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By John Jackson Miller

[Reprinted with permission from Comichron.com.]

The massive single order had effects on the charts in several ways. Comics unit sales were up 20% over last May: 7.5% of that came from the Loot Crate copies. Industry sales went up $5.8 million versus last May, but $2.5 million of that came fromBravest Warriors. The title cost $4.99, so it helped punch up the weighted average cover price — the price of the average comic book Diamond shipped — to a record $4.17; without the inclusion of the Loot Crate books, that average drops to $4.11. (Still a record, but it only beats the last one — set in April — by nine cents.) It also sent Boom‘s market share northward, making it the #4 publisher in terms of units sold last month — and #3 in dollar sales within just the Top 300.

Where we don’t see the distortion is in Diamond’s dollar shares, which only look at the dollars it was paid — and there, Boom is in fifth place. According to Diamond’s dollar rankings, it sold 2.4 copies of Bravest Warriors for every Secret Wars #2 it sold — and yet the distributor made more money on Secret Wars #2. Since Secret Wars #2 and Bravest Warriors cost the same — $4.99 — that would indicate that Loot Crate got a much better deal from Boom at wholesale on its copies than retailers got from Marvel. In the case of this issue and Februrary’s chart-topping Orphan Black, it’s probably more appropriate to look at these as promotional copies. Diamond stopped including comics promotionally cover-priced below $1 in its charts several years ago, but there doesn’t appear to be a rule concerning a wholesale price minimum. (If there were, we wouldn’t see graphic novels sold at deep discounts included in the charts — and those have often distorted the sales figures by several million dollars.)

There is, again, no single rule I can think of that would easily fit all occasions here — and as the number of box offerings proliferates, the potential impact on the charts grows. (Secret Wars #1 itself was in the Comic Block, Geek Fuel, and Comic Con boxes in May, and Convergence: Action Comics #1 andMythic #1 were also in the Comic Block box, although the numbers involved are likely much smaller than the Loot Crate case. It’s also not clear whether they’re all going through Diamond: DC didn’t go through Diamond with its first Loot Crate offering.) About the only suggestion I might have would be for Diamond to remove from the Top 300 charts sales any non-Direct Market accounts that do not order a variety of comics monthly; that would allow in sales from outlets like Hastings, but separate out promotional one-off purchases by outside firms. Such titles might be reported as an addendum to the charts, such that we’d know how they affected the market shares and bottom line; publishers would also see their sales reflected in that event. But that approach might be more difficult to do as the number of grab-bag retailers increases.

The aggregate changes are as follows:

TOP 300 COMICS UNIT SALES
May 2015: 8 million copies
Versus 1 year ago this month: +20%
Versus 5 years ago this month: +30%
Versus 10 years ago this month: +36%
Versus 15 years ago this month: +33%
YEAR TO DATE: 37.16 million copies, +16% vs. 2014, +29% vs. 2010, +26% vs. 2005, +30% vs. 2000

ALL COMICS UNIT SALES
May 2015 versus one year ago this month: +19.53%
YEAR TO DATE: +16.9%

May 2015: $33.34 million
Versus 1 year ago this month: +33%
Versus 5 years ago this month: +55%
Versus 10 years ago this month: +96%
Versus 15 years ago this month: +105%
YEAR TO DATE: $146.69 million, +21% vs. 2014, +46% vs. 2010, +75% vs. 2005, +94% vs. 2000

ALL COMICS DOLLAR SALES
May 2015 versus one year ago this month: +19.94%
YEAR TO DATE: +16.48%

May 2015: $7.27 million
Versus 1 year ago this month: unchanged
Versus 5 years ago this month: +21%
Versus 10 years ago this month, just the Top 100 vs. the Top 100: +28%
Versus 15 years ago this month, just the Top 25 vs. the Top 25: +34%
YEAR TO DATE: $35.1 million, -1% vs. 2014

ALL TRADE PAPERBACK  SALES
May 2015 versus one year ago this month: -0.29%
YEAR TO DATE: +3.41%

May 2015: $40.61 million
Versus 1 year ago this month: +26%
Versus 5 years ago this month: +38%
Versus 10 years ago this month, counting just the Top 100 TPBs: +72%
Versus 15 years ago this month, counting just the Top 25 TPBs: +118%
YEAR TO DATE: $181.76 million, +16% vs. 2014

ALL COMICS AND TRADE PAPERBACK SALES
May 2015 versus one year ago this month: +13.49%
YEAR TO DATE: +12.31%

May 2015: approximately $48.89 million (subject to revision)
Versus 1 year ago this month: +13%
Versus 5 years ago this month: +39%
Versus 10 years ago this month: +83%
YEAR TO DATE: $233.5 million, +12% vs. 2014

RELEASES
New comic books released: 436
New graphic novels released: 228
New magazines released: 44
All new releases: 708

As mentioned above, the average cover price of the comic books in Diamond’s Top 300 was $3.95, a record; there were 205 comics priced at $3.99, 26 above that mark, and 69 below. There were only 38 comics in the chart prices at $2.99, the previous most common price point. Click to see cover prices across time.

