{"id":4258,"date":"2017-03-06T13:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-03-06T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2020-07-30T18:39:51","modified_gmt":"2020-07-30T23:39:51","slug":"february-2017-comics-sales-estimates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/2017\/03\/06\/february-2017-comics-sales-estimates\/","title":{"rendered":"February 2017 comics sales estimates now online"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Diamond Comic Distributors<\/a><\/b> has released its full comics sales report for February 2017, and the Comichron estimates based on those sales figures are now online. The estimates now appear on our master page for February 2017 Comic Book Sales,<\/a><\/b> and are sortable and searchable.<\/div>\n
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As mentioned here Friday, February was another month in which a lot of comic books were shipped to the Direct Market at relatively little cost to retailers, although for a different reason than in January. That month,\u00a0Marvel\u2019s 10% minimum overship\u00a0<\/a><\/b>resulted in the largest number of comic books sent to market in any January since\u00a01997<\/a><\/b>. This time, it was\u00a0Image\u2019s<\/b>\u00a025th anniversary \u2014 and its promotionally priced comic books \u2014 that caused the largest number of new comic books to be shipped than in any February since 1997, according to\u00a0Comichron\u2019s<\/b>\u00a0analysis of data released today by\u00a0Diamond Comic Distributors.<\/a><\/b><\/div>\n
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More than 7.85 million comic books were shipped by Diamond to retailers in North America, and more than 750,000 of them were copies of\u00a0Walking Dead<\/i>\u00a0#163<\/b>, which retailers ordered at its 25-cent cost. Special no-cover-price variants were also offered for retailers who ordered 250 copies or more, and again for 500 copies or more.<\/div>\n
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Diamond does not include comics cover-priced under a dollar in its Top Sellers lists, a move made after\u00a0Batman: The Ten-Cent Adventure<\/a>,<\/i><\/b>\u00a0<\/b>a\u00a0nine-cent issue of\u00a0Fantastic Four<\/i><\/a><\/b>\u00a0and a\u00a013-cent\u00a0Gen13<\/i><\/a><\/b>\u00a0topped the charts in 2002, along with all the original Free Comic Book Day issues. (We removed those issues to the tops of their respective months, with asterisks rather than rankings, in the Comichron charts.) So while Diamond acknowledged the performance of the\u00a0Walking Dead<\/i>\u00a0issue in its press release, it ranked\u00a0Marvel<\/b>‘s\u00a0<\/i>Star Wars: Darth Maul<\/i>\u00a0#1<\/a><\/b>\u00a0as the top-seller for February.<\/div>\n
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The 25-cent Image copies resulted in a lopsided market share reading for the company; its unit share was 18.13%, as compared with a 9.58% dollar share. While Diamond\u2019s unit shares from month to month can be found on Comichron\u2019s individual monthly pages, it isn\u2019t something we keep a trendline file on (in part because of volatility like this) \u2014 so we can\u2019t really say the last time its unit share hit such a level. The 9.58% dollar share is Image\u2019s best since\u00a0January 2016<\/a><\/b>, so while it\u2019s on the high end, it\u2019s hit loftier marks relatively recently.<\/p>\n

We see the absence of the Walking Dead issues from the charts when we add up the sales of the Top 300 comics. 6.33 million copies of the Top 300 comics were sold, but 7.85 million copies were sold overall. That’s a larger than usual gap unaccounted for, and includes the Walking Deads.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Retailers ordered $39.77 million in comics, graphic novels, and magazines across February\u2019s four shipping weeks; that\u2019s the first time the overall total has been below $40 million since\u00a0February 2014<\/a><\/b>. Comics dollar sales were off 4.47% and graphic novels off 3.3%, resulting in a year-over-year decline of 4.11%. The aggregate sales statistics appear below:<\/div>\n

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