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Comic book sales get clobbered in January 2011

Not as lousy in February

ICV2.COM looks at the numbers overall and sees a slowing down in the sales decline grid:

"After a precipitous decline in January, year-over-year sales of periodical comics leveled off in February, with dollars down just 1.7% and units falling only 2.31% according to figures released by Diamond Comic Distributors today.

Even though the number of graphic novels sold in February 2011 was down by 1.7% from 2010, a platoon of higher priced titles with the deluxe edition hardcover of Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne ($29.99) leading the way pushed year-over-year dollar sales of graphic novels up a solid 6.92%, which was enough to move the total for combined February sales of comics and graphic novels into positive territory by slightly less than 1% (.94% to be exact).

It should be noted that comic sales in February of 2010 were down 3% from 2009, so it wasn’t the strongest month, but the February 2011 performance marks a definite improvement over the heavy bleeding of January’ in year-over-year terms. Still for the first two months of 2011 dollar sales of periodical comics are down 12.1% and graphic novel dollars are still down 5.48%."

January pretty bad for Marvel

This by Pat O'Brien at Comic Book Beat on the Marvel sales numbers:

"Let’s be blunt: January was a pretty terrible month for the direct market. Compared with January 2010, comic book sales were down by 23% in units and 22% in dollars. The picture for graphic novels wasn’t much better. In part, it’s because of a lack of really big titles; but to be honest, there seems to have been a lack of titles across the board. The number 300 title in January was LADY MECHANIKA #1, with estimated orders of only 1,291. That’s extraordinarily low. In December, it took more than three times that many sales to make the chart.."

Related:

Best Selling Graphic Novels of 2011

Comic Book Sales Clobbered in January 2011

Comic Book Sales September 2008

Comic Book Sales November 2008

Comic Books Tougher Than Other Mediums - Tom Spurgeon