Our joint report with ICV2 on 2014’s overall comics sales is being finalized; look for it here in the coming days.

BY JOHN JACKSON MILLER

[Reprinted with permission from Comichron]

With today’s release of December comics orders from Diamond Comic Distributors — and our subsequent analysis and estimates for December 2014 comics sales now posted — Comichron has drawn upon that information to project estimates for the Top Thousand Comics and the Top Thousand Graphic Novels for 2014. Click to see them.
The tables are on the page just beneath the image links to individual months. As in past years, it is a large page, necessarily, so it may take a bit to load. Also as in the past, I have rounded off estimates to the nearest hundred comics.

Before launching into a discussion of what’s on the list, some more general thoughts on 2014, now that we’ve seen all the data:

• Last winter stank, but it didn’t matter. Headlines for comics sales in January, February, and March 2014 were dire in many places (though not here); the Direct Market was off 4% in the first quarter, overall, or about $5 million. But comics shops made that up in April alone. Across the next three quarters. the market was up 7.1%, or $28 million — allowing the final comics and graphic novel total sale for the year to be up more than 4%, or $23 million to $540.4 million.

It’s a good reminder that not all sales seasons are created equal (especially not as January 2014 had one of its weeks given to December 2013 in the accounting), and that the amount of volume in the market is what matters. It is also a good reminder as we look ahead to the figures for the first part of this year, which will be infused by Star Wars #1‘s blockbuster sales: its effect is likely to be even further amplified given the lower amount of releases to the market in the winter. The addition of a million-copy book to a market that might only see 6 or 7 million copies sold in January could be quite significant.

• 2014 was not the year of the blockbuster — despite a new record-setting comic book. As noted further below, Amazing Spider-Man #1 from April broke all sales records from the last fifteen years — but it was largely an outlier, as six months out of twelve the top-seller for the month was the book that leads the list when no blockbusters are around: Batman. (Not that Batman’s sales haven’t been blockbuster some months in the past, just that it is the typical industry leader in non-event months.) This seems to have played out in the charts in general, as we see in the Top Thousand and the larger indexes that the upper tier books didn’t carry as much weight this year, even as comics sales overall grew.

Here’s some visible evidence of the shape of the market, as seen on the lists. We find the following breakdowns for unit sales:

As you can see, the upper tiers, above 75,000 copies, fell off dramatically from 2013 to 2014. But the next tiers bulked up. The best guess is that about 3,800 comics sold at least 5,000 copies — which makes sense, considering that’s about where the 300th place cutoff is each month these days.

Now to that list. The Top Thousand Comics account for around 52.07 million copies; that’s well over half of all the comics that Diamond sold. The figure is down from 54.21 million copies in 2013, though Diamond’s unit sales of comics overall were up 0.25%.  In 2012 the figure was 53.43 million copies; in 2011, it was 47 million copies, and in 2010, the total was 45.3 million copies.

Using our database to project sales for other issues, it appears that the Top 2,500 Comics for the year sold around 78 million copies, down from 79 million in 2013. So the farther down the list we go, the more the unit sales picture improves.

In full retail dollars, the Top Thousand Comics sold for $201.03 million, a $1 million drop from last year’s total of $202.02 million. (See the 2013 article here and charts here.) Again, since Diamond’s dollar sales for comics were up 4%, it’s clear that the highest-selling comics were not where the growth was last year — but rather, the titles selling fewer than 25,000 copies each. And it’s growth from 2012’s figure, which was $191.4 million. (See the 2012 article here and charts here.)

Doing the same estimating for the Top 2,500 Comics puts 2014 ahead of 2013, $294 million versus $288 million.

Once again this year, almost every single one of the Top 100 comics on the list had a “multiple order codes” notation from Diamond, meaning there were variant covers or reprints combined to make the main entry.

