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Post by wildfire2099 on Aug 11, 2014 14:14:00 GMT -5
I thought I'd spin this into a new thread, after a small discussion about it in AdamWarlock's thread about continuity and such. All stats are from Comichron:
DC sales the month before new 52( 8/11)
Unit Share: 34.84%
Dollar Share: 30.72%
A somewhat distant 2nd to Marvel (this is before Image took off), which was at 42%/37%)
A slowish mid-summer month for sales put DC at 6.62 Million in sales on single comics for the month...
This INCLUDES the 1st New first title (Justice League) which apparently snuck in.
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DC for the 1st New 52 month:
17 of the top 20 titles are DC
Unit Share 43.04%
Dollar Share: 35.74%
(both ahead of Marvel, though just barely on Dollars)
DC makes 8.72 million... about a 32% Increase
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Jan. 2012
DC holds the ENTIRE top 10 (all issue #5s of the regular titles)
Unit Share: 39.86%
Dollar Share 33.55%
(DC leads in Units, Marvel in Dollars)
a slow month in general, DC sales - 6.65 million (right at pre-new 52 level), but with nothing special going on events, New #1s, etc).
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Jul. 2012
Walking Dead #100 starts (arguable) the Image re-birth... Image goes from 6% to 9% Market share.
the rest of the top 20 is split between Marvel (the end of AvX) and DC (before Watchmen a bit, but mostly the regular titles)
Unit share: 36.55%
Dollar Share 32.71%
(DC leads buy a hair in both)
Total Sales: 8.1 million (Overall sales back up to 9/11 levels)
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Jan. 2013
Marvel dominates top 10, including Superior Spidey #1 and 2, New Avengers #1, and Savage Wolverine #1
DC has only 3 of the top 10 and 7 of the top 20
Unit Share: 35.41%
Dollar Share: 31.61%
(both 2nd... Image at 7.45 and 8%)
Total Sales: 7.57 Million
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Jun 2013
Superman Unchained and Batman/Superman are far and away #1 and #2, but Marvel has 14 of the remaining 18 books in the top 20
Unit Share: 32.03%
Dollar Share 29.57%
(2nd... Image at 8.3/8.7)
Total Sales: 7.56 Million
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Jan. 2014
DC continues to have 6 of the top 20, though Harley Quinn and JLA have replaces Superman Unchained (which ended) and Green Lantern.
Unit Share: 30.77
Dollar Share: 28.06
(a bit more distant 2nd... Image breaks 10% unit share)
Total Sales: 6.54 Million (below the month before New 52)
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June 2014
DC has 12 of top 20 spots... 4 from the Batman weekly, then Superman Wonderwoman and Justice League United. Image has 2 spots. Marvel has only 2 issues of ASM, 2 of Original Sin, and All-New X-Men
Unit Share: 33.20%
Dollar Share: 29.88%
(a closer 2nd... Image still over 10%...Dark Horse and IDW both are over 4%)
Total Sales: 7.1 Million
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Post by wildfire2099 on Aug 11, 2014 14:16:10 GMT -5
So, what does that tell us? New 52 gave a pretty good bump, but it didn't last. 3 years later sales are back where they were, with events and such giving small bumps, then things going back to the baseline.
So, the question is, are these the same fans? Did they trade some old crumudgeons for young, hungry new fans (which would be a positive, retail wise). Or was the spike casual interest and speculators?
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Post by Deleted on Aug 11, 2014 14:20:26 GMT -5
So, what does that tell us? New 52 gave a pretty good bump, but it didn't last. 3 years later sales are back where they were, with events and such giving small bumps, then things going back to the baseline. So, the question is, are these the same fans? Did they trade some old crumudgeons for young, hungry new fans (which would be a positive, retail wise). Or was the spike casual interest and speculators? What's missing here is the perspective of title by title for DC. Those sales for DC are more concentrated into a fewer number of titles. In July 2014, Batman sold 117K copies while Batwing was barely over 8K. A fewer number of titles are making up a larger percentage of DC's sales post new-52, and that is not healthy for their line overall. -M |
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Post by wildfire2099 on Aug 11, 2014 15:12:08 GMT -5
I think that's been true pretty much from the beginning, though it has gotten more extreme. Certainly right now the Bat titles are a HUGE percentage of DC's sales.
