Various new charts

Brian Hibbs has his analysis of the 2014 Bookscan charts in his Tilting at Windmills column, including a link to a spreadsheet of the top 750 comics.

ICV2 has their Bookscan Top 20 for February up now. Note for those comparing past charts, this particular chart was recently changed to include non-fiction, so now includes several books (those by Roz Chast and John Lewis this month) which wouldn't have been included before.

The February 2015 Diamond numbers are also up at the usual places, including Comichron. See sidebar for links to the other usual charts and articles.

A few quick notes on the Diamond numbers, since I probably won't get around to any longer post this month. Obviously, as noted everywhere, the ORPHAN BLACK debut at #1 with 497k is almost entirely due to it being included in Loot Crate. For comparison, the previous highest selling IDW book was MY LITTLE PONY FRIENDSHIP IS MAGIC #1 in 2012, at 80k. Also, note that it only ranked #3 in Diamond's Dollar Rank, indicating a higher than normal discount off cover price (previous Loot Crate propelled #1 books outsold the other books that month by such a margin that a higher discount wouldn't be evident).

It would be incredibly surprising if #2 sells more than 10% of what #1 did. Which means the 84% drop that STAR WARS #2 posted probably won't last as the highwater mark for second issue drops (if you ignore books with promotionally priced $1 first issues). Second issues as a whole dropped an average of 35%.

The Top 300 Graphic Novels chart was almost evenly split, 152 new items, 148 backlist, which seems to be about normal now in months where there's no evidence of massive backlist sales from Marvel or DC. There are around 90 books which you can count on to chart almost every month (I'll try to update that list this month), not too many surprises overall.

December 2014 Diamond Charts

Diamond charts for December are starting to come out. Here are ICV2's versions of the Comics and Graphic Novels Top 300. Other usual sources will update in the next few days, use the links in the sidebar.

First thing to note, DC does not appear to have used Diamond as the middleman in the Loot Crate version of BATMAN #36, which has the potential to be an order in the range of 250k. This probably cost them slightly in the Diamond marketshare, but saved them a lot otherwise.

No big comics debuts this month, so the top two comics and only ones over 100k are BATMAN and AMAZING SPIDER-MAN. Top debut is SHIELD at #3 with 94.5k. The AVENGERS AND X-MEN AXIS event finished weakly at under 70k for the last issue. ANGELA ASGARD'S ASSASSIN debuts at 61.4k, expect that to be down in the 30k range within a few issues. SANDMAN OVERTURE took a pretty big tumble with #4, over 19%, but it's marked as returnable (presumably for lateness) so sales might have been adjusted down. MULTIVERSITY continues to underwhelm, dropping below 48k.

Average second issue drop is up to 37%, and that's with SPIDER-VERSE TEAM UP keeping down the average with just a 3% drop. Biggest drop was GEORGE PEREZ SIRENS at over 60%, but INTERSECT, HUMANS and ALL NEW CAPTAIN AMERICA not far behind at over 58% each.

Only a few noteworthy increases this month. SAVAGE DRAGON makes the Top 300 for the first time in almost a year with #200, hard to quantify the increase without more data, but probably over 50%.  Likely out of the Top 300 again with #201. SHUTTER and EAST OF WEST return from short breaks with new storylines launching and 40%+ increases in orders. INFINITY MAN AND THE FOREVER PEOPLE got a 20% increase for tying in with the Green Lantern books. That increase will be gone soon, as will the title. DOCTOR WHO 11TH saw a small 8% increase for some reason while AFTERLIFE WITH ARCHIE returned from a long unscheduled publishing gap with a 6% increase.

Haven't had a chance to really go over the Graphic Novels chart yet, but it looks like it's nearly evenly split with 157 new items and 143 backlist. SAGA TP VOL 04 did very well, outselling the next item that should be on the chart by a better than five to one margin (the #2 book, Marvel's CAPTAIN AMERICA PEGGY CARTER AGENT OF SHIELD #1 should be on the comics chart based on most factors). Overall it was a pretty standard month on the charts. More when I have the full numbers and the year-end numbers.

Hibbs on retailer ordering

Brian Hibbs has an interesting column this month about the number of titles currently being published and how he orders them for his stores. There are a huge number of titles which get little or no sales in his stores, either through pre-orders or shelf copies. Looking at the total market numbers from Diamond, I'd guess that's true of a lot of stores.

