{"id":5108,"date":"2012-04-09T23:37:00","date_gmt":"2012-04-09T23:37:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2020-08-01T16:10:32","modified_gmt":"2020-08-01T21:10:32","slug":"march-2012-comics-sales-estimates-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/2012\/04\/09\/march-2012-comics-sales-estimates-now\/","title":{"rendered":"March 2012 comics sales estimates now online"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

UPDATED to reflect new information<\/b><\/i>
\n
\n<\/b>
\nDiamond Comic Distributors <\/b>has released the full lists for March 2012, and as reported here last week<\/b><\/a>, while March itself was against a five-week month and slightly off, it
\nnonetheless contributed to the first time in the 21st century the direct
\nmarket has ordered more than $100 million in the first quarter of the
\nyear. The Comics Chronicles<\/a><\/b> estimates retailer orders of $33.7 million for the month; that brings the quarter to $101.9 million. (Click to see the charts for the month.<\/b><\/a>)
\n
\n<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

Avengers Vs. X-Men<\/i> #1<\/b><\/a> just barely topped 200,000 copies ordered, its numbers boosted by various special offers to retailers, about which more further down. It marks a return to the top of the charts for Marvel, after several months of DC leadership during its relaunch. The 300th place title<\/b><\/a> was off by more a thousand copies; that benchmark is very sensitive to fifth weeks for obvious reasons, however, and it’s worth noting that the figure is higher than the four-week months on either side of last March<\/b><\/a>.<\/p>\n

It was, as mentioned last week, the first month since 1994 that five publishers \u2014 Marvel, DC, Image, Dark Horse, and IDW \u2014 had dollar market shares higher than 5%. The percentage captured by the Top 20 publishers was the highest in years: just 1.55% of the items and 3.18% of the dollars were sold by publishers outside the Top 20. The list of the Top 300 Comics and the Top 300 Trade Paperback and Graphic Novels included only familiar names, which rarely happens.<\/p>\n

There is, in fact, a disconnect this month when it comes to the Top 300 Trade Paperbacks
\nand Graphic Novels. While the comparative sales statistics that Diamond
\nreleased find graphic novel dollars off by 5.67%, the actual numbers
\nbehind the Top 300 show a different picture, up 25%, or more than $1
\nmillion, over the same grouping from last year. Now, occasionally
\nstrength in the top-sellers is offset by weakness below 300th place \u2014
\nbut a 30-point gap requires more explanation.<\/p>\n

Updated:<\/b> <\/i>I’ve confirmed with the distributor that the aggregate change figures are correct, and that what I considered to be the most likely explanation for the gap is probably also correct. <\/span>The Top 300 list contains a large number of trade paperbacks discounted greater than the usual amount, and since Diamond’s
\nmarket shares and percentage-change figures are based on wholesale<\/b> and not retail dollars, it becomes possible that the retail dollar value of
\ntrades stores ordered went up, while the amount of money they paid (the
\ntotal wholesale dollars) went down.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/div>\n
It is possible to sort the lists Diamond provides by wholesale dollars;
\nthe publisher provides a dollar ranking when it lists titles on its site<\/b><\/a>. Looking at the Wholesale Dollar rankings reported by Diamond, we see evident discounting on a lot<\/b> of Marvel items this month. The Secret Invasion<\/b><\/i> trade paperback, ranked 32nd in unit orders and 7th in full retail dollars, is ranked by Diamond at 136th place in wholesale dollars. So even if we didn’t know there was a sale \u2013 the numbers contain plenty of evidence of a sale!<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n

The information is there \u2014 and from it, you can often ferret out
\nwhat titles were discounted more heavily, as was done in the Secret Invasion<\/i> example above. (But note that it is not<\/i>
\nnecessarily the case that two titles with equal unit sales rankings and
\ndifferent dollar sales rankings mean that one of the books had a
\nspecial discount. Different retailers order at different discounts, and
\nwhat’s paid for a given product varies from item to item by who’s doing
\nthe ordering.)<\/p>\n

There are often special
\ndiscounts figured into sales of not just graphic novels, but comics
\nthemselves; as noted above, Marvel offered a significant promotional discount on Avengers Vs. X-Men<\/i>
\n#1 this month. Diamond includes these unit sales in its rankings, but,
\nagain, because of the wholesale\/retail distinction, the publisher
\ndoesn’t get the same amount of credit in dollar market shares that it
\nwould if the titles had been offered at the regular discount.<\/p>\n

Promotionally-cover-priced <\/b><\/i>comics do<\/i>
\nget trimmed off the lists at the Diamond level \u2014 nothing below $1
\nusually appears any more. But it’s tough to say what should be done
\nabout regularly priced books retailers didn\u2019t pay the usual rate for.<\/p>\n

