Total Amount of Comics Published Per Month

[earl]

I always find My Comic Shop's website to be a pretty good place to go look up issues and by month. It always blows me a way when you say look at a month from 1962 and see how few comics were published that month. I don't doubt that their database might be missing a few comics, but it definitely would have most of the major publishers.

Ironic thing was that even though comics were not at their biggest boom then, they still sold boatloads more than they do now and I swear there are more issues published in a week some times than a whole month back then.

Kinda weird to think that considering people say comics are dying that there are just way, way more comic books published every month now than really ever before.

[MDG]

It's not the number of titles, it's the circulation. A book selling 75,000 in '62 might've been considered on the verge of cancellation. A lot of titles today would be happy with half that number.

[The Confessor]

Like you say though earl, sales were much bigger across the board back then. Maybe the greater number of titles is necessary nowadays in order to sell enough books to keep comic publishers afloat in an ever dwindling market. Basically, comic book companies are selling more and more individual titles to an ever shrinking number of fans. Also, today's 20, 30, or 40-something comic fans have much more disposable income to spend on a greater number of comics than yesteryear's children did, even though there are less and less of those older comic fans buying comics with each passing year.

I'm just fumbling about here, trying to put together some kind of coherent response to your post. But that'd be my take on it.

[Kid Montana]

Like you say though earl, sales were much bigger across the board back then. Maybe the greater number of titles is necessary nowadays in order to sell enough books to keep comic publishers afloat in an ever dwindling market. Basically, comic book companies are selling more and more individual titles to an ever shrinking number of fans. Also, today's 20, 30, or 40-something comic fans have much more disposable income to spend on a greater number of comics than yesteryear's children did, even though there are less and less of those older comic fans buying comics with each passing year.

I'm just fumbling about here, trying to put together some kind of coherent response to your post. But that'd be my take on it.

I think that is it. Someone posted a 1970's ish top ten or twenty, and Harvey, Charlton and Archie all had books over 100,000, and these were the afterthought companies. I think even Gold Key had a 6 figure book. No wonder Texas Rangers sells for a buck, they made a ton of them!

Now, they count on the fewer buyers they have buying multiple titles.

[T GUy]

It's not the number of titles, it's the circulation. A book selling 75,000 in '62 might've been considered on the verge of cancellation. A lot of titles today would be happy with half that number.

Hilarious. Comics selling twice that figure in 1962 were probably below the threshhold for cancellation.

Remember, in the 1950s, Dell's threshhold for cancellation was 600, 000.

To save people the bother: yes, that is not a typographical error; it reads six hundred thousand.

[dan bailey]

Hilarious. Comics selling twice that figure in 1962 were probably below the threshhold for cancellation.

That's my impression as well. Anything in the low-to-mid-100,000 range was very likely doomed.

[An Ear In The Fireplace]

Yes, let's say your target number is one million copies. You want to sell one million copies in a given month. Well, if you're a popular publisher you might be able to do that by selling two titles in the classic era, both with sales of 500,000. However, now, if a publisher can only expect sales of 20,000, then that publisher has to sell fifty titles in a month to come up to the one million mark.

And of course it costs a lot less to print two titles (with a high print run--and the savings that come with that) than it costs to print 50 titles (with a costly low print run). Not only are there the printing costs, there's the costs of paying several different creative teams. You're doing more and more work for less and less return on investment. Which is why the prices have to go up--though that also drives down sales. It's a vicious circle.