link for the whole thing.
RT @Comixace: Wimpy Kid #7 sells more than 350,000 in its frst week: Without going into all the is it a comic or a boo… http://t.co/Y …
Bought one for my 8yo daughter yesterday. She’ll be done with the first read-through right about 3:30 this afternoon…
Wimpy Kid is awesome stuff. Kinney really gets a lot of personality out of his drawings.
My brilliant second-grade nephew devoured the book on day one, then was halfway through it again on Tuesday.
Brilliant fifth-grade niece is devouring The Mark of Athena, but not the graphic novels.
Yeah, I’m gonna be that guy…It’s not a comic, more a light novel.
What Wimpy Kid has done for the gn category(and comics for kids) is blown up a lot of barriers. The children’s buyer in the school districts, the public library system and now, in traditional retail is now paying greater attention to the category and looking for more books and series just like this. Why? Because the reader is demanding it.
This is not really that different from the I Want My MTV campaign in the early 80s. A lot of cable system operators were ignoring MTV because they were a bunch of ‘old white dudes’ who just didnt get it. MTV got the fan base to blow up the phone lines of their local providers and the rest is history.
Yes, there’s a lot of great adult level comics/gn out there but the gold rush is with the children and young adult category.
Beyond that, it’s a really well written series. I’ve talked with many adults who wanted to check out the books to see what the fuss is about and they too have become fans.
You will notice the book is listed as a Children’s book and not ALL Ages.
I’ve used Wimpy Kid successfully to raise interest and sales on all ages comics in the book store I work in. So successfully that for a run of four months, a half bay of comics in the kids department was outselling the front of store bays with the latest hardback and paperback releases.
All it took was that recognisable brand to hook the kids interest, and even old Tintin saw his sales shoot up!
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