The Comics Chronicles<\/b><\/i>‘ interest is how many comics are in
\ncirculation, period, so it wouldn’t be good to see the numbers of comics
\nactually sold trimmed just for ranking purposes, as happened in the DC
\nreturnable situation. (Those unreturned DC copies do<\/i><\/b> end
\nup on the charts eventually \u2014 though we may only see them reflected in
\nthe aggregate totals until the end-of-year rankings.)<\/p>\n

Separate dollar rankings used to be provided by Capital City Distribution in its trade magazine, but the lists were never referred to as much as the unit-sales lists. The reason goes back to the purpose of the lists to begin with in the 1980s: retailers wanted to know how titles sell relative to each other, unit-wise. I suspect today’s internet readers still do. The feeling at
\nComichron<\/i><\/b> is that the item-rankings horserace in 2012 isn\u2019t going to
\nmatter as much to people looking at the site in 2022 \u2014 readers are just
\ngoing to want to know how many copies of a given book were in
\ncirculation.<\/p>\n

As always, every figure on Comichron is subject to change as more information comes in. The aggregate figures:<\/p>\n

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

March 2012<\/a>: <\/b>6.02 million copies
\nVersus 1 year ago this month<\/b><\/a>: +1%
\nVersus 5 years ago this month<\/b><\/a>: -14%
\nVersus 10 years ago this month<\/b><\/a>: +18%
\nVersus 15 years ago this month<\/b><\/a>: -30%
\nYEAR TO DATE: 17.89 million copies, +15% vs. 2011, -12% vs. 2007, +11% vs. 2002, -30% vs. 1997<\/p>\n

ALL COMICS UNIT SALES<\/b>
\nMarch 2012 versus one year ago this month: -2.45%<\/b>
\nYEAR TO DATE: +14.74%<\/b><\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

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

March 2011: $20.8 million
\nVersus 1 year ago this month: +2%
\nVersus 5 years ago this month: -7%
\nVersus 10 years ago this month: +48%
\nVersus 15 years ago this month: +4%
\nYEAR TO DATE: $61.6 million, +14% vs. 2011, -4% vs. 2007, +34% vs. 2002, +1% vs. 1997<\/p>\n

ALL COMICS DOLLAR SALES<\/b>
\nMarch 2012 versus one year ago this month: -1.18%<\/b>
\nYEAR TO DATE: +15.85%<\/b><\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

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

March 2012: $6.44 million
\nVersus 1 year ago this month: +25%
\nVersus 5 years ago this month, just the Top 100 vs. the Top 100: -7%
\nVersus 10 years ago this month, just the Top 50 vs. the Top 50: -10%
\nYEAR TO DATE: $18.13 million, +22% vs. 2011<\/p>\n

ALL TRADE PAPERBACK\u00a0 SALES<\/b>
\nMarch 2012 versus one year ago this month: -5.67%<\/b>
\nYEAR TO DATE: +13.42%<\/b><\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

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

March 2012: $27.23 million
\nVersus 1 year ago this month: +7%
\nVersus 5 years ago this month, counting just the Top 100 TPBs: -7%
\nVersus 10 years ago this month, counting just the Top 25 TPBs: +39%
\nYEAR TO DATE: $79.73 million, +16% vs. 2011<\/p>\n

ALL COMICS AND TRADE PAPERBACK\u00a0 SALES<\/b>
\nMarch 2012 versus one year ago this month: -2.61%<\/b>
\nYEAR TO DATE: +13.42%<\/b><\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

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

March 2012: approximately $33.72 million (subject to revision)
\nVersus 1 year ago this month: -6%
\nVersus 5 years ago this month: +1%
\nYEAR TO DATE: $101.81 million, +13% vs. 2010, +3% vs. 2007<\/p>\n

One notable change is that the ten-year comparisons now extend out to the Top 50 trade paperbacks; Diamond moved to reporting the Top 50 in March 2002.<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n

The average comic book in the Top 300 cost $3.48; the average comic book
\nretailers ordered cost $3.46. The median and most common price for comics offered was $2.99.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

UPDATED to reflect new information Diamond Comic Distributors has released the full lists for March 2012, and as reported here last week, while March itself was against a five-week month and slightly off, it nonetheless contributed to the first time in the 21st century the direct market has ordered more than $100 million in the … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5109,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[80,17],"class_list":["post-5108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-2012-sales","tag-diamond-monthly-reports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5108","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=5108"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5108\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6511,"href":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5108\/revisions\/6511"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5109"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}