{"id":4719,"date":"2014-07-11T18:24:00","date_gmt":"2014-07-11T18:24:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2020-08-01T14:52:23","modified_gmt":"2020-08-01T19:52:23","slug":"comics-sales-recover-from-winter-to","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/2014\/07\/11\/comics-sales-recover-from-winter-to\/","title":{"rendered":"Comics sales recover from winter to finish first half of 2014 flat; Archie tops GN list for first time"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Comic shops in North America spent the same amount of money on comic books and graphic novels in the first half of 2014 as they did during the first half of 2013, according to new data released by Diamond Comic Distributors<\/b><\/a>. Retailers purchased almost $250 million worth of comics, graphic novels, and magazines in the period, a decrease of less than $200,000 at full retail. That’s the equivalent of a single upper-tier comic book*; had one more shipped in the year, the Direct Market would be even or slightly ahead.<\/p>\n

The flat dollar sales result represents a slowdown in unit sales terms for comic books, as 6.36% fewer copies shipped in the first half of the year; graphic novel unit sales were up 5.41%. Overall dollar orders for the second quarter were up more than 4%, making up for the losses during the first quarter. Spring sales volumes are always larger than winter volumes in comics, so even a mildly positive figure is enough to erase a drop as small as we saw in the first three months.<\/p>\n

Dollar orders in the second half of 2013 were nearly 7% higher than in the first half of 2013, so to outperform last year, the same pace will need to be bettered going forward. The aggregate sales changes:<\/p>\n

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