The Top Thousand Graphic Novels, led by Saga Vol. 3, went for $81.19 million, up from $79.03 million in 2013, from $71.4 million in 2012, and from $58.4 million in 2011. Combined, the Top Thousand Comics and Top Thousand Graphic Novel lists account for about 52% of the orders by dollars Diamond received in publishing last year, which was around $540 million. That percentage is down from 54% in 2013 and 55% in 2012. Again, the best-selling books are accounting for less and less, even as the pie grows larger.

TOP COMICS OF THE YEAR, DECADE, AND CENTURY

The renumbered Amazing Spider-Man #1 was the top seller of the year; Comichron estimates that, all told, around 559,200 copies of the issue, including all variants, were ordered by Direct Market retailers in North America. That’s enough to make it the highest-selling comic book of the 21st Century through the end of 2014; Marvel’s Star Wars #1, released last week, will easily surpass it, but we won’t see it on the list until Diamond releases its 2015 end-of-year data next year.

So it will be a short reign for the Spider-Man issue atop the list — less than a year. The issue takes the spot held for five years by the Obama Amazing Spider-Man #583, with orders of 530,500 copies in 2009. You can see the updated top-sellers by year here.

The entire Top Comics of the 21st Century list has been updated, and it has been split into lists for thedecade of 2000-2009 and the decade of the 2010s. One more comic book from 2014, Walking Dead#132, cracked the Top 10 for the Century, landing at #8. It’s the third year in a row an issue from the series has broken into the list, but this one comes with a dagger in our charts, noting that most of its sales came from a single gigantic purchase by the repackager Loot Crate. While the copies were sold by Diamond and can’t be separated out, it is worth some kind of footnote so readers in future years will know why this one issue ranked the way it did.

The Top 10 since 2000, up to 2014:

Uncanny Avengers #1 and Civil War #4 were bumped from the Top 10.

Fourteen issues from 2014 made the Top 300 for the 21st Century list, once again fewer than last year. Five 2014 issues made the Top 100, and four made the Top 50.

THE PUBLISHERS
Who published the Top Thousand Comics this year? Here’s the breakdown:

That’s a pretty short list, with Aspen and Boom dropping out. Titan made the list, thanks to Doctor Who. Marvel picked up a bunch, while the biggest drop-off belonged to IDW, mostly for the reason that My Little Pony isn’t as high on the charts as it was in 2013.

And here’s the publisher breakdown of the Top Thousand Graphic Novels. Those with 10 or more entries:

Viz: 17 (+1 from 2013)
Oni: 10 (+1 from 2013)

Marvel’s loss is almost the size of DC’s gain, and Image picked up a lot. Random House and Boom also made headway into the list.

Walking Dead softcovers and hardcovers in the Top 2,500 added up to more than $6.5 million at retail — with comics bringing the total for the line up to nearly $10.8 million. That’s enough to give it a market share of exactly 2%, which would make it once again the seventh largest publisher for the year, after Dynamitewere it a separate firm.

COVER PRICES

 

Since comics are linked to prices to other goods and services — like paper and ink, and what it costs to hire talent — it’s not too surprising that the average prices tend to have been a bit higher. And we can see that there have been times in which prices have increased faster than others: particularly 2008-2010, when major publishers tried to go from $2.99 to $3.99 in defiance of the general recession the rest of the economy was suffering. Comics publishers pulled back on price increases at that point. But generally, we might expect that a $2.25 comic book in 1994 ought to cost about $3.50 now — which it might if most publishers didn’t eschew half-dollar increments. We’re not far off of that.

To a degree, some of the perception of high comics prices comes from a lack of collective memory about what comics used to cost: look back on monthly changes over time and annual median prices since 1961 here. And the track of the green line above would be different depending on what year it started in: 1994 was a year in which paper supply was in great demand, and so that $2.25 baseline could already have been high. But there generally haven’t been many wild departures from inflation in the general economy in the last 20 years.

Repeating the end-of-year report, the comic shop market in North America ordered more than $540 million worth of comics and graphic novels in 2014, an increase of 4% over 2013. The final end-of-year report, bringing in outside channels and digital, will appear later this year. You can look back on the 2013 Overall charts here.

There are 23 other years of Diamond annual reports on the site, going back to 1991. You can also find comparatives for how the market as a whole did across that time by viewing our Yearly Comics Salespage.

