As Marc-Oliver Frisch suggested more than a week ago, there was a glitch in Diamond Comics Distributors’ computer system that led to inflated sales figures for some January titles.
ICv2.com now has the corrected estimates, which now place Hulk #1 in the top spot with about 134,000 copies, and drop Amazing Spider-Man #546 to No. 2.
According to the retailer-oriented news and analysis site, the corrected figures also mean that single-issue sales were up just 1 percent over January 2007, versus the previously reported 7 percent. Graphic novels were up 3 percent instead of 17 percent.
Top 300 comics for January 2008 (revised)
Top 100 graphic novels for January 2008 (revised)
March 4th, 2008 at 8:53 am
I suspect Joe Q.
March 4th, 2008 at 11:33 am
Of what?
March 4th, 2008 at 12:40 pm
My guess, he suspects Joephisto of trying tout bigger numbers for the BND-relaunch of ASM.
As much as I despise the OMD/BND reboot, I won’t go that far.
March 4th, 2008 at 4:57 pm
I’d get excited about the BND change in sales, but it will be months before that shakes out.
March 4th, 2008 at 5:17 pm
I’m stunned that it dipped lower than 100,000 issues within its first month.
April of 2006 is the last time sales on Amazing Spider-Man were as low as the second and third issues of “Brand New Day,” and January of 2006 was the last time the title had sustained sales that low.
March 4th, 2008 at 5:19 pm
so did anyone do the analysis of whether the 3 BND spidey stories outsold previous months of 3 separate spidey titles (sums, obviously).
March 4th, 2008 at 5:34 pm
“January of 2006 was the last time the title had sustained sales that low.”
I think ultimately the test of Amazing Spidey sales will have to be Amazing vs. all three of the old Spidey titles. If the three issues of Amazing in a month combined do better than the three titles combined used to do in a month, then the thrice-monthly Amazing Spidey is a success. Just looking at Amazing now vs. Amazing 2 years ago doesn’t really reflect the change in the publishing structure.
March 4th, 2008 at 7:26 pm
so did anyone do the analysis of whether the 3 BND spidey stories outsold previous months of 3 separate spidey titles (sums, obviously).
Just off the top of my head, I think the average non-event monthly sales for the three previous titles was around 210,000 – 220,000, with Amazing accounting for around half of that number.
If the three issues of Amazing in a month combined do better than the three titles combined used to do in a month, then the thrice-monthly Amazing Spidey is a success.
I’m sure if it comes to it, that will be Marvel’s position as well. But I find it hard to believe that Marvel went with this approach with the goal to just sell more copies of a Spider-Man title than they were selling previously. You could have gotten that result with the old publishing structure and a change in creative teams.
I’d be shocked if Marvel’s page rates under the new structure aren’t significantly higher than they were under the old publishing structure, which means that their sales target has to be significantly higher than it was before. While it would have been unreasonable for anyone to expect that sales under the new structure would be 3x the previous sales for Amazing, I also don’t think it’s unreasonable for someone to expect that sales would be around 85-90,000 an issue. If Amazing continues to drop at the rate it’s been dropping, it will be below that mark before three months are up.
March 5th, 2008 at 12:47 am
“You could have gotten that result with the old publishing structure and a change in creative teams. ”
How do you know they could have gotten the same results that way? They did change creative teams, even creating a whole new book with F’n Spidey. But still Amazing routinely outsold the others.
March 5th, 2008 at 2:14 pm
If Amazing continues to drop at the rate it’s been dropping, it will be below that mark before three months are up.
Bingo. Let’s not forget, these first three months are among the ones that comic shop owners reported that they ordered BEFORE several of them also reported that they saw their customer orders for Amazing Spider-Man drop by HALF.