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Comics Sales - March 2014

Started by techvoodoo,

39 posts in this topic

techvoodoo

techvoodoo

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Posted

Just saw this interesting article about comics sales and market share.

 

Lots of info here, but I was mostly looking at the top comics for the month, and seeing TMNT's march sales at just over 15k units and ranking in at 134th was a surprise. One of my 3 monthly books I still purchase.

 

TWD is still in the top 10 and Batman has seems to have a clear hold on the #1 spot, with DC titles all in the top 4 spots. I'd never even heard of the #3 Forever Evil title. I browsed the Silver Surfer #1 at my LCS and I can't see that staying in the top 10, but that's just a guess.

 

March 2014 Comic Sales

 

 

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Davenport

Davenport

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Just saw this interesting article about comics sales and market share.

 

March 2014 Comic Sales

Man, those cold hard numbers for comic books seem unreal. Think about overall US population, and the average comic does a single small town type numbers. Fifty, sixty thousand nationwide? Wow.

 

I don't want to think about how many of those are multiples and variants, shaving the number of actual buyers down even more.

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techvoodoo

techvoodoo

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Makes you wonder if comics will survive another generation or two.

 

I was talking about this a few weeks ago with my friend. He mostly agreed with me on this, though I'm sure a lot of people here won't, but comics have to be one of the worst forms of entertainment, dollar per dollar.

 

I read a new issue in around 5 minutes. If it's beefy on dialog maybe 10 minutes. At $4 an issue that's between $24-$48 per hour. Even if we split the difference and call it $36 an hour for entertainment, that's pretty steep in my opinion. TPB's can offset that price quite bit, but I don't imagine a book will make it to TPB if it isn't a hot selling book in the first place.

 

By comparison an MMORPG like World of Warcraft costs you $15 a month. When I was playing WoW A LOT, I probably played around 20 hours a week. That's about 86 hours a month, that runs me about $.17 an hour for entertainment. That's about one of the best examples of entertainment for your money.

 

I went from getting around 30 titles a month down to getting 3, and honestly I think I'm probably going to cancel those 3 soon and just get them in TPB's or not at all. Around 3-4 hours worth of reading a month for $120 just isn't worth it to me.

 

I'm not going to start suggesting on if I think comics will or won't survive in the future, I honestly don't know how their business model works. But unless a cheap monthly subscription model like Marvel Unlimited comes out for the other publishers, I think they've pretty much lost my money.

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ComicConnoisseur

ComicConnoisseur

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April is going to produce one of the biggest dm numbers since mid-1996 or so with Amazing Spider-Man #1. Perhaps the biggest, depending on where it ends up.

Yes it will do big numbers, but how many will be bought by LCS owners and speculators?

I don`t see any new readers buying it. It`s just another pretty number one that most likely will be found in a dollar bin a year from now.

It seems like once a month there is one or two big seller number ones that prop up the overall sales while the rest of the comic books do low volume.

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ComicConnoisseur

ComicConnoisseur

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Posted
Just saw this interesting article about comics sales and market share.

 

March 2014 Comic Sales

Man, those cold hard numbers for comic books seem unreal. Think about overall US population, and the average comic does a single small town type numbers. Fifty, sixty thousand nationwide? Wow.

 

I don't want to think about how many of those are multiples and variants, shaving the number of actual buyers down even more.

Agreed. This disconcerting.

 

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miraclemet

miraclemet

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Along with digital downloads, also remember that there is a much greater TPB market than in the past (when TPBs/HCs were few and far between).

 

That helps boost readership numbers. I read most of my new releases in Trade, not in singles.

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MatterEaterLad

MatterEaterLad

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It's hardly surprising, as comics have priced themselves totally out of reality, and their market consists of only the most hardcore of addicts.

 

Yep. The direct distribution model shrunk the market just like PPV shrunk the audience for boxing. Seemed like a lucrative idea at the time (which it was) but doesn't expose the product to a wide audience, so as that hardcore audience shrinks there's no one there to replace it.

 

 

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DigsUT

DigsUT

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Makes you wonder if comics will survive another generation or two.

 

I was talking about this a few weeks ago with my friend. He mostly agreed with me on this, though I'm sure a lot of people here won't, but comics have to be one of the worst forms of entertainment, dollar per dollar.

 

I read a new issue in around 5 minutes. If it's beefy on dialog maybe 10 minutes. At $4 an issue that's between $24-$48 per hour. Even if we split the difference and call it $36 an hour for entertainment, that's pretty steep in my opinion. TPB's can offset that price quite bit, but I don't imagine a book will make it to TPB if it isn't a hot selling book in the first place.

 

By comparison an MMORPG like World of Warcraft costs you $15 a month. When I was playing WoW A LOT, I probably played around 20 hours a week. That's about 86 hours a month, that runs me about $.17 an hour for entertainment. That's about one of the best examples of entertainment for your money.

