Updated 6/19: OK, some technical difficulties past, you can find the tables with sales estimates for May 2008 here.
My
guess at total market size earlier this week was based on a file
Diamond distributed to the media that mistakenly included the April
market shares under the banner for May; once that was ferreted out, the
new figures adjusted the estimate downward. (The market shares listed
here on the site and on Newsarama appear to be the correct ones.)
Last May
was a monster, so the comparatives were going to be hard to hit; there
was also one less shipping week this May. In any event, orders were off
in all categories against a year ago and all year-to-date categories are
now off — though the widest category, overall comics, trade paperback,
and magazine orders, is only off 2% year-to-date.
June 2007
was a much slower month than May 2007, so we’ll see how the
comparatives work next time. It’s beginning to look a bit like 2003, a
year when the market seemed to have been catching its breath after a
period of stronger growth; we won’t know whether that’s true for a few
months, I shouldn’t think. Having observed this market through colossal
highs and extreme lows, I always find it’s helpful to get a good number
of data points before drawing many conclusions.
With Diamond trade paperback indexed
reporting stretching back to early 1998, we can now also do ten-year
comparisons. To preserve apples-to-apples, I only compare the number of
titles Diamond had on its list in each year; the top 50 in 2003, the top
25 in 1998. There’s probably something to be said for the dollars
realized by the Top 25 trades more than doubling 10 years later, as we
see below.
TOP 300 COMICS UNIT SALES
May 2008: 7.06 million copies
Versus 1 year ago this month: -9%
Versus 5 years ago this month: +24%
Versus 10 years ago this month: +1%
YEAR TO DATE: 32.88 million copies, -7% vs. 2007
TOP 300 COMICS DOLLAR SALES
May 2008: $23.12 million
Versus 1 year ago this month: -6%
Versus 5 years ago this month: +47%
Versus 10 years ago this month: +36%
YEAR TO DATE: $104.36 million, -6% vs. 2007
TOP 100 TRADE PAPERBACK DOLLAR SALES
May 2008: $5.06 million
Versus 1 year ago this month: -17%
Versus 5 years ago this month, just the Top 50 vs. the Top 50: +60%
Versus 10 years ago this month, just the Top 25 vs. the Top 25: +140%
YEAR TO DATE: $21.91 million, -5% vs. 2007
TOP 300 COMICS + TOP 100 TRADE PAPERBACK DOLLAR SALES
May 2008: $28.18 million
Versus 1 year ago this month: -8%
Versus 5 years ago this month, counting just the Top 50 TPBs: +48%
YEAR TO DATE: $126.63 million, -8% vs. 2007
OVERALL DIAMOND SALES (including all comics, trades, and magazines)
May 2008: $36.79 million ($40.66 million with UK)
Versus 1 year ago this month: -10%
Versus 5 years ago this month: +55%
YEAR TO DATE: $171.03 million, -2% vs. 2007, +46% vs. 2003
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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