I am pleased to report that, website problems mostly past, my sales estimates for August 2008 are now online.
This is working out to be a year where we’re doing slightly worse than last year most months in the periodical categories; but slightly ahead most months in the trade paperbacks — and then when the whole backlist is filled in, we catch up with last year. We’re $10 million behind in the Top 300 year-to-date, almost $2 million ahead in the Top 100 trades in the year-to-date — and then the rest is made up by comics and trades outside the top groupings. Amazingly, the January-to-August total for 2008 is just $47,000 higher than the total for the same period last year — about the contribution of a single issue of a single mid-list comic book!
This is also the first month in some time where we’ve seen Marvel with this many more items than DC on the list — 19. They’re not all new titles, and a lot are variant covers and second printings. The breakdowns and comparatives:
TOP 300 COMICS UNIT SALES
August 2008: 6.86 million copies
Versus 1 year ago this month: -11%
Versus 5 years ago this month: +14%
Versus 10 years ago this month: -2%
YEAR TO DATE: 53.6 million copies, -7% vs. 2007
TOP 300 COMICS DOLLAR SALES
August 2008: $22.27 million
Versus 1 year ago this month: -10%
Versus 5 years ago this month: +32%
Versus 10 years ago this month: +20%
YEAR TO DATE: $171.4 million, -5% vs. 2007
TOP 100 TRADE PAPERBACK DOLLAR SALES
August 2008: $5.36 million
Versus 1 year ago this month: +16%
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: +60%
YEAR TO DATE: $38.51 million, +4% vs. 2007
TOP 300 COMICS + TOP 100 TRADE PAPERBACK DOLLAR SALES
August 2008: $27.63 million
Versus 1 year ago this month: -6%
Versus 5 years ago this month, counting just the Top 50 TPBs: +36%
Versus 10 years ago this month, counting just the Top 25 TPBs: +19%
YEAR TO DATE: $210.27 million, -4% vs. 2007
OVERALL DIAMOND SALES (including all comics, trades, and magazines)
August 2008: $36.26 million ($40 million with UK)
Versus 1 year ago this month: -7%
Versus 5 years ago this month: +46%
YEAR TO DATE: $286.58 million, +0.2% vs. 2007, +47% 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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