John Jackson Miller has tracked the comics industry for more than 20 years, including a decade editing the industry’s retail trade magazine; he is the author of several guides to comics, as well as more than a hundred comic books for various franchises. He is the author of several novels including Star Wars: Kenobi, Star Wars: A New Dawn, and the upcoming Star Trek: The Next Generation – Takedown, releasing January 27. Visit his fiction site athttp://www.farawaypress.com.

Marvel’s svp of sales David Gabriel has  confirmed that STAR WARS #1 will sell 1 million copies.  And already my inbox is jammed with missives from Brandon Schatz and John Jackson Miller.

It doens’t appear that Loot Crate is part of the reason for the record sales. However, at least 38 variant covers and a switch to some new distribution outlets:

We’ve seen Marvel explore new ways of getting comics exposed to potential new readers. Everything from strong retailer support, to unconventional methods of sale like LootCrate & GameStop. Can we expect new and different outlets for the comic to be sold through?

There are a number of new outlets that we’re working with here in terms of the folks purchasing and selling a large number of exclusive covers, which in the end means that this very large number of comics will be sold in places where we haven’t necessarily had comic sales. We’re confident we’ll have lots of new fans reading issue #1. And the great thing about this for all our comic retailer friends is that they’ll be able to sell those new fans the second, third, fourth issues and on and on.

Gabriel went on to say that even without all the variants, this would have been a best selling issue:

I can safely say that even without the massive variant plan on this first issue, the numbers on the regular cover alone would make this the highest selling debut of 2015. When you add in the astounding numbers from the variants you’ve got one huge launch, unseen in the direct market for two decades or more! And I should also give a quick thank you to all those retailers who are showing the support for this launch and the launch parties. They’re all really taking this to new levels and making history with this issue.

MIller has some context and thoughts here.

I have written a lot about the history of Star Warscomics in the past (including having written quite a few of them myself), and the million-copy mark bears a particular historical importance for the line.Star Wars #1 in 1977 was the first comic book since Dell‘s Uncle Scrooge in 1960 to top a million copies sold. Star Wars #1 did that in 1977 not through its initial sale to newsstands, but also through a newsstand reprint and at least three waves of bagged reprints offered to department stores through Western Publishing‘s Whitman arm. Sales of the bagged editions of the movie adaptation were so strong, according to former Marvel Editor in Chief Jim Shooter, that Western temporarily suspended its program of printing variant editions for other Marvel titles to focus solely on Star Wars reprints in late 1977. At least the first three issues of the 1977 series all would have topped a million copies, and possibly more.

Just throwing in y own two cents, places where these comics might be distributed:

Disney theme parks

Target

Wal-Mart

Toys ‘r’ Us

…and so on. Just guesses but all could contribute to the massive sales. Comics at theme parks have a long tortured history; when I was at Disney Comics 20 eyars ago many thought this would have saved the line, but stores didn’t like replenishing small budget items that had to be moved every month. Also, giveaway comics were often discarded in trash bins….although that mind set may have changed since then.

I hope we do find out more about where and how this comic is being sold. No matter how it worked out, it’s a real achievement for Marvel. COngrats to Jason Aaron, John Cassaday, Laura Martin and editor Jordan B. White on the huge commercial success.  

By John Jackson Miller

[reprinted with permission from Comichron.]

October smashed all comics records from the last decade-plus again, with a thousand new comic books, graphic novels, and magazines hitting the market. Based on Comichron’s analysis of data released by Diamond Comic Distributors, comics shops in North America ordered more than $56 million in printed product during the month. Seven comic books had orders of more than 100,000 copies. Click to see the sales estimates for comics ordered in October 2014.
Highlights of the month included Diamond’s Halloween ComicFest, its fall counterpart to Free Comic Book Day — and topping the charts again, we have a comic book whose sales were greatly inflated by a single order from the pop culture subscription club, Loot Crate. Image’s Walking Dead #132 far outdistanced other comic books offered in October, with estimated orders of more than 326,000 copies.

The question is, how many of those copies did Loot Crate order? There’s no way to know for sure — and no reason to expect that Diamond would reveal the ordering levels of one of its customer accounts. But unlike Rocket Raccoon #1, this issue of Walking Dead was in the middle of a series — and as such, the issues around it serve as clues. Issue #131 in September had first-month estimated sales of 69,810 copies; issue #133, which also came out in October, ranked 16th with orders of 69,561 copies.

