Sometimes – and you can keep your smart remarks to yourselves, wiseguys – I see something and lose the ability to make any kind of intelligent commentary. Such a thing happened when looking at ICv2’s summary of July sales for comics and graphic novels:

Graphic novel sales in comic stores picked up the pace in July, with 25% growth vs. the same month in 2005.  Comic sales were up 18%, bringing over-all sales in the category to a 19% increase over the previous year. 

 

This was the first month since last November in which graphic novels grew faster than periodical comics.

I see that, and my first thought was honestly “25%? That’s a lot.” You can see why I have my blogging reputation, can’t you? Luckily, Tom Spurgeon has more interesting things to say:

The graphic novel market is noteworthy again for both its differences from the bookstore market and the way it’s actually much more diverse than the comic books — you’d probably have to get into the 200s to find anything in the periodical format equivalent to Fruits Basket.

My favorite commentary on the July sales figures, however, comes from (who else?) Mark Millar:

The next smug twat who snipes about this is getting his arse kicked. Yes, the chart says 279,000 or something, but THAT CHART ALWAYS UNDER-ESTIMATES around 10-20%. Our INITITIAL ORDERS ALONE were 340K and that was before re-orders.

Groan.

This happens every month.

That chart is useful, especially for trends, but every single book there is under-ordered around 20% and when a book sells as much as MCW that’s about 70K or something.

will someone from Marvel PLEASE confirm this so retailer and Millarworld regular] Ryan Higgins shuts up!!

It’s great to see creators so passionate, isn’t it?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 15th, 2006 at 1:11 pm and is filed under Books, Comic Books, Industry, Internet, News & Views. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.