{"id":5120,"date":"2012-03-12T19:48:00","date_gmt":"2012-03-12T19:48:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2020-08-01T16:13:41","modified_gmt":"2020-08-01T21:13:41","slug":"virtuous-cycle-february-comics-sales","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/2012\/03\/12\/virtuous-cycle-february-comics-sales\/","title":{"rendered":"Virtuous cycle? February comics sales show depth"},"content":{"rendered":"
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I have written many times that the recovery in comics sales that began in earnest at the end of 2001 was built upon a “virtuous cycle”<\/b><\/a> developing, in which retailers placed the money from strong-performing comics not solely into paying down other expenses, but into ordering more of the next big project. With Marvel’s “Avengers Vs. X-Men” event launching later in 2012, the question was whether the market could hold its gains from the DC relaunch through the “Dead Quarter,” giving shops something to work with as AVX approached.<\/p>\n

As reported here on Friday, according to figures released by Diamond Comic Distributors, Direct Market orders had their best February in years<\/b><\/a>, with the year-to-date increase mirroring the increase of early 2002, when Wolverine: The Origin<\/b><\/i><\/a> fed into Dark Knight Strikes Again<\/a><\/b><\/i>, which fed into the Spider-Man<\/i><\/b> movie, the first Free Comic Book Day, and the Transformers<\/b><\/i> nostalgia boomlet. With the estimates for February sales online<\/b><\/a>, we see that the internal numbers also show positive signs.<\/p>\n

Last February, while itself a rebound month for the market, had the lowest orders ever for a top-selling title<\/b><\/a>, with Green Lantern<\/i> #62<\/b> selling 71,500 copies to retailers in its initial month. This February, market-topping Justice League <\/i>#6<\/b><\/a> had orders approaching 135,400 copies (excluding the Combo Pack) and six titles outsold last year’s top-seller.<\/p>\n

But perhaps the more important comparisons come by looking at the two-month cycle \u2014 the tempo retailer orders are placed on. Most titles would expect to lose significant ground as the winter months are entered; retailers in February 2011 cut their Green Lantern<\/i> orders more than 6% from the previous December. This February, Justice League<\/i>‘s orders dropped by less than 5% from December \u2014 and the issue was a Feb. 29 shipping product, so it included only first-day shipments. I would suspect that going down the list we’d find a similar lessening of the usual winter order reductions; retailers ordered nearly 1 million more copies of the Top 300 comics in the month than in February 2011<\/a><\/b>, so that seems likely.<\/p>\n

February’s total was, of course, aided by the fifth shipping week \u2014 it was the first February with five Wednesdays since 1984. Past years show about an 11% increase in Top 300 comics unit orders in weeks with five months; this month’s increase in the Top 300 was 18%, so there’s something more going on. Whether due solely to the extra week or not, the depth of publisher offerings was much greater this month: we never see a February with just 15 publishers represented in the Top 300. February used to be the month where we’d see the publisher names that usually bubble under. But this month, Marvel, DC, Image, Dark Horse, <\/b>and IDW<\/b> combined for 239 entries \u2014 and Dynamic Forces <\/b>(Dynamite) added an additional 25! So there aren’t a lot of slots left.<\/p>\n

We can further see the depth by looking at the 300th-place title<\/a> <\/b>bellwether. Look at the number of copies ordered of the 300th-place title in the last<\/p>\n

February 2003 \u2022 1,585
\nFebruary 2004 \u2022 857
\nFebruary 2005 \u2022 1,155
\nFebruary 2006 \u2022 1,561
\nFebruary 2007 \u2022 1,314
\nFebruary 2008 \u2022 1,997
\nFebruary 2009 \u2022 2,604
\nFebruary 2010 \u2022 2,237
\nFebruary 2011 \u2022 2,860
\nFebruary 2012 \u2022 4,185<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

These are all years in which Diamond reported Final Orders, so we’re comparing like against like in all cases. Even with the fifth week, retailers ordered far more copies of the titles in the low 200s than they did during even the years that were overall, like 2005-2007. The fragmentation of sales across multiple titles is an old theme on this site, but the above figures are a pretty good indicator that something fundamental has changed in the Direct Market.\u00a0 (The 300th-place graphic novel, by the way, had unit orders of 337 copies, versus 295 last year.)<\/p>\n

