The recovery which began in the comics industry in late 2000 is continuing, with 2005 now projected to be the fifth consecutive year of overall sales growth, according to CBG?s analysis of the October 2005 sales reports released by Diamond Comic Distributors on Nov. 11.
Diamond?s sales of comic books, trade paperbacks, and magazines to North American retailers are on pace for a $352 million year, up from $328 million in 2004, said John Jackson Miller, F+W Publications editorial director for collectibles and compiler of the world?s largest collection of comics circulation figures, the CBG Standard Catalog of Comic Books here.).
?We?re up 7% year-over-year for the first ten months, and it would take a cataclysmic holiday sales season to prevent a positive performance,? Miller said. Overall comics, trade, and magazine sales are estimated at $288.42 million through October 2005, versus $269 million through October 2004. Miller said a growth rate of 7%, if it holds, would be slightly better than 2004?s 6% rate, an improvement over 2003?s sales of $310.6 million.
?It might not be the double-digit gains we were on pace for earlier in the year, or like we saw in 2002 ? but it?s better to be in a class with 2004, which saw modest growth, than 2001 or 2003, in which the industry eked out the narrowest of gains,? he said. ?And they all beat anything we went through in the mid- and late-1990s, when there were minus signs attached to everything.?
CBG?s chart analysis for October 2005 appears here.
Infinite Crisis leads DC to a big win. Helped by the estimated 249,100 copies of Infinite Crisis #1 ordered by retailers, DC managed a rare feat, leading Marvel in every single category calculated by CBG: Top 300 Comics units, Top 300 Comics dollars, Top 300 Comics plus Top 100 Trades, and the Overall category, which includes backlist trades and comics not in the Top 300.
While it came close in May of this year, DC last led Marvel in all calculations in August 2000. Observers will note that there aren?t many high-profile DC products in that month?s listing ? but where it surpassed Marvel was in volume of releases.
?In August 2000, DC placed fully twice as many comics in Diamond?s Top 300 as Marvel did, 98 to 49,? Miller said. ?This was right at the end of the comics recession and preceded the increase in Marvel?s number of offerings.? By contrast, in October 2005, DC ranked 91 items to Marvel?s 78. Since Marvel has often been able to outsell DC in units despite having fewer offerings, this change suggests that DC is digging into Marvel?s per-title performance advantage.
However, he said those figures can be hard to interpret. ?When it comes to computing per-title sales averages for publishers ? comics? version of baseball?s ?slugging percentage? ? it?s necessary to drop out reprints, reordered titles that make it into the Top 300 a second of third time, variant covers and other things that might be oranges to the apples of titles receiving initial orders.? Doing that, DC appears to have had 80 first-time items in October, averaging 32,000 copies each, where Marvel had 69 first-time offerings averaging 36,700 copies each.
?It does suggest the old axiom of the random Marvel selling one-and-a-half times the copies of the random DC is no longer accurate, now that Marvel?s line has grown to include kids? titles and subgenres that aren?t necessarily at the top of the charts,? he said. ?On the other hand, it?s the presence of that new material that?s helped make the difference between the recession of 2000 and the recovery of 2005.?
Comics unit sales: The Top 300 comic books had retailer orders of 6.12 million copies in October, 3% more than October 2004, which had the same number of shipping weeks.
There were only two publishers new to the Top 300. Zenscope was the highest ranking publisher debut, with its Grimm’s Fairy Tales #1 placing 197th with approximately 6,100 copies ordered. The first comics product from Bill Jemas’ new firm, 360ep, placed 242nd with approximately 3,400 copies ordered. The issue, Advent Rising: Rock Planet #1, is based on the Majesco video game.
For the first 10 months of 2005, the Top 300 comics from each month have sold a combined 63.1 million copies, an increase of 3% over the same period in the previous year.
Comics dollar sales: The Top 300 comic books had sales worth $18.16 million in October, 6% more than in October 2004.
For the first 10 months of 2005, the Top 300 comics from each month have sold a combined $182.35 million, an increase of 4% over the same period in the previous year.
Trade paperbacks: The Top 100 trade paperbacks and graphic novels reported by Diamond had orders worth $3.76 million at full retail in October. Adding those to the Top 300 comics for the month yields $21.91 million, an increase of 2% over October 2004.
For the first 10 months of 2005, the Top 300 comics and the Top 100 trade paperbacks from each month had orders worth $219.6 million, up 5% over the same period in 2004.
Among trade paperbacks, Vertigo First Offenses was the top seller. Essentially a DC 100-page giant at $4.99, its inclusion in this category is unusual, since similarly sized items (and at higher prices) have been customarily been classed by Diamond with the comic books.
It’s not unprecedented, however, as Diamond has classed a handful of periodical-like items before with the trades — usually items likely to be listed on the Star System for reorders. The Top Cow Collected Editions from several years back were smaller still, for example. Now, as it has on those occasions, it is likely to feed fuel to the debate about what physically constitutes a comic book as opposed to a trade paperback. Marvel Must Haves, for example, are today categorized with the comics, despite being the size or larger than the Top Cow editions which once were listed for a time as trades.
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 October 2005 total was $29.11 million, which increases to $32.44 million, when Diamond?s United Kingdom orders are added. The figure is 4% over October 2005. Again, overall, the last 10 months stand at $288 million, up 7% over the same period in 2004.
Note the nearly $70 million difference between the ?overall? grouping for the yea
r and the Top 300 comics plus Top 100 trades grouping. While there are magazines and comics below 300th place each month in there, most of this money is coming from trade paperbacks below 100th place: the ever-growing backlist. It can be argued that two-thirds of trade paperback dollar sales are now in that region not reported on Diamond?s charts.
