Sales of comic books and trade paperbacks to comics shops increased
9% in the first half of 2005 to $168.4 million, according to my analysis of sales reports released by Diamond Comic Distributors on July 21. June’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. Click to see the sales estimates for June 2005.
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. 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.
Diamond’s overall sales: Diamond publishes dollar market shares for its top 20 publishers
across all comics, trade paperbacks, and magazines. 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. 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.
Market shares: Marvel led DC in Diamond’s reported overall unit and dollar market shares, and that held true for each of the 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.
Comichron founder John Jackson Miller has tracked the comics industry for more than 25 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 novels including Star Wars: Kenobi, Star Wars: A New Dawn, Star Trek: Discovery – The Enterprise War, and his upcoming release, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds – The High Country. Read more about them at his fiction site.
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