By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 2/3/2016
We're heading towards a tipping point in the market. Companies are partnering up with Walmart and Loot Crate and other alternative sales avenues are on the rise. DC is undergoing a Rebirth. Where do we go from here? How do we build a comics industry for the 21st century?
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 12/30/2015
The Hollywood Reporter and Comichron put together a list of 2015’s best selling single issues, based on estimated sales only of course, so salt yadda yadda: Star Wars No. 1 (985,976) (Marvel Entertainment) January Secret Wars No. 1 (527,678) (Marvel Entertainment) May Bravest Warriors: Tales From The Holo John No. 1 (502,737) (BOOM! Studios) May […]
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 6/16/2015
[Reprinted with permission from Comichron.com.]
Marvel’s Secret Wars revival made a big splash in the comics market in May, moving more than 527,000 copies to comic shops in North America. That’s according to Comichron’s estimates for May 2015 comics sales based on information released by Diamond Comic Distributors. You can find the report here.
That’s enough to place the issue fourth on the list of best-selling comics of the century, and it could go higher with reorders. It came in a month when strong six-figure launches from A-Force and Old Man Logan, and a dominating performance from Batman: Earth 2 Vol. 2 on the graphic novel charts helped push the market to a 13% increase.
The Secret Wars issue edged out a surprise second-place finisher, Bravest Warriors: Tales from the Holo John #1 — and with the comic book, Loot Crate‘s effect on the Direct Market sales charts may finally have reached — pun entirely intended — cartoonish levels. Just over half a million copies of the comic book based on the animated series were shipped by Diamond, and indications are that most of those copies went directly to one customer: Loot Crate, which then doled them out to its subscribers (who do not know in advance what comic books they’re going to receive). When the regular Bravest Warriors title appeared on the periodical charts more than a year ago, it was selling around the 4,000 copy level, and while this first issue likely sold more copies than that in comic shops, it’s likely that more than 98% of the copies went to one customer.
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: Heidi MacDonald,
on 11/10/2014
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: Heidi MacDonald,
on 6/12/2014
art by Skottie Young
by Brandon Schatz
A few days before the book’s final order cut-off with retailers, Marvel let it slip that their upcoming Rocket Raccoon series had garnered over 300,000 initial orders, well above expected estimates for the series. Yesterday, the other shoe dropped as reports came in regarding mass quantities of the book having been ordered by Loot Crate, a company that sends boxes filled with assorted genre and video game paraphernalia to homes via subscription.
With numbers ranging from roughly 100,000 upwards to 180,000, depending on who’s been dong the digging, many feel as though this places an asterisk on the numbers Marvel so proudly announced. To put this into context, people who are subscribing to a service are receiving product, much like a shop’s regular subscription service. What’s more, many of these copies will be read and experienced by those who don’t normally make the regular trip to the comic shop, exposing the series and comics in general to a new audience – and while Marvel’s initial announcement wasn’t all that forthcoming, the information stands: Rocket Raccoon #1 has received over 300,000 in initial orders, a number that has no doubt grown as retailers made their final order adjustments with that information in mind.
Step 1) Modernize distribution so that data flows bottom up across the vertical from store to publisher and back to store
Step 2) Publishers realize that their audience is now the readers, not the stores, which means reworking their advertising/marketing
Step 3) Actually use the data from step 1 to help with step 2
Step 4) Profit
From the data I see Loot Create (all the geek boxes) provide no long term lift, there’s a next issue crash. The digital redemptions from the boxes I’m told is worse.
Walmart is horrible, best the industry stay away. They leave nothing but damage in everything they touch.
Reboots have become the crack cocaine of the comic book industry. When you have to relaunch your entire line every few years, something is wrong. Namely, the people in charge don’t know what they’re doing.
A. Make comics affordable. Go old school and do cheaper print runs on cheaper stock. Drop the price to 3 bucks or less.
B. Sell through Walmart and other mass market retailers. Sell them anywhere a retailer wants to put them on display.
C. Stop it with the endless variant covers. It does nothing to grow your market beyond the die hard fans.
D. Wipe the collectible mind set from your brain-this is for everyone: the artists, the writers, the publishers and the retailers. That is THEE WORST freaking thing to infect the entire industry.
E. Stop trying to impress the other publishers and start publishing stories that people want to read.
F. Remember how old you were when you started reading comics and publish more stories for the next gen readers.