CBR: DC Comics Dominates September's Sales

[CBR News]

Batman and Frank Miller top the September sales charts as DC Comics dominates the Top 100 and Legendary Comics' "Holy Terror" takes the top spot in the trade paperback rankings.


Full article here (http://comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=34838).

[BrotherUnitNo_4]

I'm somewhat confused by the second issue drops for the double-shipping Ultimate books.

I'm not sure how retailer orders work, but if they both sell in the same month, and the orders are presumably placed at the same time, why cut off a third of the orders for the second issue?

It's also a shame that Mystery Men and CAC are going to end with less than 10K for the final issue. :(

[g-dawg]

Wow. Wasn't Justice League like preordered to the hundreds of thousands in one report? And they only actually sold like 46k? What happened? Justice League Dark totally killed the opening salvo of the DCnu!

[elaniel]

Wow. Wasn't Justice League like preordered to the hundreds of thousands in one report? And they only actually sold like 46k? What happened? Justice League Dark totally killed the opening salvo of the DCnu!

Justice League was an August comic, that's obviously 2nd/3rd/4th printing sales.

[g-dawg]

My bad. I thought that since JL sold on August 31 it would reflect at least till next month. Next time I'll lrn2comicsales.

Anyway, those are pretty good numbers for DC, though I was expecting bigger numbers due to the hoopla.

[maskedmanissue1]

Here is the greatest achievement by DC on behalf of the whole comic book industry, and something to pay attention to:

- DC increased their sales by 1.1 million books, compared to sales in the previous months
- The numbers of Marvel month to month are unchanged, in fact they continue to grow moderately.
- The numbers of all other retailers as a whole are unchanged
- Therefore, DC brought 1.1 million new (or additional) readers to the comic book industry, a 17% increase for the whole industry.

That is a HUGE ACHIEVEMENT. And of course, it will be interesting to see how the numbers for October and November look, considering drops from speculators and only #1 buyers. But if DC managed to bring in even half of that number of new purchasers to the comic book industry, that is an increase of almost 9% and that is something to commend.

Let's see how the coming months play out, but in the mean time well done DC!

[Steward Ace]

Here is the greatest achievement by DC on behalf of the whole comic book industry, and something to pay attention to:

- DC increased their sales by 1.1 million books, compared to sales in the previous months
- The numbers of Marvel month to month are unchanged, in fact they continue to grow moderately.
- The numbers of all other retailers as a whole are unchanged
- Therefore, DC brought 1.1 million new (or additional) readers to the comic book industry, a 17% increase for the whole industry.

That is a HUGE ACHIEVEMENT. And of course, it will be interesting to see how the numbers for October and November look, considering drops from speculators and only #1 buyers. But if DC managed to bring in even half of that number of new purchasers to the comic book industry, that is an increase of almost 9% and that is something to commend.

Let's see how the coming months play out, but in the mean time well done DC!

Not new readers. More likely, many existing readers bought new books and some new readers bought copies of multiple books. Also, since online and bookstore sales aren't in this and those outlets have a disproportianate number of new readers, DC may be doing better than these numbers reflect.

But I agree with the closing statement- well done DC.

[maskedmanissue1]

Not new readers. More likely, many existing readers bought new books and some new readers bought copies of multiple books. Also, since online and bookstore sales aren't in this and those outlets have a disproportianate number of new readers, DC may be doing better than these numbers reflect.

But I agree with the closing statement- well done DC.

Yep, that's what I meant by "(or additional)", to convey additional within the current number of readers. It's just such an impressive hike over the status quo!

[colin.ynwa]

Based on these figures and doing the lazy thing and lumping reorders in I think the most telling figure for how well DC have done is the following

Marvel's average per book = 27266
DC's average per book = 49813

and that's before you take account of the fact that over 40 of DC's books have had there numbers reduced by an as yet unconfirmed 10-20%.

Now there may well be all sorts of mitigating facts one way or another but just a quick sum like that really but DC success into perspective.

[Alex Keller]

Holy Terror topped the trade paperback list? I thought TPBs were different from graphic novels?

[elaniel]

Looks to me that DC's print runs may have hurt some books sales. IE: Some of the books sold 50,000ish and apparently had sold out their printings. Makes you wonder if they would have printed 100,000 of some of those how much higher the sales would have been.

[maskedmanissue1]

One more number to put it all in perspective: The 1.1 million additional books sold by DC is still higher than the total sales by Dark Horse, Dynamite, IDW, Image, Boom, Zenescope, Aspen, Bongo, Avatar and Archie COMBINED. So if DC had chosen to acquire all of these publishers, it still would not have done as well as it did.

