Comichron's 2019 Year End Sales Report

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Click the link for the full report, I'll just post a few snippets I find interesting.

Comic book, graphic novel sales to comics shops up 2% in 2019; Detective #1000, Watchmen top charts

The decade of the 2010s ended on a note of growth for the Direct Market when it comes to retailer orders from Diamond Comic Distributors. According to our analysis of a report released today by the firm, comics shops bought $528.1 million in comic books, graphic novels, and magazines from it in 2019, an increase of 2.23% or $11.5 million over 2018's total of $516.6 million.

The market shares finished the year very close to what we'd predicted, with Marvel topping 40% in dollar share, an upward move of nearly two percentage points. Its unit sales increased by nearly four points. The unit gains came partially at the expense of DC, which had pared back its line in the first half of the year; its unit share dropped a little more than three points. But its dollar share suffered much less, down only three-quarters of a point, indicating that the products it did put our earned more on average.

Comichron's tracking all year had predicted Detective Comics #1000 would be the top-selling comic book — it's the second best-seller of the decade, after all, with more than half a million copies shipped — but we also saw that the Top 10 comics through November remained the Top 10 after December, with only one change in position. X-Men #1 edged past Black Cat #1 for third place, on the strength of December reorders.

DC's other entry in the Top 10, DCeased #1, was the only comic book in the top ten regularly priced at $3.99.

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So while graphic novel sales specifically were down 2% in the direct market they were up 16.1% in book stores according to publishers weekly, this is while overall print book sales were down 1.3%.