Powered by a strong launch for Justice by Alex Ross, the August comics market posted solid double-digit gains over the same month in 2004, according to CBG?s analysis of the sales reports released by Diamond Comic Distributors on Sept. 16.
?August shows it doesn?t take a comic book topping 200,000 copies for the market to wind up ahead,? 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 now shipping to stores; also available here.). ?While there wasn?t an All-Star brightening the scene, the large number of offerings from the five largest periodical publishers combined to put this August ahead by low double digits over last August. Marvel, DC, Image, Dark Horse, and IDW combined to take 246 spots ? meaning last place in the Diamond Top 300 was around 2,100 copies, higher than we?ve seen it in a while.
Combined sales of comics, trade paperbacks, and magazines by Diamond were estimated by CBG to be $32.6 million, up 18% over last August. CBG?s chart analysis for August appears here.
Comics unit sales: The Top 300 comic books had retailer orders of 7.13 million copies in August, 12% more than August 2004, which had one less shipping week.
?August was the second five-week month in three months,? Miller said, a quirk of the calendar that?s provided this summer with an additional week of sales. ?While some contend that publishers spread their monthly offerings out such that the number of shipping weeks don?t matter, obviously when it comes to late product, five-week months have a 25% better chance of catching sales for products not originally scheduled for them.?
Two issues each of New Avengers and Green Lantern helped power the strong month.
The highest (and only) debut publisher in the Top 300 was Red Eagle. Its Robert Jordan?s New Spring placed 215th, with approximately 5,500 copies sold.
For the first eight months of 2005, the Top 300 comics from each month have sold a combined 50.23 million copies, an increase of 4% over the same period in the previous year.
Comics dollar sales: The Top 300 comic books had sales worth $20.83 million in August, 14% more than August 2004.
For the first eight months of 2005, the Top 300 comics from each month have sold a combined $144.78 million, an increase of 5% over the same period in the previous year.
Trade paperbacks : The Top 100 trade paperbacks and graphic novels reported by Diamond had orders worth $3.66 million at full retail in August. Adding those to the Top 300 comics for the month yields $24.5 million, an increase of 11% over August 2004.
For the first eight months of 2005, the Top 300 comics and the Top 100 trade paperbacks from each month had orders worth $174.39 million, an increase of 7% over the same period 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 those 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 August 2005 total was $32.58 million, which increases to $36.03 million, when Diamond?s United Kingdom orders are added. The U.S. figure is a whopping 18% over that for August 2005. Overall, in the last eight months the U.S. industry stands at $230 million, up 9% over the same period in 2004.
CBG cautions 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 ancillary items were removed.
Market shares: Marvel led both unit and dollar categories in Diamond?s reported overall unit and dollar market shares, but each had well over a third of the market to themselves. DC had 97 comics in the Top 300 versus Marvel?s 85. Image, with 37 titles in the Top 300, posted one of its better months in a while ? though Dark Horse still surpassed it in the overall categories.
Price analysis: The average comic book on Diamond?s Top 300 list cost $3.17, unchanged from the same month in 2004.
The weighted average price ? that is, the cost of the average comic book Diamond sold ? was $2.92, up from $2.75 last year.
The average price of the comics that made the Top 25 was $2.82, up from $2.57 last in August 2004.
Historical context: Increasingly, Comics Buyer?s Guide is adding to its online library of past sales figures. Sales figures from this month in 2004 can be found here.
The archive of all months posted to date, going all the way back to July 1997, appears here. ?We?re adding a few more months each week, so keep checking back,? Miller said.
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 664 comic books ? with a 95% probability that the real figure was between 663 and 665
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. A sample issue of Comics Buyer’s Guide can be read online here.
The Magazine
Hi John.
I pointed out ICV2′s estimates to Mike Miller CEO of Alias Enterprises on the Alias message boards. Obviously Mike’s comments are based on the ICV2 estimates rather than your own but I thought they were interesting comparisons even so. The ICV2 estimates don’t include orders via Diamond UK, which may account for some of the difference between the estimates and what Mike says were actually ordered.
ICV2 #s for DWTD #2: 2,937
Actual sales of DWTD #2: 3,601
ICV2 #s for Judo Girl #1: 3,605
Actual sales of JG #1: 4,272
ICV2 #s for XIII #1: 7,534
Actual sales of XIII #1: 8,801
Diamond UK is a good 10% above what we usually find in these charts — and you are right, it is not counted in the Diamond charts. Also, reorders after the initial month that, say, Judo Girl #1 was out may also be part of the total that Alias is looking at.
Another element that used to be a factor in figuring these numbers is that not all the publishers would get their purchase orders at the same time, relative to when Diamond calculates the order index codes. As such, it was common to see publishers reporting figures higher or lower than those that the calculations suggested. Milton at ICV2 and I used to always have different calculations, simply because we used different baskets of titles to calculate the likely order index number.
Now, since Diamond went to reporting not preorders but end-of-month sales in February 2003, much of that variance has dropped out. Our figures and ICV2s are much closer, in part because the end of month for one publisher is the same as the end of month for another. I’m getting standard errors that are very, very low relative to the preorder days. So the deviation you see in Alias figures is, indeed, unusual these days — but since they all seem to be higher by about the same amount, that gives me reason to suspect UK or something else is in there.
It’s all part of why we try, at least at CBG, to use 50 or more titles each month in calculating the order index number. If I tried to calculate from a handful of numbers that are off for whatever reason, that difference then balloons out to the rest of the market if those are the only ones applied to the order index number.