Diamond’s new reporting for this month continues: After a web post of the Top 100 trades yesterday, the media release includes indexed figures for the Top 300 Trade Paperbacks and Graphic Novels, a three-fold increase bringing the TPB reporting in line with the Top Comics list.
It is unknown whether this is intended to be the manner for the future, but if so, it represents a significant addition to Diamond’s reporting. I have yet to complete all calculations for November, but it looks as though the distributor sold a record $6 million of its Top 100 trades to retailers in the month, approaching June 2008’s record; $8.3 million, when the next 200 places are added.
The Comics Chronicles has regularly reported how the unreported trades each month lately have accounted for business in the neighborhood of to $10 million that’s not otherwise captured in the Top Seller lists. These 200 trades account for $2.3 million of that this month, so it would appear that the the Top Trades list is back to capturing at least half of all dollars represented by trades again.
I need to re-run some numbers before posting, as the cross-year comparisons now need to be adjusted. As done in the past when Diamond has added to the TPB count (from 10 to 25 to 50 to 100), we’ll both provide the whole total, as well as comparing the same number of apples to the same number of apples. This month, for example, just the Top 100 trades would appear to be just slightly above November 2007 sales for the same number of items, while just the Top 50 appear to be 26% ahead of the Top 50 from November 2003, when only 50 TPBs were reported.
UPDATE: Looking into the numbers, it appeared probable that the Trade Paperback chart and the Comics chart were using two different “magic numbers” for the Order Index Number. I have heard that there may be revisions coming for the comics chart — of so, I will delay my report until everything appears.
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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