Market Shares for Comics Publishers Distributed Through Diamond, 1997-present

While market shares for comics publishers have been available from direct-market distributors since the 1980s, they usually were based on preorders. This had the effect of overstating the sales of publishers whose comics did not ship on time, while understating those of publishers who had strong reorder activity. Publishers got credit in the sales charts for books that didn't ship — and then would get credit again when those books were resolicited. Furthermore, comics market shares didn't capture the sales represented by backlist trade paperback sales, which by the late 1990s were a growing force in the business.

Pressured to remedy the situation, Diamond Comic Distributors unveiled its monthly  "Actual Dollar Market Share" chart in the November 12, 1997 edition of its Dateline newsletter. Readers promptly noticed major differences between the preorder percentages that had appeared; DC, for example, quickly gained on and then surpassed Marvel, which was then in bankruptcy.

While more inclusive than anything seen before, the new charts did retain a degree of imprecision, while introducing a new one. The total number of dollars represented by all sales on the chart has never been published; it was only in 2003 when CBG acquired enough necessary additional information to state the Overall Market Value, reported in each of its monthly reports on CBGXtra.com. And the Diamond chart includes publishers of magazines, only some of which publish comics themselves and many of whose products have nothing to do with comics. (So for true comics market shares, most of the market share of, say, Wizard Entertainment would need to be removed from the pie.)

The Diamond dollar shares across time for the four largest publishers, Marvel, DC, Image, and Dark Horse, are reported above and below — as well as that for CrossGen and a percentage for all others. CrossGen, which came in 2000 and went in 2004, racked up a market share rivaling that for Dark Horse rather quickly; without its presence on the chart, the "others" category balloons. Other publishers have reached similar levels of sales briefly, and a handful of publishers such as TokyoPop and Viz have managed to maintain a long-term presence on the charts above 1% but rarely above 3%.

Remember again: These charts represent dollars, not units, sold. There is some unit sales market share information on this site, but it's a messy statistic to deal with since comics and trade paperbacks are lumped together. Unit sales can be found by navigating from our Main Sales Data page. 

Source: Diamond Comic Distributors . Analysis by John Jackson Miller .