One of the few major publishers still shipping comics to subscribers Periodical Class — and thus filing Statements of Ownership with sales figures — is Archie. Seeing the Statements for it is always particularly useful, as Archie owes more of its sales to the newsstand and thus direct market numbers are not very meaningful. As … Read more
Edit: Caught a simple but embarrassingly large math error, thanks to John diBello. The ICV2 data included Diamond data within. Corrections made to the math, and new info below… San Francisco retailer Brian Hibbs has his annual look at the Nielsen Bookscan numbers for trade paperbacks online, and again it provides a lot of interesting … Read more
Completing its roundup of 2008, Diamond Comic Distributors has released its rankings for its Top 300 Comics and Top 300 trade paperbacks for the year, as well as final market shares. And, just as it’s doing now on a monthly basis, it released a Top 50 Independent list for the year — independent meaning all … Read more
As noted also in the updated main post below: Dan Manser, director of marketing at Diamond, has confirmed my understanding of the numbers: Indeed, all three findings that have been reported are correct. The 3-4% drops in Diamond’s 2008 sales mentioned in previous interviews with Bill Schanes and Roger Fletcher refer to Diamond’s overall sales, … Read more
Diamond Comic Distributors released its top-sellers list and market shares for December 2008 last week — and as the end of a quarter and the end of the year, the report from the comics industry’s main distributor provides a lot to talk about. First, speaking just of December: As seen from the tables with estimates … Read more
Diamond continues its rollout today of the December 2008 comics sales figures, with a release of a longer (and corrected) market share list and the Top 100 Comics. On the December number score: First off, my hunch was correct that the dollar and unit sales columns were reversed in last week’s “sneak peak,” so I’m … Read more