{"id":4773,"date":"2014-02-07T17:11:00","date_gmt":"2014-02-07T17:11:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2020-08-01T15:06:12","modified_gmt":"2020-08-01T20:06:12","slug":"january-2014-comics-dollars-steady","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/2014\/02\/07\/january-2014-comics-dollars-steady\/","title":{"rendered":"January 2014 comics dollars steady, graphic novel orders decline"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"http:\/\/bit.ly\/CCBat27\"<\/div>\n

January 2014 was a fairly wretched month for weather in the United States and Canada, and that may have played some role in a softer market for comics, judging from the data released this morning from Diamond Comic Distributors<\/b><\/a>. Comics shops sold nearly $39 million worth of comic books and graphic novels in January, off 5% from last January<\/a><\/b>. Comic book dollar orders were essentially unchanged, but the graphic novel category dropped against difficult competition from the previous year.<\/p>\n

It was the first year-over-year decline since August, and the first January drop since 2011. But it’s still 21% better than January 2012 \u2014 a time after<\/i> the DC relaunch \u2014 so these things are all relative!<\/p>\n

January is always an odd duck statistically, and not just because of the weather: the holidays at the beginning of the year impact shipping and how Diamond accounts for sales. Both this January and last January had five Wednesdays, but in each case, the first week’s sales were invoiced with the last week of December. So a lot of sales that really did happen in January were counted with the previous month\u2014and same for last January.<\/p>\n

The comparative statistics across time:<\/p>\n

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