Diamond Comic Distributors appears to have shaved a full week off of its process when it comes to starting the rollout of sales information; as with last month, we have the actual order rankings almost immediately. Diamond is also back to rolling out just the Top 10 Comics and Trade Paperbacks this time with the full list to follow; click to see the charts for November 2009.
Blackest Night #5 helped DC again dominate the highest part of the top-sellers list for comics; only Captain America Reborn #4 in third from Marvel kept DC from repeating last month’s feat of taking the top six slots. Five of the Top 10 comics ordered by retailers were priced at $2.99, five at $3.99. (They very nearly alternate!)
The unit shares and dollar shares show the same companies in the top seven slots: Marvel, DC, Dark Horse, Image, IDW, Dynamic Forces (Dynamite) and Boom.
Image’s Chew, a $9.99 collection, led the trade paperbacks list. It seems likely that one of the $20 volumes below it on the list will have a higher dollar contribution, but that determination will have to wait for the order index numbers.
Probably the most interesting thing about November 2009’s data release, when it all becomes available, is in that trade paperbacks list. It was in November 2008 that Diamond first began publishing its Top 300 Trades, rather than its Top 100. Until now, this year, all year-to-year comparisons have been for the truncated Top 100 lists, but now we’ll be able to see a one-to-one (or, rather, a 300-to-300) comparison. My guess, given what we’ve seen in the Overall estimates, is that the Top 300s for this year have tended to come in slightly below last year dollar-wise, but we’ll have to see.
Diamond will release its full Top 300s with its order index numbers next — probably early next week if the pattern holds. As explained here before, because of the earlier release, it is not possible to obtain all the needed corroborating data immediately to generate the sales estimates and aggregated overall estimates that we do here on The Comics Chronicles; those tend to become available mid-month, as the individual publishers get their final actual sales reports.
However, as always, we’ll publish the estimate-less rankings when they become available and update as we have more information. Be sure to get our RSS feed and sign up for updates on Twitter.
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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