Comic Book Research Forum
Welcome! Login and Registration links are at the upper right of the page.
(Editing help: To increase your post from the default size, select all and choose "x-small" under "size" before posting.)
 |  | |
| | |
| | |
| | |
 | | |
|
|
|
| For a rough history of comics numbers |
|
|
[originally posted 10/22/2007]
I'm writing a PhD dissertation about superheroes in which I need to somehow provide my committee with a very simple overview of comic 'popularity' trends since Action #1. Since most of my diss is theoretical, not numbers-based, I want to keep that overview as simple as possible - I'm imagining a basic bar chart with entries for each decade or so, measuring SOME basic indicator that is not dollar sales (don't want to worry about inflation adjustments).
This metric isn't actually supposed to 'represent popularity' (I realize that would be highly controversial); it's just meant to show some people who don't know comics the ups and downs experienced by the industry since superheroes appeared. I had first planned to use 'total copies sold' as a metric, but that measurement is proving hard to find for all years ir even decades. Other possibilities seem to be total copies published, total copies in circulation, and issues/titles per year. The only one of those for which I have been able to find consistent reporting is issues per year (on this site, of course).
I wonder if anyone has any thoughts on which of those metrics would be best to use.
If anyone has suggestions of what kind of metric to use I'd appreciate any thoughts. |
|
|
|
| |
|
|
| Re: For a rough history of comics numbers |
|
|
[originally posted 10/24/2007]
Issues per year is meaningful for a while, until the Direct Market makes it possible for anyone who wants to publish a comic book to reach the market. So that really won't say much about the popularity of any one genre.
Copies sold really is the best indicator, although as you have observed the reporting is spotty before a few years ago. You'll see some guesstimates I have in some other threads here, but you also may be able to see problems with them in relation to your thesis, as well. The overall circulation trends sometimes make the effects of superhero comics hard to see. You can look at a year like 1962 in which we're all thinking we're in the high Silver Age — but the number of super-hero titles is actually pretty small, still.
Dollars can be reverse-engineered fairly easily from copy counts, where we have them. The differentiation in pricing before 1980 is minor.
Best, John Jackson Miller • Curator, The Comics Chronicles |
|
|
|
| |
|
|
| Re: For a rough history of comics numbers |
|
|
[originally posted 10/24/2007]
Thanks for the reply, John. I haven't found any 'copies sold' data for after the mid-1990s - at that point everything seems to be in dollars. As you know CBG has 'copies sold' data in the 'Yearly Aggregates' section, but that data is confined to Diamond's 'Top 300', which seems like a small section of the industry. Are you recommending I use those CBG numbers, or are there industry-wide numbers somewhere that might work better for 'copies sold'? |
|
|
|
| |
|
|
| Re: For a rough history of comics numbers |
|
|
[originally posted 10/24/2007]
Diamond's Top 300 should suit your purposes. What they don't cover is the comics outside Diamond's Top 300 -- which simple mathematics limits to less than 5% of Diamond's single-copy sales -- plus comics sold through newsstand distributors. That figure has been dropping consistently over time and may be only 10-15% of the overall market for single copies. Not counted as well is British sales of U.S. copies, which is about 10% the size of Diamond's Top 300 unit sales.
Upshot is the Diamond 300 is the lion's share of unit sales, so that might be a safe metric. The only problem in it is that the figure reported is preorders from 1996-2002, and final orders thereafter. The boost in the second group might be 5%-7%.
These are back-of-the-envelope guesses, of course.
Best, John Jackson Miller • Curator, The Comics Chronicles |
|
|
|
| |
|
|
| Re: For a rough history of comics numbers |
|
|
[originally posted 10/26/2007]
Thanks again John. Sorry if I'm being dense, but I'm still confused about something. My goal is to provide my committee with a very general sense of the industry's ups and downs since Action #1, more or less. The data I've found for 1940-1993 (mostly on comichron.com, in posts by you) is for 'all comics' published or circulated or sold. However, the post-1993 numbers are Top 300 only, which as you say is only a small portion of 'all comics'. So it seems to me I cannot put those together in one 'history' graph, since they are different metrics ('all comics' vs '5% of all comics'). Am I wrong? |
|
|
|
| |
|
|
| Re: For a rough history of comics numbers |
|
|
[originally posted 10/26/2007]
They are different metrics, but the Diamond numbers are not a small part: They're the majority, at least in the early years of the Diamond data. More than 70%, in 1996.
The annual Diamond counts are aggregated in the charts further down the page on the Yearly Reports page, and you can see how the dollars represented by the Top 300 relate to the Estimated Overall sales over time. In 1996, it's $244 million out of $300-320 million.
What's in that missing $56-76 million? Comics out of Diamond's Top 300, yes, and, from that era, reorders. Newsstand copies, too. But there's also trade paperbacks in there, and that part of it makes the gap widen when you get to 2006, where the Top 300 are worth $252 million and the overal total is $475-550 million. So while you might take the 1996 overall figure and divide by the average cost of a comic book that year to get a copy count, that strategy will not work in 2006.
The upshot is what you're looking for is something I have not calculated, because I do not know (and no one save the publishers knows) how many copies they have sold (a) on the newsstand and (b) outside the Top 300. But we know from the Statements of Ownership that (a) is not much at all — maybe 10-15% again — and we know from math that (b) can't be more than 3 or 4%. So what I would do is use the Diamond Unit Sales for the Top 300 and adjust slightly upward.
The problem with all of this is that even if you get one metric, it may not represent what you need it to represent. It'll be representing sales of comic books, but in these later years, the statistic is more linked to the popularity of the format, not the content. True super-hero popularity would be explained better by including trade paperbacks, which is why the publishers prefer the broader indicators. But you'd want units rather than dollars, and I don't know anyone who keeps public totals on that. Most of that is in the bookstore market.
Best, John Jackson Miller • Curator, The Comics Chronicles |
|
|
|
| |
|
|
| Re: For a rough history of comics numbers |
|
|
[originally posted 11/17/07]
>This has been very helpful, thanks John. Another question: I can't find any numbers on comichron (or anywhere else) for the period of 1994 through 1996, either in 'copies sold' or dollars. Given the huge dip in sales between '93 and '97, that's kind of a key period. I wonder if you have those numbers, or more 'napkin' estimates, kicking around somewhere? If not I would also be interested to know whether there is a specific reason that this period is missing, e.g. industry goings-on that make those numbers harder to get? |
|
|
|
| |
|
|
| Re: For a rough history of comics numbers |
|
|
[originally posted 11/24/07]
It's industry-goings-on. At the end of 1994, Marvel bought Heroes World Distribution, and by the next summer it handled its sales exclusively. There was no data on Marvel sales until September 1996, when I got access to data directly. Everything else fragments at the same time.
Somwhere I have estimates for those years, but I am on the road and don't have them at hand. My recollection is that we go from $850 million in 1993 to something like $600 million in 1994 -- and that's generous -- and then there's another big drop. I would have to get back where my notes are to say, though.
Best, John Jackson Miller • Curator, The Comics Chronicles |
|
|
|
| |
| | |
| | |
| | |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|