In Indie Comic Sales part 2 (part 1 here), we’re going to look at what sales on an average comic book do on a monthly and yearly basis. Before we start, time for the usual credit and disclaimer. All the numbers for these examples come from ICv2. For the acknowledged inaccuracies and why the numbers are still valuable, see part 1.

On a month-to-month basis, sales on the average comic book series generally fall -1.5% to -3.0%. That number is pretty consistent across the industry, even with the top-selling superhero books from “The Big Two” (Marvel & DC). While that’s not a huge drop in sales from one month to the next, if you multiply that by 12 months, you usually end up with a -10% to -25% drop in sales over the course of a year.

To illustrate, here’s some numbers for Brian Wood’s DMZ series from DC/Vertigo and the consistent top-ten selling Avengers by Brian Bendis and John Romita Jr from Marvel. In the DMZ numbers, you can see the standard monthly sales drop in effect. On Avengers, if you compare sales on #1 to the most recent issue, #16, you’d see sales have fallen -66%. That’s not an entirely fair measurement though, as first issues are always ordered much higher than subsequent ones. If we look at a twelve month period, from September, 2010 to August, 2011, we’d see a drop of -28%. Which is about standard.

 

DMZ
#51     $2.99     6,840     Mar 10
#52     $2.99     6,826     Apr 10     (-.0.2%)
#53     $2.99     6,759     May10     (-1.0%)
#54     $2.99     6,661     Jun 10     (-1.5%)
#55     $2.99     6,581     Jul 10      (-1.2%)

 

Avengers
#1     $3.99      163,867    May 10
#2     $3.99      98,788      June 10
#3     $3.99      87,410      Jul 10
#4     $3.99      87,333      Aug 10
#5     $3.99       82,411     Sep 10
#6     $3.99      73,409      Oct 10
#7     $3.99      89,758      Nov 10
#8     $3.99      67,840      Dec 10
#9     $3.99      64,867      Jan 11
#10   $3.99      63,924      Feb 11
#11    $3.99      66,618     Mar 11
#12    $3.99      63,441     Apr 11
#13    $3.99      68.086     May 11
#14    $3.99      64,057     June 11
#15    $3.99      62,580     July 11
#16    $3.99      60,295     Aug 11

 

Even the most well crafted story-arcs see their sales decline. Generally there are two cases that will cause a book’s sales to stay the same, or actually rise: the story itself took some MASSIVE twists and turns that got people talking, creating a buzz about the story – or – the book slipped in under the radar on release and the fans of the book have been championing it’s quality, creating a buzz about the book.

If sales drop 25% over the first year, you can imagine what kind of trouble your book will be in by the end of the second — down 50% overall. To counter this sales decline and reset the starting point the numbers are going to fall from, the Big Two do something like this:

 

1. Relaunch book with a new #1
2. Sales drop off
3. Change roster of characters in book
4. Sales drop off
5. New creative team takes over book
6. Sales drop off
7. Kill character
8. Sales drop off
9. Bring a character back from the dead.
10. Sales drop off
11. Start cycle over (possibly mixing up the order)

 

Obviously with the new DC Comics relaunch, many of these things apply to their books, but think about how many also apply to Marvel at the moment — Ultimate Spider-Man (kill character, new #1, change roster), Daredevil (new #1, new creative team) Fantastic Four (kill character, new #1), Wolverine and the X-Men (new creative team, new #1, new roster), Avengers (new roster, new artist) and Captain America, which has done every one of these in the last few years (brought Bucky back from dead, killed Captain America, changed roster with Bucky being lead during Cap’s death, brought Cap back from dead, killed Bucky and relaunched a new #1).

Again, that’s no knock on those stories or the creators telling them, just an observation on tactics used to keep sales high. And I can’t say I really fault the companies for this strategy. As far as sales trends seem to show, it’s virtually inevitable that sales will drop and you’ll have to take action to raise them up.

Expect at least another two or three parts in these series. More next week.

 

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