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Post by fanboystranger on Aug 11, 2014 17:54:43 GMT -5
I'd also like to see some analysis of both sales of collected editions and online viewings. One of the sticking points of the argument that DC hasn't really changed is that a book like Azz/Chaing's Wonder Woman is currently selling around what it was selling pre-JMS, but the flipside of this argument is that sales of the initial HCs and eventual paperback collections are significantly higher than they were for pre-52 WW material. I'd like to see how that plays out linewide, even on books like Dial H that sold poorly monthly but because of their creative team (China Mieville, in this case) may have more impact in a bookstore. The addition of online sales isn't really factored in, either, and DC hadn't completely adopted it until after they began the New 52 initiative. (I've heard varying reports on this, anywhere from online sales accounting for a further 30% to the impact being negligable. There is no official reporting, though, and I find both of those claims to be unrealistic.)
What I'm getting at is that I find the standard of monthly issue sales to be somewhat out of step with the current market. That doesn't mean that a new metric would necessarily justify the New 52 as a success, but it would give us a better picture of what DC management is making decisions on.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 11, 2014 18:07:29 GMT -5
I think the staggering majority of them are the same fans, probably north of 98% of them.
Diamond numbers never give a complete picture, but it's the best picture we have to measure the success of monthly floppy superhero comic sales. If sales are basically the same now as they were before the reboot, I'd say they have lost an insignificant number of readers. I kind of skip past unit share and dollar share, because as the industry grows, DC could have the same exact number of units sold and slowly lose market share. It would paint a picture that the company is shrinking, or making less money. If we look strictly at dollar amounts one could say "Well, comics went up in price, that explains it!" So this is why units sold is the measure I like to go by. If they're selling seven million units a month before the reboot, and selling seven million units a month after the reboot, nothing's really changed.
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Post by hondobrode on Aug 11, 2014 18:08:41 GMT -5
I agree.
Unfortunately, DC is now where Marvel was with the x-titles 20 years ago, and practically had a lock on the market.
DC has lost share with the obliteration of the Wildstorm imprint as well as a shrinking of Vertigo post-Karen Berger.
Justice League titles and GL titles solid second tier. Super titles about the same. Wonder Woman and Aquaman both definitely up.
Overall I think nu52 was a success, but Marvel has been successful retaining and gaining especially with Superior Spider-Man and the Avengers franchise rocketing on.
Image has also definitely made huge strides and has the buzz now, and I believe more indies are growing as well. My purchases of Dynamite, Dark Horse, IDW, Avatar and others is way up from what it was. I guess I too have diverted DC dollars to the indies, but still buy DC/Vertigo, just not as much as I was.
I want more choices like Frankenstein, I Vampire, Doom Patrol, Jonah Hex, Legion, and Shazam.
I think DC's biggest problem has not been playing to their strengths quickly enough and still barely rolling out the Multiverse after 3 years. If they would have more aggressively pursued it, I think they could've passed Marvel.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 11, 2014 18:13:36 GMT -5
I think pursuing the multiverse is exactly what's stopping them from drawing in new readers. The reboot was only a success as much as slapping a #1 on anything is in comics, a small fraction of the regular readers bought extra copies. Real success would be reaching a new market, gaining new readers, long term. Increasing marketshare. I don't think shared universes and crossovers and reboots is how to do that.
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Post by hondobrode on Aug 11, 2014 18:36:50 GMT -5
I've read that many non-DC readers jumped on, while very few DC readers were lost.
