Mayo Report for 2011-Summary

Mayo Report: 2011 Summary Comics
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Mayo Report: 2011 Summary Trades
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A lot can change in a year and a lot did change in the comic book market during 2011. The year started off rough with the top of the comics chart with only one comic breaking the 100,000 unit mark in January. In February, "Green Lantern" #62 was the top selling comic with a mere 71,517 estimated units. Not a great way to start the year. By the end of the year, the top selling comic during a month was the new "Action Comics" #1 with 182,748 estimated units in September.

The chart of both the units and dollars from month to month paint a generally positive picture:

The peak in September and October were due to the New 52 from DC as seen by these charts which split the units and dollars by publisher:

Marvel has been generally stable in both unit and dollar sales with some noticeable ups and downs over the course of the year. The aggregate of all of the other publishers continue to be amazingly stable for both units and dollars with the chart for 2011 looking remarkably similar to the one for 2010. Given the way the titles and even the publishers in this area from month to month, this stability is not something any single person or company can control. And that might actually be why it is so stable, when one company falters, another picks up the slack.

While the month to month picture looks fairly good during 2011, the picture of the advances and declines paints a less favorable picture:

As regular readers of my analysis of top 300 comics list each month know, usually most of the items of the list each month sold less than the previous issue of that title. This overwhelming trend for most titles to sell less and less each month is the fundamental problem facing monthly comics today.

The count of items advancing and declining and the total advancing and declining units was fairly dramatic and a bit misleading for 2011. With the New 52 from DC in September, all of the DC Universe titles neither advanced nor declined. These were new titles with new baseline values. Even with the entire DC Universe line of titles getting a new sales baseline, there were still around a quarter million units in declines in September.

What may seem like an alarming drop in October isn't really that alarming. Simply put, not all readers stick around for the new volume of the series when a title relaunches. Typically this is more than compensated for by new readers but a lot of them are there out of curiosity and soon drop the title. After all, they don't have any long standing attachment to the title or characters so it isn't a big deal to drop the title. Any momentum a title has with a reader can be completely lost with a reboot, renaming or renumbering. Over 825,000 of the million units of declines in October is the result of people who sampled the first issue of various New 52 titles and didn't come back in October for the second issue. This is an all too common sales trend.

So, how can most titles drop in sales while the monthly total unit sales go up? New titles. In December, the total unit advances was an estimated 19,811 units. A single new title like "Carnage USA" #1 with approximately 37,620 units boost the monthly total nearly twice as much as the actual increase in sales for all of the titles that increased in sales. And, yes, that phrasing may sound a little odd but the total net change in sales in December for these returning titles was a loss of over 750,000 units. The average declining issue loses around 2,528 units from the previous issue and the average advancing issue gains around 2,447 units over the previous issue. If most titles just held roughly even in sales from issue to issue it would be like adding another month of sales to the calendar. Granted, it would be a weak month like January 2011 but I doubt most retailers would be unhappy with those extra sales.

Actually, since the declines are only counted once but lost going forward, the additional sales would be much larger than that depending on the length of the various titles. For example, "Fables" declined by 1,581 units from #101 in January 2011 to #112 in December 2011. If all dozen issues sold the 19,184 estimated units "Fables" #101 sold, it would equate to an additional 8,445 units over the course of the year. A title like "DC Universe: Online Legends" would have sold nearly twice as many units over the course of the 20 issues released in 2011 if they all sold around the 36,519 units the first issue sold. Even a title like "Avengers Academy" would have come out around 1,000 or more units ahead if it all of the issues released in 2011 the same 24,016 estimated units #8 sold in January. The interesting thing to note is five issue of the 16 sold better than #8 sold. Of course, a title like "Walking Dead" would have lost out on nearly 40,000 units if it only held even instead of having a generally upward trend in 2011. Only a handful of titles would be in the same boat as "Walking Dead." In most cases, the key to success is to stop the loss of sales from issue to issue and sometimes that wakes drastic action.

The New 52 from DC was a clear game changer in the second half of 2011. This resulted in a major success for DC which managed to get the largest percentage of the unit sales for the top 300 comics four months in a row, doubling the number of times they have done so during the final order era. DC took a major risk with the New 52 and the above chart of the units by publisher shows that it has been working.

But the honeymoon period for the New 52 is starting to end and this rebooted universe will sink or swim in 2012 based on how well the material clicks with the readers. The challenge the editorial and marketing teams at DC now face is keeping the interest and excitement around the New 52 alive while keeping the titles shipping on time and rotating titles in and out of the mix as needed.

One of the other huge game changers in 2011 was the digital revolution. Digital comics have been around for a few years and IDW had been very active with digital comics for a while. During 2011, however, digital comics went from a sideline to the mainstream as far as the availability of titles. In January, you could find a number of digital comics fairly easily. In December, most of the comics shipping in any given week were available digitally. This digital revolution is going to continue to evolve during 2012. So far, the digital comic audience appears to be an additional group of readers. This is very different from the audience for trades which seems to have been a group of readers who converted from reading comics to waiting for the trades.

In theory, publishers might be able to cut back on the number of trades they offer since that material is now already available digitally. Certainly some titles should remain in print as trades and hardcovers. "Walking Dead" and "Fables" are two examples of titles that have very robust sales in the collected format. The total sales top 300 trades for all twelve months of the year works out to around 3,462,674 units. Many titles, including a lot of the superhero titles from Marvel and DC, might benefit from each and every story arc not being automatically collected. This perceived guarantee of a collected addition down the line seriously undercuts the sense of urgency to get either the individual component issues when they are released and to get the collected edition when it is first released. The threshold a trade has to meet is higher for people waiting for the trade because the reaction to the material, both when it first comes out and again when the trade is released, can factor into the buying decision. I suspect more often than not this prevents a sale instead of making one. By not collecting every story arc into a softcover, hardcover or both removes the safety net for readers and should get many of those the readers waiting for the trades back into buying the comic book format. While there no doubt would be some sort of unintended consequence of this sort of publishing strategy, it seems like it is worth considering.

If 2012 is anything like 2011, we can only imagine what the market place will look like at this time next year. I certainly would not have predicted the current state of things a year ago.


Order index data provided courtesy of Diamond Comic Distributors, Inc. and used with permission.

For additional comic book sales information, check out The Comic Chronicles.

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