{"id":4967,"date":"2013-01-11T17:09:00","date_gmt":"2013-01-11T17:09:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2020-08-01T15:44:07","modified_gmt":"2020-08-01T20:44:07","slug":"december-2012-comics-sales-make-for-475","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/2013\/01\/11\/december-2012-comics-sales-make-for-475\/","title":{"rendered":"December 2012 comics sales make for $475 mil year"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Comic-book stores in North America ordered nearly $40 million in comic books and bound editions in December 2012, according to Comichron<\/b>‘s anaylsis of data released this morning by Diamond Comic Distributors<\/a>.<\/b> This is an increase of 15.74% over last year, and it confirms our estimate for 2012’s overall sales<\/b><\/a> earlier this week; retailers ordered $474.6 million worth of comics in the Direct Market in 2012, up from $413.55 million last year. That’s a gain of $61 million, or 14.72%.<\/p>\n

Total dollar sales for the fourth quarter eclipsed those of the third quarter by 3.5%, and beat last year’s fourth quarter by 11%.<\/p>\n

(The full December data will be released next week, which will also mean the release of Comichron’s year-end Top Thousand Comics and Top Thousand Trade Paperbacks lists \u2014 and that is also when we’ll update the Top Comics of the Century<\/b><\/a> list. Click to see the 2011 Top Thousand lists.<\/b><\/a>)<\/p>\n

Amazing Spider-Man<\/i> #700<\/b><\/a>, the last issue in that numerical sequence (and we have heard that before) was the top-selling title, and as we already know it was the fourth-best-selling comic book of the year to the Direct Market, it’s expected that its sales likely just topped 200,000 copies; it topped Avengers Vs. X-Men<\/i> #2<\/b><\/a> in that list, which with reorders would have been getting toward the 200k territory. Priced as it was at $7.99, that’s a noteworthy performance.<\/p>\n

(UPDATE<\/b>: Diamond noted that comics that were shipped to comic book retailers on Dec. 28, 2012 with an on-sale date of Jan. 2, 2013 were included in December’s sales chart information. This isn’t a bit of statistical legerdemain to improve the December figures; Diamond took a holiday skip week<\/b><\/a> for the week of the 24th. So while it would seem to have made December a five-Wednesday month, it really isn’t. But for comparison purposes, January 2013 will<\/i> be a four-week month, despite the calendar.)<\/p>\n

The aggregate change figures for the month, fourth quarter, and year:<\/p>\n