Market Shares of Comics Sold to Coimic Shops
Publishers' shares of comic books and graphic novels bought by comics shops in North America, 1996-2018
Diamond Comic Distributors, the sales agent for most North American comics publishers serving the comics shop "direct market," reports monthly market shares for its sales of comic books, trade paperbacks, and magazines.
The chart below depicts the shares for as long as Diamond has been running them:
Recent Publisher Market Shares of Sales of Comic Books, Graphic Novels, and Magazines by Diamond Comic Distributors to Comics Shops in North America
CrossGen is included to illustrate the rise and decline of what was once a challenger to the top four; without including it, the "other" line rises. Image and Dark Horse have not always been in the Top Four, nor in the above order; some months, other publishers rise above one or the other. But Marvel and DC have been in the top two since Diamond began reporting this statistic.
Diamond is not the only distributor of comic books, although it ships the vast majority. Small reorder distributors such as Cold Cut and FM International have participated in the market — and Diamond's sales do not account for the comics sold returnably through the newsstand market. The above figures account for the majority of the comic books moving through the comics shop system, though not always the majority of the trade paperbacks.
For charts depicting the numbers of units and dollars depicted above:
