{"id":5278,"date":"2011-05-03T04:46:00","date_gmt":"2011-05-03T04:46:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2020-08-01T17:22:44","modified_gmt":"2020-08-01T22:22:44","slug":"million-more-comics-ordered-in-march","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/2011\/05\/03\/million-more-comics-ordered-in-march\/","title":{"rendered":"Million more comics ordered in March 2011 than March 2001"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

Apologies for the delay in getting the estimated orders for March 2011 comics<\/b><\/a> online here \u2014 website maintenance gave way last month to home maintenance, as Wisconsin’s water table decided to come to the surface to take a look around. (Fortunately, your Comichron curator had already learned the lesson of many collectors before him: store all comics on the second floor!)<\/p>\n

At any rate, there is not a lot to add to the preliminary report for March 2011<\/b><\/a>, which noted that DC’s price rollbacks were impacting the charts in several ways. We now can see that $3.43 was the average price of Diamond’s Top 300 comics titles \u2014 as well as the average price weighted by orders. The median price for comics in the Top 300 was $2.99, and the most common price was, as well.<\/p>\n

One consequence of the presence of so many comics below $3 in the top of the charts is that the Top 300 represented a smaller portion of Diamond’s overall sales than it usually does. Diamond’s Top 300 titles saw a dollar sales drop of 4%, but that went down to 2.43% when the rest of the list was included. (Items after 300th place are typically more expensive than those higher up.) And in units, the fact that volume is being distributed more evenly meant that the Top 300’s 2% loss became a 0.81% gain once the lower-ranked titles were included. The 300th place comic book<\/b><\/a>, Ardden’s Grim Ghost<\/i> #1<\/b>, had orders of 4,499 copies in March \u2014 the fourth-highest total for a comic book in that ranking in the Diamond Exclusive Era.<\/p>\n

One interesting sidelight of that is that we’re getting into some really impressive unit-sales comparatives against a decade past, now: the Direct Market sold a full million fewer copies of the Top 300 comics in March 2001<\/b><\/a>. Comparing the two lists is interesting, because we see how volume has shifted:<\/p>\n

#1 comic book in March 2001: 105,248 copies
\n#1 comic book in March 2011: 114,472 copies<\/p>\n

#10 comic book in March 2001: 67,382 copies
\n#10 comic book in March 2011: 62,714 copies<\/p>\n

#100 comic book in March 2001: 18,840 copies
\n#100 comic book in March 2011: 20,768 copies<\/p>\n

#200 comic book in March 2001: 3,329 copies
\n#200 comic book in March 2011: 9,525 copies<\/p>\n

#300 comic book in March 2001: 787 copies
\n#300 comic book in March 2011: 4,499 copies<\/p>\n

Granted, the March 2001 figures do not include reorders from that month; they’d shrink the million-copy difference by perhaps a third. But still, the volume in the lower part of the list really has grown. The 300th place title in March 2011 would have placed 189th in March 2001!<\/p>\n

Why? Again, more prolific major publishers, and more mid-range publishers, period. Marvel had a puny 39 titles in the Top 300 in March 2001 (heading toward a modern-era low of 33 titles in May); this March, it placed 114 titles. Dynamic Forces went from placing three titles in March 2001 to placing 16 \u2014 and IDW, with 20 titles on the 2011 list, wasn’t there at all ten years earlier.<\/p>\n

More of the same ongoing transformation, but once we get fully into Marvel’s biweekly shipping this summer, things could really get interesting.<\/p>\n

The aggregate figures:<\/p>\n

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

March 2011<\/a>: <\/b>5.94 million copies
\nVersus 1 year ago this month<\/b><\/a>: -2%
\nVersus 5 years ago this month<\/b><\/a>: -15%
\nVersus 10 years ago this month<\/b><\/a>: +21%
\nYEAR TO DATE: 15.51 million copies, -9% vs. 2010, -17% vs. 2006, +2% vs. 2001<\/p>\n

ALL COMICS UNIT SALES<\/b>
\nMarch 2011 versus one year ago this month: +0.81%<\/b>
\nYEAR TO DATE: -8.05%<\/b><\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

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

March 2011: $20.38 million
\nVersus 1 year ago this month: -4%
\nVersus 5 years ago this month: -5%
\nVersus 10 years ago this month: +50%
\nYEAR TO DATE: $53.8 million, -9% vs. 2010, -4% vs. 2006, +30% vs. 2001<\/p>\n

ALL COMICS DOLLAR SALES<\/b>
\nMarch 2011 versus one year ago this month: -2.43%<\/b>
\nYEAR TO DATE: -8.57%<\/b><\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

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

March 2011: $5.17 million
\nVersus 1 year ago this month: -19%
\nVersus 5 years ago this month, just the Top 100 vs. the Top 100: -26%
\nVersus 10 years ago this month, just the Top 25 vs. the Top 25: -28%
\nYEAR TO DATE: $14.92 million, -11% vs. 2010<\/p>\n

ALL TRADE PAPERBACK\u00a0 SALES<\/b>
\nMarch 2011 versus one year ago this month: -10.01%<\/b>
\nYEAR TO DATE: -7.24%<\/b><\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

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

March 2011: $25.55 million
\nVersus 1 year ago this month: -8%
\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: +42%
\nYEAR TO DATE: $68.71 million, -10% vs. 2010<\/p>\n

ALL COMICS AND TRADE PAPERBACK\u00a0 SALES<\/b>
\nMarch 2011 versus one year ago this month: -4.98%<\/b>
\nYEAR TO DATE: -8.14%<\/b><\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

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

March 2011: approximately $33.56 million (subject to revision)
\nVersus 1 year ago this month: -5%
\nVersus 5 years ago this month: -4%
\nYEAR TO DATE: $89.75 million, -8% vs. 2010<\/p>\n

Again, sorry for the delay. April 2011 reporting should be starting later this week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Apologies for the delay in getting the estimated orders for March 2011 comics online here \u2014 website maintenance gave way last month to home maintenance, as Wisconsin’s water table decided to come to the surface to take a look around. (Fortunately, your Comichron curator had already learned the lesson of many collectors before him: store … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[85,17,75],"class_list":["post-5278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-2011-sales","tag-diamond-monthly-reports","tag-quarterly-reports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5278","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=5278"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5278\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6556,"href":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5278\/revisions\/6556"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}