That suggests a floor for #132 in the Direct Market of nearly 70,000 copies — meaning however many copies Loot Crate purchased, it could not have been more than 256,000. How many fewer? While theWalking Dead fifth season did premiere on TV on Oct. 12, eleven days after the release of #132, it doesn’t seem from the solicitation materials that the particular issue was the target of special attention. Diamond shipping records indicate no variant editions for the Direct Market. So while I had suggested here on Friday that the comic book could have topped the charts without Loot Crate’s help, seeing the numbers suggests that’s less likely. It could be possible, in fact, that Loot Crate ordered a quarter million copies of the issue.
Earlier in the year, Rocket Raccoon dropped 237,000 copies from its first Loot Crate-ordered issue to the next, but it would’ve dropped some part of that because of the difference between first- and second-issue sales. Loot Crate offers orders of specific individual bundles in addition to its subscriptions, so there could well be significant volatility from order to order. We need more data points to get a better gauge, but we are almost certainly in the peculiar situation of a variant, the Loot Crate labeled edition, being more numerous than the regular Direct Market version.

All this raises the question of whether such colossal orders are being reported in the right place. Yes, Diamond is selling the books nonreturnably to Loot Crate, just as it does copies of other variant comics produced for mail-order houses — though none of them, to my knowledge, have ordered more copies than the entire Direct Market bought of a comic book. Does it make a difference if these orders are reported with the regular monthly data? It really depends on your point of view.

Certainly the publisher with the Loot Crate deal benefits by having the orders reported in the same place, while all the other publishers who might have vied for first place do not. While the importance of its suppliers’ views are obvious, however, the target audience of distributor sales charts has always been retailers, looking to see what other shops are having success with and using the Order Index numbers to adjust their purchase numbers. The figures for Loot Crate-enhanced titles are thus basically useless for such a purpose, although they may tip shop-owners off that a bunch of new people have been introduced to the title.

There’s no similar gap on the graphic novel side of things; we see from the numbers that Ms. Marvel Vol. 1 topped the graphic novel charts with first-month orders of about 7,795 copies, surpassing the #2 title by a couple of cases.

RECORDS: There was, of course, the main record broken: the highest dollar value for comics, graphic novels, and magazines ordered in the Diamond Exclusive era, at $56.09 million. That’s double the total for ten years earlier, October 2004.

But other records were set. Retailers ordered 8.41 million copies of the Top 300 comics, the highest number since December 1997, when Darkness #11 led the market. The Top 300 comics were valued at $31.94 million, the highest figure seen in the period. Image’s unit sales in that grouping — again, boosted by Loot Crate — were its highest since April 2000 when Fathom was atop the charts, and Image’s dollar sales in the Top 300 were at the highest level since July 1998.

Retailers ordered $40.76 million of the Top 300 comics and the Top 300 graphic novels, the highest figure for that category in the Diamond Era. Marvel’s sales in that grouping were also its highest in the era.

The aggregate changes:

October 2014: 8.41 million copies
Versus 1 year ago this month: +8%
Versus 5 years ago this month: +36%
Versus 10 years ago this month: +42%
Versus 15 years ago this month: +30%
YEAR TO DATE: 69.17 million copies, -3% vs. 2013, +11% vs. 2009, +13% vs. 2004, +7 vs. 1999
ALL COMICS UNIT SALES
October 2014 versus one year ago this month: +10.14%
YEAR TO DATE: -0.66%

 —

October 2014: $31.94 million
Versus 1 year ago this month: +10%
Versus 5 years ago this month: +49%
Versus 10 years ago this month: +87%
Versus 15 years ago this month: +84%
YEAR TO DATE: $262.38 million, +1% vs. 2013, +23% vs. 2009, +49% vs. 2004, +57% vs. 1999
ALL COMICS DOLLAR SALES
October 2014 versus one year ago this month: +10.84%
YEAR TO DATE: +3.64%
—

October 2014: $8.82 million
Versus 1 year ago this month: +6%
Versus 5 years ago this month: -9%
Versus 10 years ago this month, just the Top 100 vs. the Top 100: +24%
Versus 15 years ago this month, just the Top 25 vs. the Top 25: 13%
YEAR TO DATE: $73.51 million, -3% vs. 2013
ALL TRADE PAPERBACK  SALES
October 2014 versus one year ago this month: +12.9%
YEAR TO DATE: +5.31%
—

October 2014: $40.76 million
Versus 1 year ago this month: +9%
Versus 5 years ago this month: +36%
Versus 10 years ago this month, counting just the Top 100 TPBs: +60%
Versus 15 years ago this month, counting just the Top 25 TPBs: +98%
YEAR TO DATE: $335.88 million, unchanged vs. 2013
ALL COMICS AND TRADE PAPERBACK  SALES
October 2014 versus one year ago this month: +11.46%
YEAR TO DATE: +4.15%