 

I went from getting around 30 titles a month down to getting 3, and honestly I think I'm probably going to cancel those 3 soon and just get them in TPB's or not at all. Around 3-4 hours worth of reading a month for $120 just isn't worth it to me.

 

I'm not going to start suggesting on if I think comics will or won't survive in the future, I honestly don't know how their business model works. But unless a cheap monthly subscription model like Marvel Unlimited comes out for the other publishers, I think they've pretty much lost my money.

 

While I would 100% agree that dollar per hour value is incredibly bad for comics in general, vary few of the other media competing with comics can be potentially resold for what you paid for it or more. However, that is not always the case with comics as we all know. As long as comic books retain secondary market value and collectability, I believe there will always be a buyer for them, despite the digital format.

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aggr1103

aggr1103

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how are digital downloards. I gather that digital downloads reveal more about readers than floppies, you just can't imagine collectors hoarding digital copies.

 

This is what I wonder about. I have more friends that read comics than collect comic books. Those friends use their smartphone/tablet to read comics, especially the walking dead.

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the blob

the blob

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Makes you wonder if comics will survive another generation or two.

 

I was talking about this a few weeks ago with my friend. He mostly agreed with me on this, though I'm sure a lot of people here won't, but comics have to be one of the worst forms of entertainment, dollar per dollar.

 

I read a new issue in around 5 minutes. If it's beefy on dialog maybe 10 minutes. At $4 an issue that's between $24-$48 per hour. Even if we split the difference and call it $36 an hour for entertainment, that's pretty steep in my opinion. TPB's can offset that price quite bit, but I don't imagine a book will make it to TPB if it isn't a hot selling book in the first place.

 

By comparison an MMORPG like World of Warcraft costs you $15 a month. When I was playing WoW A LOT, I probably played around 20 hours a week. That's about 86 hours a month, that runs me about $.17 an hour for entertainment. That's about one of the best examples of entertainment for your money.

 

I went from getting around 30 titles a month down to getting 3, and honestly I think I'm probably going to cancel those 3 soon and just get them in TPB's or not at all. Around 3-4 hours worth of reading a month for $120 just isn't worth it to me.

 

I'm not going to start suggesting on if I think comics will or won't survive in the future, I honestly don't know how their business model works. But unless a cheap monthly subscription model like Marvel Unlimited comes out for the other publishers, I think they've pretty much lost my money.

 

yes, but with 25K print-runs these are rare limited editions! (by early 90s standards...)

 

i don't know if readers do the minute/$ calculation, maybe they do, but if that's the case the publishers ought to consider putting more material in there (48, preferably 64 pages) for the reader's $3-$4. the extra pages shouldn't add much to cost, though maybe they will for shipping cost.

 

my main problem is paying full price (or getting a file and paying 80% of full price) for something that has an 80% chance of being findable in a dollar box within the next 2-4 months..it has to be something like WD or Goon or Chew or some title that I rarely see in the dollar box (unless it is a trashed copy) .. in some ways the comics shops/dealers have shot themeselves in the foot with this expectation of deep discounting, but OTOH, they're stuck with this stuff that is going to be a SLOWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW mover as a back issue at cover price 98% of the time.

 

the extra 20-40 pages need not be top tier material. i always find back-up stories to be fun. let the 5th tier artists and writers do some stuff and pay them diddly for it. experiment a little. put some reprint material in there. it isn't like these companies don't have vast hoards of potential reprint material to use. do it in a haphazardly enough way that you don't mess up your TPB business (like just use stand-alone stories, for example). would your gripe be the same if new 64 page comics were $3-$4? per page, that's going back to early/mid 90s prices? (getting a little closer to the manga style bulk entertainment magazines)

 

 

 

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Davenport

Davenport

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Out of curiosity I googled what Manga does numbers wise. (which I know nothing about at all)

 

The weekly manga and light novels rankings for March 5th - 11th

Rank / This week's sales by copies / Cumulative sales / Titles

 

Manga

*1, 1,842,220 2,247,140 One Piece Vol.69

*2, *,429,693 *,432,196 Bleach Vol.58

*3, *,327,856 *,377,478 Ansatsu Kyousu Vol.3

 

So it's not the artform. Looks like readers respond just fine to quality strorytelling, if invitingly priced and marketed. (note they're charting "this week's" sales, not Monthly)

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ss5rmp

ss5rmp

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Out of curiosity I googled what Manga does numbers wise. (which I know nothing about at all)

 

The weekly manga and light novels rankings for March 5th - 11th

Rank / This week's sales by copies / Cumulative sales / Titles

 

Manga

*1, 1,842,220 2,247,140 One Piece Vol.69

*2, *,429,693 *,432,196 Bleach Vol.58

*3, *,327,856 *,377,478 Ansatsu Kyousu Vol.3

 

So it's not the artform, it's packaging, pricing, cultural or other things. Looks like readers respond just fine to quality strorytelling, if invitingly priced and marketed. (note they're charting "this week's", not Monthly)

 

though a manga is more like a tpb than an comic book and honestly most manga stories are better than any current comic book dc or marvel put out

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