{"id":4627,"date":"2015-02-09T17:20:00","date_gmt":"2015-02-09T17:20:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2020-08-01T14:31:53","modified_gmt":"2020-08-01T19:31:53","slug":"january-2014-comic-sales-estimates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/2015\/02\/09\/january-2014-comic-sales-estimates\/","title":{"rendered":"January 2015 Comic Sales Estimates: Every seventh comic Diamond shipped was Star Wars #1"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

\"http:\/\/bit.ly\/CCMarvSW1\"The final comics sales estimates for January are out from Diamond Comic Distributors<\/b><\/a>, and as reported here<\/b> on Friday, the Direct Market began the year strongly, up 12%. Click to see the sales estimates for comics ordered in January 2015<\/b><\/a>.
\n
\n<\/a>
\nAs expected, Marvel’s relaunch issue Star Wars<\/i> #1<\/b><\/a>
\nhad sales that, when UK and February reorders are included, will put it
\nover 1 million copies sold; Diamond shipped closed to 986,000 copies to
\nNorth American retailers in the month of January. The lion’s share of
\nthose orders were placed by comics ships, although one of the dozens of
\nvariant covers was for the repackager Loot Crate, whose\u00a0 orders would
\nhave been somewhere over 200,000 copies based on what we’ve seen in the
\npast. Regardless, it’s reasonably safe to assume the issue would have
\ntaken the century bestseller record based on comic-shop sales alone.<\/p>\n

The achievement has been added to the Diamond Exclusive Era records page<\/b><\/a>,
\nbut there are a number of other things we can say about it that we
\ndon’t normally keep categories for. The issue sold nearly nine times as
\nmany copies as its closest competitor, Batman<\/b><\/i> #38<\/b>; this doesn’t appear to have happened since 1991, when X-Men Vol. 2<\/i> #1<\/b> \u2014 at 8 million copies plus, the best-selling comic in North American history<\/b><\/a> \u2014 outpaced the second-place title, X-Force<\/i> #3<\/b>,
\nby about the same factor. Further, the issue outsold the next 12 comic
\nbooks on the charts combined \u2014 and, perhaps more impressively, sold as
\nmany copies as every comic book between 163rd and 300th place, combined. About every seventh comic book retailers ordered in the Top 300 was a Star Wars #1 \u2014 and the comic book alone represented 11% of Diamond’s dollar sales for the month, if we look just at standard retail price. That’s larger than everyone’s market share but Marvel and DC.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

Comic unit sales were up 10% over the previous January, and the Star Wars<\/i>
\nissue accounts for all the increase and more, but it doesn’t really
\nwork to make comparisons of the “without this issue” variety. It’s true
\nthat the approximately $5 million spent on this one comic book is
\nslightly larger than the increase in the size of the overall market this
\nJanuary versus last January \u2014 but it’s reasonable to expect some of
\nthose dollars would have been in the market anyway, and simply got
\nrerouted to Star Wars<\/i> #1. Graphic novel sales were up nearly 17%
\nunrelated to the action in new comic books, so the market had strength
\nin other places. The market shares across time charts<\/b><\/a> have been updated for the new year; we now have a 17-year track, as seen above.<\/p>\n

The aggregate changes are as follows. No year-to-date numbers, since January is all we know:<\/p>\n

TOP 300 COMICS UNIT SALES<\/b><\/span>
\nJanuary 2015<\/a>: <\/b>6.81 million copies
\nVersus 1 year ago this month<\/b><\/a>: +10%
\nVersus 5 years ago this month<\/b><\/a>: +21%
\nVersus 10 years ago this month<\/b><\/a>: +37%
\nVersus 15 years ago this month<\/b><\/a>: +22%<\/p>\n

ALL COMICS UNIT SALES<\/b>
\nJanuary 2015 versus one year ago: +9.65%<\/b><\/p>\n

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

January 2015: $26.87 million
\nVersus 1 year ago this month: +15%
\nVersus 5 years ago this month: +39%
\nVersus 10 years ago this month: +94%
\nVersus 15 years ago this month: +88%<\/p>\n

ALL COMICS DOLLAR SALES<\/b>
\nJanuary 2015 versus one year ago: +10.27%<\/b><\/p>\n

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

January 2015: $6.63 million
\nVersus 1 year ago this month: +14%
\nVersus 5 years ago this month: -26%
\nVersus 10 years ago this month, just the Top 100 vs. the Top 100: +26%
\nVersus 15 years ago this month, just the Top 25 vs. the Top 25: +48%<\/p>\n

ALL TRADE PAPERBACK\u00a0 SALES<\/b>
\nJanuary 2015 versus one year ago: +16.83%<\/b><\/p>\n

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

January 2015: $33.5 million
\nVersus 1 year ago this month: +15%
\nVersus 5 years ago this month: +25%
\nVersus 10 years ago this month, counting just the Top 100 TPBs: +68%
\nVersus 15 years ago this month, counting just the Top 25 TPBs: +99%<\/p>\n

ALL COMICS AND TRADE PAPERBACK\u00a0 SALES<\/b>
\nJanuary 2015 versus one year ago this month: +12.27%<\/b><\/p>\n

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

January 2015: approximately $43.75 million (subject to revision)
\nVersus 1 year ago this month: +12%
\nVersus 5 years ago this month: +37%
\nVersus 10 years ago this month: +88%<\/p>\n

RELEASES<\/b><\/span>
\nNew comic books released: 449<\/b>
\nNew graphic novels released: 268<\/b>
\nNew magazines released: 41<\/b>
\nAll new releases: 758<\/b><\/p>\n

The average comic book in the Top 300 cost $3.77; the average comic book
\nretailers ordered cost $3.95. The median and most common price for comics offered was $3.99. Click to see comics prices across time.<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n

Some <\/b>long overdue updates: the graphics on the Market Shares Across Time<\/b><\/a> page has been updated, as have the Three-Year<\/b><\/a> and Complete Diamond Era sales graphics<\/b><\/a> reporting the performance of the business across time. And this month’s update starts a new year of sales reports here on Comichron: we neglected to mention that last month’s report completed 20 years of sales rankings on site, beginning with January 1995 at Diamond<\/b><\/a> and Capital City<\/b><\/a>. (There wasn’t just one listing back then, as there were still several distributors.) More historical data on the way this year!<\/p>\n

<\/i><\/i><\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The final comics sales estimates for January are out from Diamond Comic Distributors, and as reported here on Friday, the Direct Market began the year strongly, up 12%. Click to see the sales estimates for comics ordered in January 2015. As expected, Marvel’s relaunch issue Star Wars #1 had sales that, when UK and February … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4628,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[66,17,55],"class_list":["post-4627","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-2015-sales","tag-diamond-monthly-reports","tag-star-wars"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4627","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=4627"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4627\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6409,"href":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4627\/revisions\/6409"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4628"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}