—

October 2014: approximately $56.09 million (subject to revision)
Versus 1 year ago this month: +11%
Versus 5 years ago this month: +64%
Versus 10 years ago this month: +101%
YEAR TO DATE: $451.19 million, +4% vs. 2013

RELEASES
New comic books released: 590
New graphic novels released: 374
New magazines released: 55
All new releases: 1,019

The average comic book in the Top 300 cost $3.75; the average comic book retailers ordered cost $3.80. The median and most common price for comics offered was $3.99. Click to see comics prices across time.

As mentioned Friday, Comichron projects the comic shop market will complete the year with orders totaling around $535-540 million; the smaller figure is reached if November and December are completely flat, the larger if sales are up 5%. Either one would bring the year-to-year increase to around 4%, the smallest year-to-year gain of the three up years. “Gravy Day” — the point after which any new sales are an increase over last year’s sum — should fall in the second week of December this year.

That’s it for October’s report. I’ll be speaking about the comics market in panels this weekend atAtomacon in N. Charleston, S. Carolina, and the weekend of Nov. 21-23 at Memphis Comic and Fantasy Con. Hope to see you there — and wherever you are, you can find your local comic shop here.
 
John Jackson Miller has tracked the comics industry for more than 20 years, including a decade editing the industry’s retail trade magazine; he is the author of several guides to comics, as well as more than a hundred comic books for various franchises. He is the author of several bestselling novels including Star Wars: Kenobi and the recently released Star Wars: A New Dawn. Visit his fiction site athttp://www.farawaypress.com. And be sure to follow Comichron on Twitter and Facebook!

by John Jackson Miller

The full estimates for June 2014 comics sales are now online, and as reported last weekend, at “halftime” we see a market that has rebounded from winter to bring this year’s sales even with last year.

Retailers spent almost the exact same amount of money on comics and graphic novels in the period in the first halves of this year and last year, but this year they bought slightly more graphic novels and slightly fewer comic books. But the losses in comic books mainly came during the winter; they’ve perked up since. We were down 4% in overall sales in the first quarter and up 4% in the second. (So there’s no “comics recession,” at least in the two-negative-quarters definition of the term.

Further, the “long tail” in comics has outperformed the Top 300. This is even more true of the long tail in graphic novels, though there is a caveat: the fact that Top 300 graphic novel revenue reads as off 8% for the year while Diamond says that the category overall is up 3% is partially explained by the fact that there were larger quantities of graphic novels dumped on the market at deep discount in the first half of 2013. We’re seeing fewer graphic novels in the itemized charts, yes, but Diamond is seeing more wholesale revenue — which is what it bases its percentages on.

June itself was led by Batman #32 — and saw some upward movement by several titles, including Harley Quinn. The top graphic novel, as noted on Friday, was Afterlife with Archie Vol. 1, the first Archie graphic novel to top the book list with orders approaching 12,000 copies.

The comparison data:

June 2014: 6.46 million copies

Versus 1 year ago this month: -8%

Versus 5 years ago this month: -2%

Versus 10 years ago this month: -1%

Versus 15 years ago this month: -1%

Q2 2014: 20.09 million copies, -3% vs.Q2 2013

YEAR TO DATE: 38.39 million copies, -8% vs. 2013, +8% vs. 2009, +6% vs. 2004, +1 vs. 1999

ALL COMICS UNIT SALES

June 2014 versus one year ago this month: -4.51%

Q2 2014 vs. Q2 2013: -1.29%

YEAR TO DATE: -6.36%

June 2014: $23.75 million

Versus 1 year ago this month: -7%

Versus 5 years ago this month: +5%

Versus 10 years ago this month: +28%

Versus 15 years ago this month: +43%

Q2 2014: $76.77 million, +2% vs. Q2 2013

YEAR TO DATE: $144.77 million, -4% vs. 2013, +20% vs. 2009, +41% vs. 2004, +49% vs. 1999

