Back in 1997, the top selling comic almost every month was Uncanny X-Men, and around that time, it would have been selling around 160,000 copies or so. Today, House of X #1 was a big launch for Marvel with 185,000 copies sold in the first month – but the difference is that whatever issue of Uncanny X-Men came out in 1997 had one cover. House of X #1 had how many? 30 something? I don’t think we know the actual number there in terms of “real” sales to individual readers, and I worry that if we did, the truth would be shock all of us.
According to the estimates published online, only 25 comic books sold over 50,000 copies this September. A little over 100 topped 20,000 copies - meaning three fifths of the top 500 is under 20,000. The somewhat good news is that those figures haven’t really changed all that much in nearly 30 years years, but yeah, I think our industry has some very serious challenges ahead of us.
I think that becomes even more apparent when you look at the top selling trades and graphic novels for September and see that Guts – a book that is selling like wildfire – clocks in at only #25 for estimated Direct Market sales with something like 2,000 orders. Sure – there are stores getting trades and graphic novels from book wholesalers or other book distributors and those numbers don’t show up on Diamond’s charts, and I would imagine some stores are dealing directly with Scholastic, but even so, I doubt that’s going to get that number up to a level where it’s challenging bookmarket sales in any significant way, which means that comic book stores are not the first stop for many of the readers that we want to reach. I think that says something, and I’m not sure we’re all getting the message.
Nrama: You seem to be speaking to the idea that there's more mid-level comic books than ever. Books being sold at sustainable levels, but there's more than ever - which might be hard for retailers to stock. What would you say to retailers who are unsure about stocking when there's such a fat 'middle' so to speak, especially when there's not much option for returnability?