It may be that the successful model for a middle-tier publisher is no longer keeping to a small-sized line \u2014 the “Rule of Eight” observed by market analyst Marc Patten<\/b> many years ago, who found a high mortality rate for publishers that extended past eight monthly titles in the post-Image era. IDW (which had its highest market share ever this month<\/b><\/a>), Dynamic Forces, and to an extent Boom<\/b> have joined Image and Dark Horse on what would appear to be a tier where trade paperbacks are making the economies of scale make sense. Is eight titles is no longer the barrier, but the lower entry point to a Periodic Table-like island of stability<\/b><\/a>? And how many publishers can inhabit that region? It’s something worth more research.<\/p>\n

Here are the aggregate figures:<\/p>\n

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

Feburary 2012<\/a>: <\/b>6.09 million copies
\nVersus 1 year ago this month<\/b><\/a>: +18%
\nVersus 5 years ago this month<\/b><\/a>: -8%
\nVersus 10 years ago this month<\/b><\/a>: +17%
\nVersus 15 years ago this month<\/b><\/a>: -24%
\nYEAR TO DATE: 11.87 million copies, +24% vs. 2011, -11% vs. 2007, +7% vs. 2002, -30% vs. 1997<\/p>\n

ALL COMICS UNIT SALES<\/b>
\nFebruary 2012 versus one year ago this month: +19.63%<\/b>
\nYEAR TO DATE: +25.94%<\/b><\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

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

February 2011: $20.98 million
\nVersus 1 year ago this month: +17%
\nVersus 5 years ago this month: +1%
\nVersus 10 years ago this month: +39%
\nVersus 15 years ago this month: +11%
\nYEAR TO DATE: $40.8 million, +22% vs. 2011, -2% vs. 2007, +28% vs. 2002, unchanged vs. 1997<\/p>\n

ALL COMICS DOLLAR SALES<\/b>
\nFebruary 2012 versus one year ago this month: +22.26%<\/b>
\nYEAR TO DATE: +26.71%<\/b><\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

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

February 2012: $5.72 million
\nVersus 1 year ago this month: +11%
\nVersus 5 years ago this month, just the Top 100 vs. the Top 100: -11%
\nVersus 10 years ago this month, just the Top 25 vs. the Top 25: -53%
\nYEAR TO DATE: $11.69 million, +20% vs. 2011<\/p>\n

ALL TRADE PAPERBACK\u00a0 SALES<\/b>
\nFebruary 2012 versus one year ago this month: +15.65%<\/b>
\nYEAR TO DATE: +16.93%<\/b><\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

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

February 2012: $26.7 million
\nVersus 1 year ago this month: +15%
\nVersus 5 years ago this month, counting just the Top 100 TPBs: -1%
\nVersus 10 years ago this month, counting just the Top 25 TPBs: +26%
\nYEAR TO DATE: $52.5 million, +22% vs. 2011<\/p>\n

ALL COMICS AND TRADE PAPERBACK\u00a0 SALES<\/b>
\nFebruary 2012 versus one year ago this month: +20.11%<\/b>
\nYEAR TO DATE: +23.49%<\/b><\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

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

February 2012: approximately $36.5 million (subject to revision)
\nVersus 1 year ago this month: +21%
\nVersus 5 years ago this month: +13%
\nYEAR TO DATE: $69.04 million, +25% vs. 2010, +5% vs. 2007<\/p>\n

This is the last month that the ten-year comparisons will be limited to the Top 25 trade paperbacks; Diamond moved to reporting the Top 50 in March 2002<\/b><\/a>.<\/p>\n

A couple of observations on the aggregates: the Direct Market has now banked $14 million over the first nine weeks of 2012 versus the year before; this will come in handy as the comparatives for the second half of the year will be more challenging, as we get into comparisons with the early DC relaunch months.<\/p>\n

Also, it’s interesting to see that the dollar value of all the Top 300 comics ordered in 2012 to date is identical with the figure for the first two months of 1997<\/b><\/a>. That was a period with much lower prices, of course, but the larger unit sales then was driven largely by there being many more shops. That’s the big mission should our nascent virtuous cycle continue; comics sales improved in the 2000s but the number of shops didn’t swell very much in response. Will retailers farther removed from the calamity of the late 1990s be more willing to expand, especially as the general economy improves? That’s one of many big questions, but it’s a nice one to be able to ask at all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 I have written many times that the recovery in comics sales that began in earnest at the end of 2001 was built upon a “virtuous cycle” developing, in which retailers placed the money from strong-performing comics not solely into paying down other expenses, but into ordering more of the next big project. With Marvel’s … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5121,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[80,78,17],"class_list":["post-5120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-2012-sales","tag-dead-quarter","tag-diamond-monthly-reports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5120","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=5120"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5120\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6515,"href":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5120\/revisions\/6515"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}