ALL COMICS DOLLAR SALES

June 2014 versus one year ago this month: -2.93%

Q2 2014 vs. Q2 2013: +3.9%

YEAR TO DATE: -1.43%

June 2014: $6.93 million

Versus 1 year ago this month: +2%

Versus 5 years ago this month: +15%

Versus 10 years ago this month, just the Top 100 vs. the Top 100: +25%

Versus 15 years ago this month, just the Top 25 vs. the Top 25: +27%

Q2 2014: $21.77 million, -7% vs. Q2 2013

YEAR TO DATE: $42.4 million, -8% vs. 2013

ALL TRADE PAPERBACK  SALES

June 2014 versus one year ago this month: +8.09%

Q2 2014 vs. Q2 2013: +4.33%

YEAR TO DATE: +2.93%

June 2014: $30.68 million

Versus 1 year ago this month: -5%

Versus 5 years ago this month: -2%

Versus 10 years ago this month, counting just the Top 100 TPBs: +15%

Versus 15 years ago this month, counting just the Top 25 TPBs: +52%

Q2 2014 vs. Q2 2013: $98.54 million, unchanged vs. Q2 2013

YEAR TO DATE: $187.18 million, -5% vs. 2013

ALL COMICS AND TRADE PAPERBACK  SALES

June 2014 versus one year ago this month: +0.33%

Q2 2014 vs. Q2 2013: +4.04%

YEAR TO DATE: -0.08%

OVERALL DIAMOND SALES (including all comics, trades, and magazines) 

June 2014: approximately $41.68 million (subject to revision)

Versus 1 year ago this month: unchanged

Versus 5 years ago this month: +13%

Versus 10 years ago this month: +91%

Q2 2014 vs. Q2 2013: $132.94 million, up 4% vs. Q2 2013

YEAR TO DATE: $249.53 million, unchanged vs. 2013

RELEASES

New comic books released: 424

New graphic novels released: 246

New magazines released: 34

All new releases: 704

The average comic book in the Top 300 cost $3.72; the average comic book
retailers ordered cost $3.67, a considerable drop. The median and most common price for comics offered was $3.99. Click to see comics prices across time.

Look here tomorrow for the release of the long-awaited 2013 end-of-year data, including the direct market, outside channels, and digital, the product of our first-ever joint analysis with ICV2.

John Jackson Miller has tracked the comics industry for more
than 20 years, including a decade editing the industry’s retail trade
magazine; he is the author of several guides to comics, as well as more
than a hundred comic books for various franchises. He is the author of
the New York Times bestseller Star Wars: Kenobi and the upcoming hardcover Star Wars: A New Dawn. Visit his fiction site at http://www.farawaypress.com. And be sure to follow Comichron on Twitter and Facebook!

By John jackson Miller

[reprinted with permission from Comichron.com]

The final comics sales estimates for April are out from Diamond Comic Distributors, and as reported here on Friday, Amazing Spider-Man Vol. 3 #1 was the best-selling title in the last 15 years in the comics market overall, and since the mid-1990s if we’re looking at just the comics shop market. (It was definitely a high-interest issue, as Friday’s post within a day became the most-read article in this site’s history!) With the new information, Comichron estimates that Marvel sold retailers nearly 532,600 copies of the $5.99 comic book, including all its different variant cover editions. Click to see the sales estimates for comics ordered in April 2014.

The Top Comics of the Century List won’t be updated until year-end, but barring any further blockbusters, expect to see this issue topping it. The sales of the previous leader,  Amazing Spider-Man #583, sales reached 530,500 copies over the course of an entire calendar year in 2009; Amazing Spider-Man Vol. 3 #1′s sales already top it. Unless something happens to reduce the total — like Diamond accepting a lot of returns because of damaged copies — we should expect it to hold its position relative to #583.

Some have noted that to a far greater degree than many previous top entrants on the record-setter list, sales of Amazing Spider-Man Vol. 3 #1 were largely boosted by retailers ordering many copies in order to earn incentive special editions. That’s true, but the practice is nothing new — and, in fact, every comic book Diamond sells retailers has a sales incentive attached: the more copies retailers order, the higher their discount gets. Amazing certainly lies on the extreme in its use of incentives, but if we’re handing out asterisks based on the presence of promotions, the historical records will be replete with them.

RECORDS: In addition to the performance of the top-selling title this month, April set some new marks, one of which is reflected on the Diamond-era records page:

• April saw the highest weighted average price for comic books ordered by retailers within the Top 300 — exactly $4 even, blowing away the previous record of $3.77. (We get this number by dividing the total dollars spent on comics in the Top 300 by the total number of Top 300 comics sold.)

This huge jump is entirely due to Amazing Spider-Man #1 and Marvel’s Deadpool #27, which had a $9.99 cover price: excising those two titles, the average weighted price is just $3.78. There’s not much of a case to be made for either issue — even Deadpool, at 100 pages — to not being included in the comics list, however: each is simply a special issue of an ongoing series, and there have been plenty of 100-page specials before.