[0bsessions]

The other side perspective:

DC launched 52 number ones and managed to top Marvel's August by half a million. If DC loses on average just under 10K readers a book (Which is an almost certainty), they're right back in second place.

Even with this huge advertising push and all the number ones, they still only topped Marvel by under 2% in the dollar share.

DC made a huge upswing in their numbers and they'll definitely be more competetive with this move. But I find this underwhelming. With Marvel's numbers staying consistent, they didn't take any readers away from Marvel and considering the horrible retention rate on new readers in comics, anyone expecting them to maintain even 75% of a lot of these figures is kidding themselves. Marvel will probably be up by at least 5% again by year's end.

[Lemurion]

The other side perspective:

DC launched 52 number ones and managed to top Marvel's August by half a million. If DC loses on average just under 10K readers a book (Which is an almost certainty), they're right back in second place.

Even with this huge advertising push and all the number ones, they still only topped Marvel by under 2% in the dollar share.

DC made a huge upswing in their numbers and they'll definitely be more competetive with this move. But I find this underwhelming. With Marvel's numbers staying consistent, they didn't take any readers away from Marvel and considering the horrible retention rate on new readers in comics, anyone expecting them to maintain even 75% of a lot of these figures is kidding themselves. Marvel will probably be up by at least 5% again by year's end.

The thing you have to remember is that while DC may have won dollar share by only 0.5% - Marvel had half again as many books as DC. So despite DC's higher proportion of $2.99 books, they still managed to generate an average of half again as much revenue per book as Marvel.

If they can keep that up they don't need to be "#1" to be much more profitable than Marvel.

[colin.ynwa]

The other side perspective:

DC launched 52 number ones and managed to top Marvel's August by half a million. If DC loses on average just under 10K readers a book (Which is an almost certainty), they're right back in second place.



Which is why I think the average per book is really important and being ignored a little in all these news articles about the figures. Sure if DC lose 10000 per book they will be behind in the overall tally but still (by my stunning rough calculations) over 10000 ahead on the average per book. A pretty impressive figure.

[devildinosaur]

Holy Terror topped the trade paperback list? I thought TPBs were different from graphic novels?

It used to be that way--now they're lumped together.

[Brian from Canada]

Looks to me that DC's print runs may have hurt some books sales. IE: Some of the books sold 50,000ish and apparently had sold out their printings. Makes you wonder if they would have printed 100,000 of some of those how much higher the sales would have been.

Disagree. DC doesn't print blindly — they print based on preorders from Diamond, and Diamond doesn't have that many customers to begin with. (According to Lee & Didio, it's hovering just above 2,000 in the US.) When you factor in that most mid-level retailers rarely order more than 10-20 copies for the shelf of lower tier books (less if you're a smaller retailer), AND the buzz would have been more successful on bigger name characters like Superman, Batman and Green Lantern, the orders on C-listers like Firestorm, All-Star Western and Voodoo would naturally be low.

Where the real impression for me is lies in the demand for 2nd, 3rd and 4th printings of these books — not to mention the overall positive buzz DC is getting from these books.

No matter how flat Marvel sales are — and, let's face it, at this point the zombies have to buy those books just to keep up with the two or three events of the month — DC's seemed to have reached out to readers of a different vein with enough options that I think they may be able to retain more readers than expected.

[Brian from Canada]

I'm not sure how retailer orders work, but if they both sell in the same month, and the orders are presumably placed at the same time, why cut off a third of the orders for the second issue?

Two reasons: first, #1s outsell more than any issue because of speculators who think it might go somewhere and because it's the trial issue for most series.

Second, and more important, there's also a one-to-two week cutoff on order increases, which means that the retailer has a (small) window in which to increase the order based on the number of customers who like #1 and add it to their pull list.

That's what I did as an LCS manager. I'd hype the book as much as I could, order more #1s than just the 2-4 copies we had on the shelf for the odd walk by (our street traffic was pathetic), and then post in the store — as well as hand customers a flier — which date they have to add it by in order to ensure they got #2 without problem.

[Ari Gold]

No matter how flat Marvel sales are — and, let's face it, at this point the zombies have to buy those books just to keep up with the two or three events of the month — DC's seemed to have reached out to readers of a different vein with enough options that I think they may be able to retain more readers than expected.

Yeah, it seems to me like there's a lot of momentum with the DC relaunch that extends beyond just the first 4 weeks of #1's.

Also, like you said, you don't have to be getting the "big" books in order to enjoy the DC universe, you can pick & choose the titles that entertain you the most.