As usual, CBG cautions that the ?overall? category also 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: Again, DC led Marvel in Diamond?s reported overall unit and dollar market shares. Image again led Dark Horse in narrower categories but was surpassed in the overall category.
Apart from the DC/Marvel reversal, little movement can be seen in the market shares in October; in fact, 19 out of last month’s Top 20 dollar suppliers for comics, games, and magazines appeared in this month’s Top 20 list.
Price analysis: The average comic book on Diamond?s Top 300 list cost $3.20, up from $3.05 in October 2004.
The weighted average price ? that is, the cost of the average comic book Diamond sold ? was $2.96, up from $2.88 last year.
The average price of the comics that made the Top 25 was $2.74, up from $2.68 in 2004.
Historical context: Increasingly, Comics Buyer?s Guide is adding to its online library of past sales figures.
The archive of all months posted to date appears here.
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 699 comic books ? with a 95% probability that the real figure was between 698 and 700.
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.
The Magazine
YAY!
I should FINALLY get to read Infinite Crisis 1 tomorrow…
along with the other DCs I missed in September and October and much of November from Katrina…
UPDATE: The original posting has been amended to add our quantitative analyses both for the month and the year.
We have also posted comparative sales from the remainder of 2000, including http://www.cbgxtra.com/Default.aspx?tabid=1152” target=_blank >October 2000.
A hearty bowl of Numbers Crunch, from Kellogg’s…
Actually, what John meant to report was that comic book fans and professionals are gaining weight at an alarming rate. Time to hit the gym, kids.
Tony Isabella
talking through his meds
It’s 7° in the direct sun outside here today, Tony. That’s not growth, that’s insulation.
So, JJM, I guess I shouldn’t mention that it’s 80 degrees outside right now?
Sorry, couldn’t resist.
Adam Sternberg
Oh, they think we’ll see 80° here in Wisconsin tomorrow. 80° Kelvin, but…
Advice for a good life: Try not to live anywhere where the forecaster uses the phrase “life threatening” more than once in a five-minute broadcast.
>>Advice for a good life: Try not to live anywhere where the >>forecaster uses the phrase “life threatening” more than once >>in a five-minute broadcast.
Given the whether this year, that could be anywhere in the country!
The Top 300 comic books had sales worth $18.16 million in October…
across all comics, trade paperbacks, and magazines…The October 2005 total was $29.11 million…
John, thanks for the helpful data supplied to folks like me who are examining the state of the industry. The two figures quoted above, am I correct in believing that those are retailer dollars based on the cover prices and that actual sales to Diamond were less? Are these figures for all of North America, or only the United States?
>>The two figures quoted above, am I correct in believing that those are retailer dollars based on the cover prices and that actual sales to Diamond were less?
Yes, that is the total full-retail price of all items sold by Diamond to retailers. Diamond’s actual receipts would be less than half that, and its actual share of the cover price is in the single digits, percentage-wise.
The only exception are items which are “net” priced, which indicates exactly what retailers paid Diamond for them. In comics, this is often the case with variants with no cover prices, where Diamond will charge $5 and the retailers will charge whatever they want. You don’t see much of that any more in comics, but it is a staple of toy pricing.
>>Are these figures for all of North America, or only the United States?
North America. The Canadian market became completely indistinguishable from the U.S. market in the mid-1990s.
Andromeda Distribution went under on April 13, 1995. Styx International eliminated is catalog in August 1995. Multi-Book got out of comics distribution on Dec. 1, 1995, and Diamond agreed to fill its orders. Capital’s Canadian distribution partner STV Distribution cut back to just subdistributing non-DC comics; I can’t remember what happened to it.
There continued to be some small non-Diamond sales into Canada through a 1996 start-up company called Big Picture, but I stopped hearing from them after a year or so.
Another approach to accessing strength in the market is to consider DC and Marvel’s publishing profits.
(One could also add Image and Dark Horse.)
As DC and Marvel comprise almost all of the market their year to year publishing profit gains yield a solid indicator.
Things are well with DC and Marvel. We continue to see both companies release $75 volumes which indicates that both companies are waking up to the “well heeled” collector.
I’ve been seeing an odd pattern. Whenever gas prices go up, I sell more high end books. When prices drop, sales slow down on the more expensive books.
Right now, gas prices are back up, and no one is complaining about comic prices. It does still shocks me a little to ring up over $50 in comic sales, and slide them into a small sack! After all, I’ve been retailing comics since the days when they were all cover priced at 60 cents!
But, overall, customers are happy with the quality of the current content. It’s not like back in the Nineties, where the artists seemingly took over the industry. Many artists who were then also doing their own writing are now back to doing art only. DC seemed to realize first, and Marvel since, that you’ve got to have a combination of great writing with great art. Art alone can no longer generate big sales.
Consistently providing a good product is what’s fueling the steady upturn in the market. Also, there have been less and less problems with surprise ‘shock content’ in recent months. Being realiable can’t be underrated.
Well here’s another irony.
I do help out the LCS but by and large I preorder via mail order. I can’t see paying the LCS $100 and getting $100 worth of comics when 40% discounts are available.
But if there weren’t the 40% discount I would actually spend less money. Because I don’t want to pay full price.
The other irony is that even with the discounting I still find that there is more to buy than what I’m willing to pay. And I’m still largely unaware of what’s going on as DC and Marvel are shooting out close to 200 titles a month.
One wonders to what extent customers are achieving discounts yet at the same time spending as much or even more money.