Sales of comic books and trade paperbacks to comics shops increased 9% in the first half of 2005 to $168.4 million, according to CBG?s analysis of sales reports released by Diamond Comic Distributors.
On July 21, Diamond released its final sales report for June 2005 ? and CBG?s analysis of those figures found that that month?s double-digit percentage sales increase helped push the first half of 2005 toward solid gains.
?This bodes well for a continuation of the recovery in comics that began in July 2000,? said John Jackson Miller, CBG editorial director and compiler of the world?s largest collection of comics circulation figures, the CBG Standard Catalog of Comic Books (fourth edition shipping next month).
CBG‘s charts for June’s Top 300 comics, Top 100 Trade Paperbacks, and Diamond Market Shares appear here.
Comics unit sales: Led by House of M #1 and 2, the Top 300 comic books had retailer orders of 7.08 million copies in June, 8% more than June 2004, which also had five shipping weeks.
Having the same number of shipping weeks in months in consecutive years helps comparison, Miller said. ?While some say that publishers spread out their schedules to balance the number of titles in each month, it?s one more week for late (or early) titles from other months to wind up in. Year-to-year comparisons are cleanest, when it?s four weeks versus four weeks or five versus five.?
New publishers posting in the Top 300 included APComics, with Mr. T #1, and Silent Devil, with Dracula vs. King Arthur #1.
Comics dollar sales: The Top 300 comic books had sales worth $20.83 million in June, 11% more than June 2004.
For the half-year, the Top 300 comics from each month have sold a combined $104.8 million, a 2% increase over the same half-year period.
Trade paperbacks : The Top 100 trade paperbacks and graphic novels reported by Diamond had orders worth $3.79 million at full retail in June. Adding those to the Top 300 comics for the month yields $24.62 million, an increase of 11% over June 2004.
For the half-year, the Top 300 comics and the Top 100 trade paperbacks from each month had orders worth $127.31 million, an increase of 5.5% over the same six months in 2004.
Exclusive: Diamond?s ?overall? sales: In the most inclusive category calculated by anyone in comics, CBG is able to estimate Diamond?s total sales for comics and trade paperbacks, including all the ones not in the Top 300/100 every month.
?Diamond publishes dollar market shares for its top 20 publishers across all comics, trade paperbacks, and magazines,? Miller said. ?Knowing the exact total orders of any publisher on that list right down to the oldest backlist item allows you to calculate Diamond?s total orders across these product groups.?
The June 2005 total was $32.83 million, which increases to $35.73 million, when Diamond?s United Kingdom orders are added. The figure is up 11% over June 2005. Overall, the last six months stand at $168.44 million, as mentioned above ? up nearly 9%.
?This largest category continues to show faster growth than the more narrow ones, suggesting that an ever-increasing amount of business is being generated by the thousands of backlist trade paperbacks that do not make Diamond?s Top 100 list each month,? Miller said. He also cautioned that the ?overall? category overstates comics? actual performance to the extent that magazines that do not have comics content are included. ?The comics publishers? market shares would actually be slightly higher, if you could knock out some of the ancillary items,? he said.
Market shares: Marvel led DC in Diamond?s reported overall unit and dollar market shares, and that held true for each of CBG?s narrower calculations. DC had 98 comics in the Top 300 versus Marvel?s 86; Image posted a strong month with 35 titles making the list. Dark Horse?s strength continues to be in its backlist ? coming in third in Diamond?s overall dollar list despite having only 13 comics in the Top 300, just one more than IDW.
Price analysis: The average comic book on Diamond?s Top 300 list cost $3.15, up from $3.06 in June 2004.
The weighted average price ? that is, the cost of the average comic book Diamond sold ? was $2.94, up from $2.83 last year.
The average price of the comics that made the Top 25 was $2.60, however, down two cents from June 2004.
Methodology: Diamond keys orders for all comics it lists sales for to Batman, with one ?order index point? being equal to 1% of that title?s orders. Using actual Diamond final orders from titles accounting for more than 25% of Diamond?s Top 300, CBG determined that one point on Diamond?s order index was likely to equal 672 comic books ? with a 95% probability that the real figure was between 671 and 673.