The November charts are up

November numbers are up at the usual places, including Comichron. Check the other links in the sidebar. It might be the last fairly normal month for a while, with a lot of chart deforming events coming up, including a Loot Crate exclusive cover for BATMAN #36 which will probably more than double the 115k it shipped in November, various Star Wars launches at Marvel next year, with a print run for #1 reportedly already over 1 million (and dozens of covers), possibly not all of those going through the direct market.

Top book was AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #9, which launched an event and had many extra covers. Not surprisingly, #10 dropped right down to normal sales for the title, which are still respectable in the current market. The actual main SPIDER-VERSE event it launched is down a bit further in the charts, about half of what #9 sold. Second issues continue to have average drops in the 33% range, which seems to be the new normal. A big increase for INHUMAN #8, about 70%, apparently engineered by shipping many free copies. The retail rank indicates that it saw a pretty big drop in actual paid copies. The 64% increase for the new creative team on WONDER WOMAN #36 was probably more genuine, though probably short-lived.

On the books chart, 161 new items, 139 backlist, which is about normal for a month without DC or Marvel doing a huge high-discount dump (although there is some of that on this chart). New WALKING DEAD TP book is of course on top, only a few books can ship over 20k out of the gate like that. TEEN TITANS EARTH ONE HC VOL 01 did pretty good at almost 9k, but still only about half the first month sales of the previous EARTH ONE books. SAGA DLX ED HC VOL 01 did remarkably well for a $50 book at over 8k, which also gives it the top retail rank.

Maybe more later this week if I have time, otherwise look forward to the year-end numbers coming up soon.

New Chart Day Link Roundup

Been slow on the linking lately, so some catch-up here on new chart day.

July numbers are up, Comichron has the charts, the market summary and  some commentary, as does ICV2 (comic chart, books chart, summary and analysis) and John Mayo at CBR (charts and commentary) It looks like the short period of Diamond releasing the Top 400 for comics is over, unfortunately. I looked briefly as what those extra 100 entries a month included over here, I was looking forward to seeing more as we got enough months of information.

And just catching up, we got the July Bookscan numbers from ICV2 up here. Basically a lot of Batman, a lot of ATTACK ON TITAN, Bryan Lee O'Malley's first post-SCOTT PILGRIM book doing very well  (even with the sales bifurcated by an exclusive edition in one major store).

Beat articles for June are up for DC and Marvel. Note that the writer of the Indie chart for The Beat is stepping down and they're looking for a replacement, so contact them if you're interested.

John Mayo's sales report podcasts are catching up from the convention season, June Trades episode is up now, expect the Comics one up soon, and the July episodes probably soon after that.

To be discussed here on the July numbers in the next few weeks, obviously the absurdly high sales of ROCKET RACCOON. There's the expected across-the-board drop in the DC books that got the "bombshell variant" bump last month, generally losing about half the increase, with most of them having "Batman 75" variants. There's the continuing success of HARLEY QUINN, which this month saw SECRET ORIGINS get a 30% bump with #4. The Books chart is about typical, with around 55% new books and 45% backlist (I'm still going through it trying to weed out a few "new editions" and deciding which should be counted as new books). As you'd expect, a new WALKING DEAD book is always going to dominate (unless a new SAGA comes in the same month). O'Malley's SECONDS does well there as well, it'll be interesting to see if it has the legs in the direct market that SCOTT PILGRIM did (the SCOTT PILGRIM books don't hit the Top 300 much anymore, but the first one was a pretty consistent presence there for about four years bracketing the release of the film adaptation). More soon.

New Chart Day Link Roundup

June Diamond charts are up. For some reason it looks like Diamond went back to just releasing the Top 300 for the comics (plus some scattered lower entries from the Small Press / Indy charts), which is a shame. That extra information was potentially interesting, if you got a good long run of it together.

Comichron has John Jackson Miller's chart over here, and some analysis here. Miller also has some other interesting posts recently, like an overview of 54 years of Archie sales figures, and it looks like he'll have some overall market data for 2013 up soon.

ICV2 has their Comics chart here, and Graphic Novels here. Analysis here.

A few quick observations.  The Books chart is just over half backlist (144 new, 156 backlist), thanks partly to a lot of discount items from DC this time around (for example, ABSOLUTE SUPERMAN FOR TOMORROW shipped over 1800 copies at fire sale prices averaging over 80% last month, and it's a book which only shipped about 1200 copies in the first month of release back in 2009). SAGA is still king of the backlist, with the three volumes being the top three backlist items and in the Top 10 of all book items. And of course AFTERLIFE WITH ARCHIE was the biggest new release by a wide margin, a first for Archie in that format.