It should be noted that we’ve seen many past occasions where a special issue bumps the average price far ahead briefly. The first time the weighted average passed $3 was December 2001, when the $7.95 Dark Knight Strikes Again #1 distorted the pricing curve. But the average weighted price was not to go above $3 for good until more than four years later.

The average weighted price went above $2 for the first time, incidentally, sometime before 1996.

• Marvel’s dollar sales of Top 300 comics reached $14.79 million, its highest figure seen in the Diamond Exclusive Era, which began in 1997. The records page does not track these individual marks for publishers, but we do keep tabs on them internally at Comichron.

The aggregate changes:

April 2014: 6.98 million copies
Versus 1 year ago this month: +3%
Versus 5 years ago this month: +4%
Versus 10 years ago this month: +9%
Versus 15 years ago this month: +11%
YEAR TO DATE: 25.28 million copies, -9% vs. 2013, +8% vs. 2009, +9% vs. 2004, +2 vs. 1999
ALL COMICS UNIT SALES
April 2014 versus one year ago this month: +6.96%
YEAR TO DATE: -6.91%
—

April 2014: $25.28 million
Versus 1 year ago this month: -9%
Versus 5 years ago this month: +8%
Versus 10 years ago this month: +9%
Versus 15 years ago this month: +2%
YEAR TO DATE: $95.96 million, -4% vs. 2013, +22% vs. 2009, +44% vs. 2004, +52% vs. 1999
ALL COMICS DOLLAR SALES
April 2014 versus one year ago this month: +17.37%
YEAR TO DATE: -0.89%
—

April 2014: $7.58 million
Versus 1 year ago this month: -14%
Versus 5 years ago this month: -3%
Versus 10 years ago this month, just the Top 100 vs. the Top 100: +47%
Versus 15 years ago this month, just the Top 25 vs. the Top 25: +16%
YEAR TO DATE: $28.21 million, -11% vs. 2013
ALL TRADE PAPERBACK  SALES
April 2014 versus one year ago this month: +16.78%
YEAR TO DATE: +5.44%
—

April 2014: $35.54 million
Versus 1 year ago this month: +8%
Versus 5 years ago this month: +7%
Versus 10 years ago this month, counting just the Top 100 TPBs: +41%
Versus 15 years ago this month, counting just the Top 25 TPBs: +85%
YEAR TO DATE: $124.18 million, -5% vs. 2013
ALL COMICS AND TRADE PAPERBACK  SALES
April 2014 versus one year ago this month: +17.18%
YEAR TO DATE: +1.04%
—

April 2014: approximately $48.17 million (subject to revision)
Versus 1 year ago this month: +17%
Versus 5 years ago this month: +15%
Versus 10 years ago this month: +80%
YEAR TO DATE: $164.77 million, +1% vs. 2013

RELEASES
New comic books released: 481
New graphic novels released: 299
New magazines released: 63
All new releases: 843

As noted above, the average comic book in the Top 300 cost $3.72; the average comic book retailers ordered cost $4.00. The median and most common price for comics offered was $3.99. Click to seecomics prices across time.

One curiosity in the charts: sales of graphic novels in the Top 300 were off 14% against last April, whereas Diamond reported that sales for the category overall were up nearly 17%. There’s no disconnect here. The first measure is calculated based on full price of everything sold, whereas Diamond’s overall figure is based on wholesale prices, or what it received from retailers. As last April’s report notes, Marvel put a lot of hardcovers into the market back then at deep discounts, which is why the Top 300 dollar value was inflated. This April’s total more realistically reflects what was sold.

The 300th-place comic book, incidentally, sold almost exactly 1% of the units that the #1 comic book sold. That’s a spread we haven’t seen in a long time (and it’s not a bad thing, as the 300th-place book still sold over 5,000 copies).

Next month’s report will reflect any reorders from Amazing #1, as well as sales activity spurred by Free Comic Book Day. Find your local comic shop here.

John Jackson Miller has tracked the comics industry for more than 20 years, including a decade editing the industry’s retail trade magazine; he is the author of several guides to comics, as well as more than a hundred comic books for various franchises. He is the author of the New York Times bestseller Star Wars: Kenobi and the upcoming hardcover Star Wars: A New Dawn. Visit his fiction site at http://www.farawaypress.com. And be sure to follow Comichron on Twitter and Facebook!