{"id":4592,"date":"2015-05-18T18:58:00","date_gmt":"2015-05-18T18:58:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2020-07-31T19:35:32","modified_gmt":"2020-08-01T00:35:32","slug":"april-2015-comics-sales-break-records","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/2015\/05\/18\/april-2015-comics-sales-break-records\/","title":{"rendered":"April 2015 comics sales break records aplenty; $9.99 Deadpool #45 top dollar item"},"content":{"rendered":"

Modern-era records fell all over the place last month in the comic shop market, according to Comichron’s analysis of data reported by Diamond Comic Distributors. Click to see the comics sales estimates for April 2015<\/b><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Among the Diamond Era records<\/b><\/a> that fell, or nearly fell:<\/p>\n

\u2022 Comics ordered (units): <\/b>Retailers ordered 8.39 million copies of the Top 300 comic books in the month. That bests any figure since December 1997<\/b><\/a>, when the figure was 8.99 million copies preordered. (That was the month that Darkness #11<\/i><\/b> had eleven covers.) Notably, eleven comic books had orders of more than 100,000 copies; that didn’t even happen during the DC relaunch in 2011. The last month with 12 titles above 100,000 copies was July 2007<\/b><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Comics unit sales are up by more than 50% over the same
\nmonth five years ago. This is a statistic worth keeping in mind: while
\nincreased prices have contributed to the topline figures in the
\nbusiness, there has been growth in the number of copies sold, greater
\nthan can be accounted for by variant covers.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Comics ordered (dollars)<\/b>: Retailers ordered $33.72 million worth of the Top 300 comics, beating by nearly $2 million a record set last October. That was due to the unit sales mentioned above, and also…<\/p>\n

\u2022 Comics cover prices:<\/b> The average comic book in the Diamond Top 300 cost $3.82, eclipsing the old record by four cents. The average Top 300 comic book retailers ordered (the weighted price) was $4.02, another record. Both were impacted by what was actually the top dollar volume comic book in the industry, Marvel’s Deadpool<\/i> #45<\/b><\/a>. Celebrating 250 issues of the title in its various incarnations, the $9.99 book had unit sales of just under 100,000 copies, and thus total retail dollar volume of just under $1 million.<\/p>\n

\"http:\/\/bit.ly\/CCWD23\"<\/div>\n

The presence of the title in the charts pulled the average cost of the Top 25 comics to $4.39; I don’t keep records on that but it sure sounds like one. The median and most offered price in the Top 300 remained $3.99. Click to see comics prices across time.<\/b><\/a>
\n
\n<\/a>
\n\u2022 Graphic novels ordered (dollars): <\/b>The Top 300 graphic novels, aided by a new Walking Dead<\/a> <\/i><\/b>volume, topped $9 million for the first time\u2014or second, depending on how you’re counting. December 2013 was an aberration in the charts with a ridiculous number of graphic novels sent to market at deep discounts, meaning more than $10 million in volume at full retail was purchased; but as we noted at the time, the figure was much inflated. April’s performance appears to be built more on books that were offered at something closer to their usual discounts.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Finally, as noted here Friday, comics, graphic novels, and magazines combined<\/b> had orders of $56.72 million, another record; the year now stands at close to $185 million, nearly $20 more than the first four months of 2014.<\/p>\n

The aggregate changes are as follows:<\/p>\n

TOP 300 COMICS UNIT SALES<\/b><\/span>
\nApril 2015<\/a>: <\/b>8.39 million copies
\nVersus 1 year ago this month<\/b><\/a>: +20%
\nVersus 5 years ago this month<\/b><\/a>: +51%
\nVersus 10 years ago this month<\/b><\/a>: +39%
\nVersus 15 years ago this month<\/b><\/a>: +45%
\nYEAR TO DATE: 29.16 million copies, +15% vs. 2014, +29% vs. 2010, +24% vs. 2005, +29% vs. 2000<\/p>\n

ALL COMICS UNIT SALES<\/b>
\nApril 2015 versus one year ago this month: +22.5%<\/b>
\nYEAR TO DATE: +16.22%<\/b><\/p>\n

TOP 300 COMICS DOLLAR SALES<\/b><\/div>\n

April 2015: $33.72 million
\nVersus 1 year ago this month: +21%
\nVersus 5 years ago this month: +75%
\nVersus 10 years ago this month: +96%
\nVersus 15 years ago this month: +119%
\nYEAR TO DATE: $113.35 million, +18% vs. 2014, +44% vs. 2010, +69% vs. 2005, +90% vs. 2000<\/p>\n

ALL COMICS DOLLAR SALES<\/b>
\nApril 2015 versus one year ago this month: +19.75%<\/b>
\nYEAR TO DATE: +15.58% <\/b><\/p>\n

TOP 300 TRADE PAPERBACK DOLLAR SALES<\/b><\/div>\n

April 2015: $9.01 million
\nVersus 1 year ago this month: +19%
\nVersus 5 years ago this month: -4%
\nVersus 10 years ago this month, just the Top 100 vs. the Top 100: +32%
\nVersus 15 years ago this month, just the Top 25 vs. the Top 25: +154%
\nYEAR TO DATE: $27.83 million, -1% vs. 2014<\/p>\n

ALL TRADE PAPERBACK\u00a0 SALES<\/b>
\nApril 2015 versus one year ago this month: +13.45%<\/b>
\nYEAR TO DATE: +4.37%<\/b><\/p>\n

TOP 300 COMICS + TOP 300 TRADE PAPERBACK DOLLAR SALES<\/b><\/div>\n

April 2015: $42.73 million
\nVersus 1 year ago this month: +20%
\nVersus 5 years ago this month: +57%
\nVersus 10 years ago this month, counting just the Top 100 TPBs: +70%
\nVersus 15 years ago this month, counting just the Top 25 TPBs: +135%
\nYEAR TO DATE: $141.15 million, +14% vs. 2014<\/p>\n

ALL COMICS AND TRADE PAPERBACK SALES<\/b>
\nApril 2015 versus one year ago this month: +17.75%<\/b>
\nYEAR TO DATE: +12%<\/b><\/p>\n

OVERALL DIAMOND SALES (including all comics, trades, and magazines)<\/b><\/div>\n

April 2015: approximately $56.72 million (subject to revision)
\nVersus 1 year ago this month: +18%
\nVersus 5 years ago this month: +77%
\nVersus 10 years ago this month: +107%
\nYEAR TO DATE: $184.61 million, +12% vs. 2014<\/b><\/p>\n

RELEASES<\/b><\/span>
\nNew comic books released: 545<\/b>
\nNew graphic novels released: 314<\/b>
\nNew magazines released: 44<\/b>
\nAll new releases: 903<\/b><\/p>\n

All in all, a decent start to the year. We’ll see next month how the Avengers movie, Free Comic Book Day, and Secret Wars<\/i> <\/b>have affected the picture.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Modern-era records fell all over the place last month in the comic shop market, according to Comichron’s analysis of data reported by Diamond Comic Distributors. Click to see the comics sales estimates for April 2015. Among the Diamond Era records that fell, or nearly fell: \u2022 Comics ordered (units): Retailers ordered 8.39 million copies of … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4593,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[66,17],"class_list":["post-4592","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-2015-sales","tag-diamond-monthly-reports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4592","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4592"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4592\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6402,"href":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4592\/revisions\/6402"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}