By John Jackson Miller on 9/25/2007 12:00 AM

And the data for August 2007 is now up -- bringing to an even 11 years the archives of estimates of Diamond Comics Distributors' sales available here.

A five-week month compared to a five ship week month from last year, August 2007 still managed improvements in all categories except for the Top 100 Trade Paperbacks. The 300th place comic book had orders of 2,500 copies, which is a far sight better than previous years where that figure had dropped close to 1,000 copies.

Overall, the comics direct market seems poised for another strong year. Up 10% after eight months, I might expect to see the overall figure for 2007 to wind up between $430-440 million.

One point on Diamond’s sales chart equals 770 copies.

TOP 300 UNIT SALES
7.69 million copies, up 4% from last August
2007 YTD: 57.46 million copies, up 6% from 2006 YTD

TOP 300 DOLLAR SALES
$24.62 million, up 7% from last August
2007 YTD: $181.22 million, up 9% from 2006 YTD

TOP 100 TRADE PAPERBACKS
$4.63 million, down 6% from last August
2007 YTD: $36.94 million, up 19% from 2006 YTD

COMBINED TOP 300 COMICS & TOP 100 TRADES
$29.26 million, up 5% from last August
2007 YTD: $218.16 million, up 11% from 2006 YTD

OVERALL DIAMOND SALES (including all comics, TPBs, and magazines)
$39.18 million, up 5% from last August ($43.19 million with UK)
2007 YTD: $286.11 million, up 10% from 2006 YTD

By John Jackson Miller on 8/28/2007 12:00 AM

The comics sales estimates for July 2007 are now online here at The Comics Chronicles.

TOP 300 UNIT SALES
7.64 million copies, up 3% from last July
2007 YTD: 49.77 million copies, up 6% from 2006 YTD

TOP 300 DOLLAR SALES
$24.02 million, up 6% from last July
2007 YTD: $156.6 million, up 9% from 2006 YTD

TOP 100 TRADE PAPERBACKS
$4.37 million, up 1% from last July
2007 YTD: $32.31 million, up 23% from 2006 YTD

COMBINED TOP 300 COMICS & TOP 100 TRADES
$28.39 million, up 5% from last July
2007 YTD: $188.9 million, up 12% from 2006 YTD

OVERALL DIAMOND SALES (including all comics, TPBs, and magazines)
$36.82 million, up 5% from last July
2007 YTD: $246.93 million, up 10% from 2006 YTD

Marvel’s Top 300 Comics unit and dollar sales were slightly higher than in May 2007, breaking that month’s 11-year record in those two categories.

By John Jackson Miller on 7/20/2007 12:00 AM

The June 2007 comics shop order totals have been posted; my estimates for individual titles can be found here.

The detailed data:

TOP 300 UNIT SALES
6.93 million copies, down 1% from last June
Q2: 21.83 million copies, up 5% from Q2 2006
2007 YTD: 42.13 million copies, up 7% from 2006 YTD

TOP 300 DOLLAR SALES
$22.11 million, up 4% from last June
Q2: $68.44 million, up 6% from Q2 2006
2007 YTD: $132.58 million, up 6% from 2006 YTD

TOP 100 TRADE PAPERBACKS
$4.85 million, up 33% from last June
Q2: $16.05 million, up 48% from Q2 2006
2007 YTD: $27.94 million, up 28% from 2006 YTD

COMBINED TOP 300 COMICS & TOP 100 TRADES
$26.96 million, up 8% from last June
Q2: $84.49 million, up 12% from Q2 2006
2007 YTD: $160.52 million, up 13% from 2006 YTD

OVERALL DIAMOND SALES (including all comics, TPBs, and magazines)
$35.08 million, up 10% from last June
Q2: $110.81 million, up 11% from Q2 2006
2007 YTD: $210.11 million, up 11% from 2006 YTD

Prospects at midyear for topping 2006 performance in all categories continue to be good. TPB performance looks to be surging in 2007, after last year when the periodicals seemed to have more momentum.

Been on the road a lot lately; I should be getting back to posting data more regularly here soon.

By John Jackson Miller on 6/27/2007 12:00 AM

David Beard has an interesting article in the latest Comics Journal (#283) on distributor sales charts -- and whether the reporting of them distorts their importance. It's in stores now, and worth checking out. My thoughts (from my own discussions with David) are here.

By John Jackson Miller on 5/3/2007 12:00 AM

 

I'm still working my way through getting more year-by-year data online, but there have been enough media requests in advance of Spider-Man 3 that I figured I'd go ahead and add one of the title pages that I intend to do, showing sales accoring to the Statements of Ownership across time.

Click for Amazing Spider-Man sales figures from the beginning in the 1960s to 2006. (Or, rather, 2005, as Marvel seems not to have run a form in it for the end of 2006, near as I can figure. If someone has one, drop me a line in the Forum. Marvel did run forms in some other titles for the year, just not this one, or so it seems.)

I'll do more of these title pages, linking from the year-by-year pages, in the future -- hopefully there will be enough for their own section at some point.