Also, the numbers are skewed because what we get are Diamond numbers. That still doesn't include non-Diamond distribution, or digital, which particularly for DC has been a win with their weeklies and digital first series like Batman '66.
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Post by Action Ace on Aug 11, 2014 18:59:49 GMT -5
It also doesn't include a very important thing that DC Entertainment knows that we don't, how much was/is DC spending to get those sales? That's the only way to know what DC's profit margin is. And even if we knew that number we still don't know if that amount of profit is good enough for the corporate overlords at Time Warner.
People still have their jobs and the comics are still coming out, so assume the New 52 is doing well enough for now. The comic company is even getting a one way trip to Burbank next year.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 11, 2014 19:13:24 GMT -5
People still have their jobs and the comics are still coming out, so assume the New 52 is doing well enough for now. The comic company is even getting a one way trip to Burbank next year. We don't know the whys, but smells more like a cost reduction move than a reward, especially since experienced (i.e. higher paid) staff is leaving and being replaced with people lower on the pay scale because of the move. It has every bit the look of downsizing and corporate consolidation to remove redundancy, not hey good job. -M |
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Post by Deleted on Aug 11, 2014 19:23:00 GMT -5
I've read that many non-DC readers jumped on, while very few DC readers were lost. Then there'd be a lot more New 52 love around here, but some of the old schoolers couldn't give a rat's ass.  Not that only DC suffers on the sales charts...Iron Man can make $300m at the US Box Office but if you look at the June 2014 sales chart, both #27 and #28 sold barely over 28,000 copies. |
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Post by wildfire2099 on Aug 11, 2014 20:02:15 GMT -5
There are statistics for trades.... I could take look at those, I suspect they're similar as far as trends go... maybe with a slightly more upward trend (since trades are more popular these days) I don't think digital and newsstand makes up enough of a portion to matter, to be honest.
I do wonder very much about Jez's point... why don't moviegoers translate into new readers? I've heard some people say its that the movie characters are too different, but I don't buy that. I think it's really all about perception, and, to a lesser extend, availability. I be if there was a $1.99 Iron Man comic on the grocery store stand, it'd sell.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 11, 2014 20:04:47 GMT -5
I've read that many non-DC readers jumped on, while very few DC readers were lost. Also, the numbers are skewed because what we get are Diamond numbers. That still doesn't include non-Diamond distribution, or digital, which particularly for DC has been a win with their weeklies and digital first series like Batman '66. But the 2011 numbers don't include that either. We're still comparing apples to apples here. And since digital numbers are very hard to come by (as are all alternative distribution numbers actually), this is still the best gauge we have for growth within the industry. |
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Post by Deleted on Aug 11, 2014 20:15:37 GMT -5
There are statistics for trades.... I could take look at those, I suspect they're similar as far as trends go... maybe with a slightly more upward trend (since trades are more popular these days) I don't think digital and newsstand makes up enough of a portion to matter, to be honest. I do wonder very much about Jez's point... why don't moviegoers translate into new readers? I've heard some people say its that the movie characters are too different, but I don't buy that. I think it's really all about perception, and, to a lesser extend, availability. I be if there was a $1.99 Iron Man comic on the grocery store stand, it'd sell. Reprint trades have a higher profit margin, but their sales are actually surprisingly low. You can be on a bestseller list selling two thousand units a month. Ten thousand units for a TPB is pretty high. Also, Marvel and DC hold a much lower marketshare in the bookstore market. I think they're still looking at that huge backstock of material as an afterthought, and focusing on pumping out steady new material. They want that trade of material from six months ago to sell well, but the way they allow their vintage stuff to go out of print, I don't think they care about that stuff as much. I don't know why, the older the material is the higher the profit margins should be, right? They paid a lower page rate for that stuff and already made their direct market money, their second, third, tenth, and fiftieth run in TPB is just gravy on top of it. And they let Fantagraphics and IDW publish their classic material? |
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