Over on the Comics side, a bit of an aberration thanks to DC's themed variant covers. Until now, the availability of those variants was limited by retailer orders of the main cover (1 for 25). Starting in June, with the "Bombshell variants", DC allowed retailers to order as many as they wished. This led to an average increase on books with the variant of about 45% (not counting SUPERMAN, which also had a high profile new creative team, and JUSTICE LEAGUE UNITED which was on its second issue, and only fell 2% from sales of #1, which is effectively a 30%+ increase from expected sales). It remains to be seen if this particular variant theme was especially enticing or if the upcoming ones ("Batman 75" in July, "Selfies" in August, "Monsters" in October) deliver comparable results. I don't expect them to, but they should keep sales higher than the May base level.

Other than that, business as usual, lots of big second issue drops, averaging over 30%, a few surprisingly high launches, we'll see if any of them hold on to most of those numbers, and a few modest increases which might be sustainable content based rather than one-off gimmick based.

Elsewhere: June 2014 Diamond overview

Diamond has their initial numbers release for June 2014 up now. Expect the full chart up on Monday.

No big launches this month, so no first issues in the entire Top 10 Comics list, and BATMAN tops the list again. Looks like HARLEY QUINN and DETECTIVE will post some pretty significant gains, probably due to the variant covers offered. SUPERMAN probably more than doubled sales from its recent track record thanks to a new creative team, but would have done a lot better with a new #1. On the other hand, SUPERMAN #33 probably won't have nearly the 30-40% plus drop that a #2 would have.

Here's the Top 50 in each category, ranked but not indexed. OUTCAST #1 is the top debut for the month, according to the publisher it sold about 86k, but that presumably includes sales outside NorthAm and there's some reduction for returnability, so it'll probably come in about 72k on the estimates. Also starting strongly from Image is THE WICKED AND THE DIVINE, probably in the 50k+ range. Also looks like a lot of DC books got a big boost from their "Bombshells variant" themed covers.

New Chart Day Link Roundup

It's Diamond Charts Day, the monthly holiday for numbers fans. I'll update the links as they become available.

John Jackson Miller has your fix here, with the Top 400 Comics, plus some small press books lower in the charts, and the Top 300 Trade Paperbacks. Some commentary as well, over here.

John Mayo has his version at CBR, with the added information he puts on issue-to-issue comparisons for the comics and cumulative sales on the Trades chart. His commentary here.

ICV2 has their version here (Comics, now featuring the full Top 400) and here (Graphic Novels). Commentary article here.

Elsewhere: May 2014 Diamond overview

Diamond has their market overview numbers for May up now, the usual suspects should have articles up based on it soon. The big story will be that the Marvel/DC market share split is much tighter than it has been in months. The full charts probably won't be available until Monday, but we might get a Top 50 or 100 before then.

[and, indeed, here are the Top 50 charts, without order index values]

Some stuff to watch for, ORIGINAL SIN #2 seems to take quite a tumble, already below the last issue of FOREVER EVIL by the second issue. WALKING DEAD #127 probably took a small jump up, since it was a double-sized issue at the regular price, but it doesn't look like it was that big a jump.  On the Books side, three original graphic novels in the Top 10, kind of tells you something that an original X-MEN book is back-to-back in the ranking with an original BLACK CANARY AND ZATANNA book.

Elsewhere: Beat Indy April Sales Analysis

Over at The Beat, Chris Rice has the Indy month-to-month sales analysis for the April 2014 comics chart.

Elsewhere: May 2014 BookScan chart

ICV2 has the May 2014 BookScan Top 20.

ATTACK ON TITAN dominates, with the top two spots for the latest and first books, and four other books down the charts. And that's prior to the English language release of the cartoon adaptation this week. Prediction, June's chart will have even more AoT, maybe a full half of the chart.

DC returns to the chart for the first time since January, with the release of the latest hardcover and paperback volumes of the current BATMAN series. Previous volumes have usually been good for three or four chart appearances, so expect to see them again, if they aren't crushed by a Titan.

From Image, WALKING DEAD and SAGA continue to do well, with three entries each. The $60 COMPENDIUM volumes seem to be taking over as the format of choice for the early issues of WALKING DEAD. SEX CRIMINALS also shows up with its first volume, a bit surprisingly, the first time there's been an Image book on the chart that wasn't SAGA or WALKING DEAD since WANTED back when the movie came out in 2008.

