By John Jackson Miller on 7/3/2008 12:56 PM

There is some discussion online about what is included in the estimates here and elsewhere of what is in the Diamond monthly reports. For reference, here's what copies are NOT included in the monthly sales reports you see here:

1) Diamond's sales to the U.K. These tend to be in the 10% range when it comes to units. Diamond sold approximately $36.8 million in comics, trades, and magazines in May 2008 in North America; my best guess on UK sales is another $3.8 million.

2) Newsstand sales, if the publisher has them, as well as any sales through other distributors, direct sales, or subscriptions — again, if the publisher has them.

3) Any reorder activity outside the calendar period being reported.

Before 2003, we could safely say that the charts ALSO underestimated sales on all comics because they only reported preorders. Since 2003 and Diamond's move to final order reporting, we also get reorders that ship within the same calendar month. This benefits Week 1 books more than any on the list, as a consequence. (And this is one of the places where month-to-month comparisons get tricky, if a book ships at different times in the months being compared. It's this, not just the issue number, that causes the decline you usually see when multiple issues of a weekly ship in the same month. It's not necessarily that sales are trailing off — just that the earlier issues have had more weeks in which to gather reorders.)

Given the standard errors most people have been able to achieve since the 2003 change, I'm reasonably sure the Comichron and ICV2 tables, as well as some others I could name, reflect what we each say they're estimating; Diamond's North American orders in the calendar month, and only Diamond's North American orders in the calendar month. The important thing is always to spell that out, which isn't always easy in a discussion. There's a lot of boilerplate small print we have to include in writing about this stuff, but it's there for a reason.

By John Jackson Miller on 6/25/2008 3:55 PM

And the Newsarama column for May is now online here. Brand new interface over there, you'll see. You can learn what Wolverine Vol. 2 #1 and the original Marvel Comics Presents #1 have in common!

By John Jackson Miller on 6/17/2008 9:23 AM

Updated 6/19: OK, some technical difficulties past, you can find the tables with sales estimates for May 2008 here.

My guess at total market size earlier this week was based on a file Diamond distributed to the media that mistakenly included the April market shares under the banner for May; once that was ferreted out, the new figures adjusted the estimate downward. (The market shares listed here on the site and on Newsarama appear to be the correct ones.) Last May was a monster, so the comparatives were going to be hard to hit; there was also one less shipping week this May. In any event, orders were off in all categories against a year ago and all year-to-date categories are now off — though the widest category, overall comics, trade paperback, and magazine orders, is only off 2% year-to-date.

June 2007 was a much slower month than May 2007, so we’ll see how the comparatives work next time. It's beginning to look a bit like 2003, a year when the market seemed to have been catching its breath after a period of stronger growth; we won't know whether that's true for a few months, I shouldn't think. Having observed this market through colossal highs and extreme lows, I always find it's helpful to get a good number of data points before drawing many conclusions.

With Diamond trade paperback indexed reporting stretching back to early 1998, we can now also do ten-year comparisons. To preserve apples-to-apples, I only compare the number of titles Diamond had on its list in each year; the top 50 in 2003, the top 25 in 1998. There's probably something to be said for the dollars realized by the Top 25 trades more than doubling 10 years later, as we see below.

TOP 300 COMICS UNIT SALES
May 2008: 7.06 million copies
Versus 1 year ago this month: -9%
Versus 5 years ago this month: +24%
Versus 10 years ago this month: +1%
YEAR TO DATE:  32.88 million copies, -7% vs. 2007

TOP 300 COMICS DOLLAR SALES
May 2008: $23.12 million
Versus 1 year ago this month: -6%
Versus 5 years ago this month: +47%
Versus 10 years ago this month: +36%
YEAR TO DATE: $104.36 million, -6% vs. 2007

TOP 100 TRADE PAPERBACK DOLLAR SALES
May 2008: $5.06 million
Versus 1 year ago this month: -17%
Versus 5 years ago this month, just the Top 50 vs. the Top 50: +60%
Versus 10 years ago this month, just the Top 25 vs. the Top 25: +140%
YEAR TO DATE: $21.91 million, -5% vs. 2007

TOP 300 COMICS + TOP 100 TRADE PAPERBACK DOLLAR SALES
May 2008: $28.18 million
Versus 1 year ago this month: -8%
Versus 5 years ago this month, counting just the Top 50 TPBs: +48%
YEAR TO DATE: $126.63 million, -8% vs. 2007

OVERALL DIAMOND SALES (including all comics, trades, and magazines)
May 2008: $36.79 million ($40.66 million with UK)
Versus 1 year ago this month: -10%
Versus 5 years ago this month: +55%
YEAR TO DATE: $171.03 million, -2% vs. 2007, +46% vs. 2003

The graphic charts will be updated soon.

By John Jackson Miller on 6/16/2008 7:51 PM

Still waiting on some materials for the estimates, but Newsarama has the Top 100 for May online. More here as I have it.

Meanwhile, I should note that my radio silence of the past month has yielded much new data; I now have surpassed 2,500 Statements of Ownership for comic books in my database, filling in a lot of blanks. There are also "new" items for the 1960s lists already posted. My suspicion is that perhaps only 500 or so comics statements remain, just from process of elimination over the years. I've been needing to load more data in for most of a year now — this, apart from time, was the one thing delaying the posting of the 1970s — I wanted to get more data collected before posting. Just a few more to go in this wave of updates, so hopefully I'll get the new and updated tables online this summer.

By John Jackson Miller on 5/19/2008 1:16 PM

Diamond Comic Distributors released its sales rankings today, and unusually I was able to attend to the math right away and generate the estimates for April 2008.

Overall, the comics industry fared better against last April — but only overall. Comparatives in the narrower categories remain slightly down, even considering this April had five ship weeks (versus four last year). But the backlist strength bumped the overall category up 6% this month — with the year-to-date now ahead by nearly $1 million, or 1%.

Look for my Newsarama column with in-depth historical analysis coming soon. (Update: And now it's online — you can find it here.)

TOP 300 COMICS UNIT SALES
April 2008: 6.71 million copies
Versus 1 year ago this month: -6%
Versus 5 years ago this month: +11%
Versus 10 years ago this month: -5%
YEAR TO DATE:  25.82 million copies, -6% vs. 2007

TOP 300 COMICS DOLLAR SALES
April 2008: $21.45 million
Versus 1 year ago this month: -2%
Versus 5 years ago this month: +28%
Versus 10 years ago this month: +22%
YEAR TO DATE: $81.24 million, -5% vs. 2007

TOP 100 TRADE PAPERBACK DOLLAR SALES
April 2008: $4.74 million
Versus 1 year ago this month: -7%
Versus 5 years ago this month, just the Top 50 vs. the Top 50: +30%
YEAR TO DATE: $ 16.85 million, -1% vs. 2007

TOP 300 COMICS + TOP 100 TRADE PAPERBACK DOLLAR SALES
April 2008: $26.19 million
Versus 1 year ago this month: -3%
Versus 5 years ago this month, counting just the Top 50 TPBs: +28%
YEAR TO DATE: $98.45 million, -4% vs. 2007

OVERALL DIAMOND SALES (including all comics, trades, and magazines)
April 2008: $36.74 million ($40.39 million with UK)
Versus 1 year ago this month: +6%
Versus 5 years ago this month: +38%
YEAR TO DATE: $135.04 million, +1% vs. 2007, +43% vs. 2003