For more information: Historical graphics for several categories tracked above appear in Comics & Games Retailer magazine. Also, check issues of Comics Buyer?s Guide and CBGXtra.com for further analysis. The CBG Standard Catalog of Comic Books also contains sales figures for every year the magazine has tracked.
The Magazine
You can look for these sales reports here monthly from here on out. We’ve been doing them in this kind of depth since September 1996, so we have a number of years to compare to.
–John Jackson Miller
That’s good news all around. Obviously it’s a lot better to have sales on an upswing instead of being stagnant or dropping. Comics fans need to keep their fingers crossed.
Allen Smith
So, I guess the comics companies are doing something right. Does this mean that there will be fewer people wondering how to get the comics readers back? While we’re on a roll, is there some way to add to the comic reader demographic further?
Something good seems to be occuring, whatever it is, can it be further encouraged?
Remember that trade paperbacks are responsible for most of the gain.
We may be evolving toward a future like I described in my column in CBG #1595, where purchasers of the 32-page periodical in effect serve as the “test-market” for the stories that may later go “broad” as trade paperbacks — and in effect subsidizing the creation of those larger works as they go along.
–John Jackson Miller
I think that’s a real good thing, as it places more comics in bookstores and libraries. Comics publishers probably will need to do some creative marketing to keep the periodicals as something more than R&D. But that’s less of a problem than a disinterest in the form.
I think that tpbs might be the way to go, because today’s comics are just too flimsy as a physical product, a tpb can take just a little more wear and tear. I buy a lot of monthly comics, for the three dollars you have to pay for them there isn’t enough reading there. But, out of habit, since I’ve been buying comics since ’63, I’ll probably keep on getting monthly comics.
Allen Smith
As I also note in #1595, the other part of my theory is that if the monthlies don’t continue, the whole thing collapses. Production of new material for those trades is subsidized 22 pages at a time by the comics shop “test market” — and if we all lived in a world where you had to have 128 pages done before you could publish, very few creators would be able to afford to do comics. At least not in a world without author advances.
–John Jackson Miller
How many times have we heard about a publisher who has decided to stop publishing monthlies, and switch to a graphic novel format only…
Only to never be heard of again?
Without comics sales, you don’t have graphic novel sales. Like every rule, there are exceptions. But comics do fuel the graphic novel sales.
When I look at my own purchasing, I realize that at least for me, switching to trades wouldn’t work. Since the 1960′s pretty much without fail, there are certain titles I’ve always bought.
No, I’m not going to stop buying Detective or Fantastic Four because there’s a story arc that doesn’t work for me. But if these titles were a series of unrelated un-numbered trades, yeah, I’d only buy the ones that looked best, breaking my decades long buying habit. What would this do to the cash flow of comic shops and publishers?
And as John mentioned in the CBG article, the lack of advertising would certainly hurt the publisher, meaning lots less cash for R&D. We need the periodicals.
A reminder that a digest of this information now also appears in CBG in “The Databank,” starting with issue #1609.
–John Jackson Miller
I think the sales increase will continue into the second half of the year. While my 1st half of the year sales increase was less than the 9% gain posted here, it did increase.
This July was a monster for sales. It was my third best month since 1994. And that’s saying something.
Last year in July, I started a sale where I put a different title on sale each week, leading up to a store-wide sale in the last week. There was also Free Comic Book Day in July of last year. It was my best month of 2003.
I ran the same sales plan again this year, and this July blew last July away by nearly 11%. With one less event going on. At the very least, that’s good news… for me!
It’s nice to feel that the industry might be going in the right direction!
… and some good news from an indie publisher just getting started.
From late January to the end of June 2005 I’ve sold *over* 250 copies of HEROES IN BIRMINGHAM #1 at conventions that I have attended. While that may not be enough to make a blip for diamond, it does mean something when short print runs for indie comics have been imagined at the 100 to 250 print threashold.
I’ve been using print on demand, basically reprinting between 50 and 100 at a time (also because I have a very small apartment share), but if I had known in advance I might have printed 500 and got a better per-imprint return.
Are there any other indie pubishers who have had comics come out this year who would like to share some of their sales results? Feel free to add your comment, too.
More info about my comics, reviews, previews and fan art at:
http://www.bestfriendsproductions.com/hib
That’s good news Rachel, especially when many of the indy comics solicited through Diamond fail to break 1,000 orders in the direct market. Congrats.
Earl.