Other than those, we had another we had a pair of licensed reference books on Marvel characters, which seems to be how the mass market likes its Marvel books, not in the form of actual comics. And no MIRACLEMAN, oddly enough (though it only had a few days of availability in May, we'll see if it shows up in June). A few Japanese comics not named ATTACK ON TITAN continue to sell well, and a slim volume of GODZILLA tying in to the movie probably sold a lot of copies the first week it was out by people not realizing the Arthur Adams cover promised more than the interiors could deliver. Y'know, sort of like a really good movie trailer for a disappointing movie dropping off after the opening weekend. Is my analogy too subtle...?

Elsewhere: Various April numbers links

John Mayo and Sam discuss the April Comics numbers, but not before John Mayo and Chris discuss the Trades numbers.

Meanwhile, at The Beat, the new guys are much more prompt about getting the charts up than the grizzled old veterans were, so we already have the April Marvel month-to-month and DC month-to-month numbers up from Jason Enright and David Carter respectively.

Elsewhere: Beat Indy March Sales Analysis

Over at The Beat, Chris Rice, either for the first time or as usual, I'm not sure, has the Indy month-to-month sales analysis for the March 2014 comics chart.

New Chart Day Link Roundup

It's Diamond Charts Day, the monthly holiday for numbers fans.

John Jackson Miller has your fix here, with the Top 400 Comics, plus some small press books lower in the charts, and the Top 300 Trade Paperbacks, with one small presser from down the charts. Some commentary as well, over here.

John Mayo has his version at CBR, with the added information he puts on issue-to-issue comparisons for the comics and cumulative sales on the Trades chart. His commentary here.

ICV2 has their version here (Comics) and here (Graphic Novels). Commentary article here.

I really need to settle on a consistent way to refer to that second chart...

The most immediately notable thing is AMAZING SPIDER-MAN (2014 SERIES) #1, at 532k, definitely the highest single month sales of any comic charting in the Diamond exclusive era, maybe on track to be the best selling period when all is said and done. That should have a spectacular second issue drop, maybe also a record.  Speaking of which, some very impressive second issue falls this time, like 64% for MAGNUS ROBOT FIGHTER, already under 10k.  Pool on how long this Gold Key revival lasts? Valiant is also all below 10k except their one first issue this month, but it took them almost two years to get there.

Looks like a more typical month on the Graphic Books chart, without any evidence of a massive sale like the last few months.  150 items are new, 150 are backlist. SAGA is doing stunningly well, with the top three backlist entries, the first book has passed 100k just in sales visible on the Diamond charts, and the third book, which placed behind the newest WALKING DEAD last month, has now outsold that WD book in cumulative sales.

More in the week to come.

Elsewhere: April 2014 Diamond overview

Diamond has their market overview numbers for April up now and Comichron has the usual quick analysis from John Jackson Miller, plus a recent article about "million sellers". Nothing much to add to the numbers released so far, more when the full charts come out next week.

Elsewhere: April 2014 BookScan chart

ICV2 has the April 2014 BookScan Top 20.  They still seem to think DC and Marvel not being on the charts for two months in a row is something new, which as I pointed out last month isn't the case. Anyway, Marvel is back on with a movie tie-in release, as well as some reference books from DK Publishing.  Other than that, nothing too surprising, multiple volumes of SAGA, WALKING DEAD and ATTACK ON TITAN, the latest issues of long-running manga successes NARUTO and BLEACH, the first volume of another manga with anime/video-game connections and the latest ADVENTURE TIME book making the chart for the third month in a row.

Elsewhere: Mayo on Marvel Relaunches

Between the monthly Diamond charts, John Mayo looks at some of the recent Marvel relaunches and diminishing returns, with charts.

Elsewhere: Archie sales figures

Once upon a time the annual Statement of Ownership required by some postal regulation was the most reliable look into sales figures that readers got. Most publishers don't run them these days, but Archie does, and  Johanna Draper Carlson reports on them at Comics Worth Reading.  Here are the figures for 2013 she could get (not including their videogame books) with links to the previous six years. Those sales do look pretty bad, with sell-through on the digests only at about 30%, and total sales way down from just a few years ago. I also didn't realize that Archie's standard non-digest comic line (not including videogame books and high-concept titles like Archie Zombies or Archie Married) was down to so few on-going books.

Elsewhere: Mayo Report podcast March Diamond Trades Chart

Latest episode of John Mayo's podcast, discussing the March 2014 Diamond Trades chart with Chris Marshall, is now available.

Elsewhere: Beat Marvel March Sales Analysis

The Beat has Jason Enright's analysis of the month-to-month sales trends for Marvel for the March 2014 Diamond comics chart.