{"id":5208,"date":"2011-09-14T00:16:00","date_gmt":"2011-09-14T00:16:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2020-08-01T16:34:31","modified_gmt":"2020-08-01T21:34:31","slug":"full-august-2011-comics-sales-estimates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/2011\/09\/14\/full-august-2011-comics-sales-estimates\/","title":{"rendered":"Full August 2011 comics sales estimates now online"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\nDiamond Comic Distributors<\/b> today released the full charts for comics ordered by shops in North America for August, and the full estimates are now online here at Comichron<\/b><\/a>.<\/p>\n

As mentioned yesterday<\/b><\/a>, this month in which most DC comics concluded their continuity in advance of the “New 52” reboot was a very strong one relative to the previous year \u2014 a month which, as mentioned here, was pretty weak<\/b><\/a>. But the market recovered nearly half of its deficit versus 2010, and the trade paperback gap within the Top 300 nearly completely closed. The year-to-date orders for all comics, trade paperbacks, and magazines is just a little more than $10 million behind the first two-thirds of 2010, or 4% \u2014 and it recovered more than $6 million in August alone. Last September presents a higher hurdle in the overall sales column, but with the rest of the DC relaunch titles appearing, chances are good that the Direct Market could be in positive territory for 2011 as we enter the fourth quarter.<\/p>\n

The aggregate totals:<\/p>\n

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

August 2011<\/a>: <\/b>6.2 million copies
\nVersus 1 year ago this month<\/b><\/a>: +14%
\nVersus 5 years ago this month<\/b><\/a>: -16%
\nVersus 10 years ago this month<\/b><\/a>: +4%
\nYEAR TO DATE: 44.1 million copies, -5% vs. 2010, -19% vs. 2006, +4% vs. 2001<\/p>\n

ALL COMICS UNIT SALES<\/b>
\nAugust 2011 versus one year ago this month: +17.55%<\/b>
\nYEAR TO DATE: -3.65%<\/b><\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

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

August 2011: $21.55 million
\nVersus 1 year ago this month:+11%
\nVersus 5 years ago this month: -6%
\nVersus 10 years ago this month: +32%
\nYEAR TO DATE: $153.08 million, -6% vs. 2010, -8% vs. 2006, +31% vs. 2001<\/p>\n

ALL COMICS DOLLAR SALES<\/b>
\nAugust 2011 versus one year ago this month: +15.14%<\/b>
\nYEAR TO DATE: -4.6%<\/b><\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

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

August 2011: $6.35 million
\nVersus 1 year ago this month: +20%
\nVersus 5 years ago this month, just the Top 100 vs. the Top 100: -25%
\nVersus 10 years ago this month, just the Top 25 vs. the Top 25: -7%
\nYEAR TO DATE: $44.68 million, -8% vs. 2010<\/p>\n

ALL TRADE PAPERBACK\u00a0 SALES<\/b>
\nAugust 2011 versus one year ago this month: +31.17%<\/b>
\nYEAR TO DATE: -2.35%<\/b><\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

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

August 2011: $27.9 million
\nVersus 1 year ago this month: +13%
\nVersus 5 years ago this month, counting just the Top 100 TPBs: -9%
\nVersus 10 years ago this month, counting just the Top 25 TPBs: +21%
\nYEAR TO DATE: $197.76 million, -6% vs. 2010<\/p>\n

ALL COMICS AND TRADE PAPERBACK\u00a0 SALES<\/b>
\nAugust 2011 versus one year ago this month: +20.15%<\/b>
\nYEAR TO DATE: -3.87%<\/b><\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

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

August 2011: approximately $37.32 million (subject to revision)
\nVersus 1 year ago this month: +20%
\nVersus 5 years ago this month: unchanged
\nYEAR TO DATE: $259 million, -4% vs. 2010<\/p>\n

The average cover price of all comic books in Diamond’s Top 300 was $3.50; the average weighted price \u2014 the average cost of all comic books retailers ordered \u2014 was $3.48. The median and most common cover price was $2.99. Click to see how cover prices have changed across time<\/b><\/a>.<\/p>\n

As discussed in much greater detail in this post<\/a><\/b>, the chart-topping sales of Justice League<\/i> #1 for August are but a portion of its overall sales; between preorders that shipped in September and to the United Kingdom, the first printing of more than 200,000 copies sold out. We’ll have a better idea of the sales of the book in next month’s report.<\/p>\n

One phenomenon I had observed continues: the 300th place title, Image’s Blue Estate<\/i> #5<\/b>, had orders of more than 4,500 copies, which is near the high mark for this metric. The rising level of this figure over time<\/a> <\/b>points partially to a fragmentation of reader purchases across a wider number of titles; it will be interesting to see if in October, as DC’s relaunch titles appear on the charts as reorders, the 300th place book breaks the 5,000-copy level for the first time.<\/p>\n

This month’s posting brings to an even 15 years the distributor sales reports I’ve done for this site and, previously, for Comics & Games Retailer <\/i><\/b>magazine. I started doing them 15 years ago in an attempt to reconcile the figures from Diamond and Heroes World, Marvel’s exclusive distributor for a time, into a single chart. I’ll write more about what I’ve seen in the past 15 years in a later post, but it has been a fascinating way to follow along with the tempo of the business. The amount of work that goes into them is significant, and it’s hard to believe I’ve done 180 \u2014 not counting the ones I’m working on retroactively! There were months in there where I didn’t necessarily have the time for it, and certainly months where we all wished the numbers said something different. But I hope that, taken altogether, it has been helpful to readers in trying to understand the hobby \u2014 and the trade \u2014 of comics, and I am glad that Comichron<\/i>\u00a0has made it possible to preserve some of these facts about the past.<\/p>\n

On to next month…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Diamond Comic Distributors today released the full charts for comics ordered by shops in North America for August, and the full estimates are now online here at Comichron. As mentioned yesterday, this month in which most DC comics concluded their continuity in advance of the “New 52” reboot was a very strong one relative to … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5209,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[85,17],"class_list":["post-5208","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-2011-sales","tag-diamond-monthly-reports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5208","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=5208"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5208\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6538,"href":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5208\/revisions\/6538"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5209"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}