Loot Crate-charged Orphan Black gives IDW its first top-seller in strong February market

by John Jackson Miller

In the strangest turn yet in what has turned into the Mail-Order Grab-Bag Era of comics sales, a comic book has topped the Diamond Comic Distributors charts in February 2015 based in large degree on the sales of a mail-order variant that has not, as of this writing, been shipped to its customers.

IDW's Orphan Black #1 appeared atop the preliminary Diamond sales charts for February released today, giving the publisher its first #1 book and making IDW only the fifth publisher in the Diamond Exclusive Era to have a book top the charts. (It joins Marvel, DC, Image, and Dreamwave, which was the last new publisher to top the list in April 2002.) And while we won't know until the mail-order boxes arrive, it very much appears that the comic book may be in the Loot Crate for March, which doesn't reach subscribers' mailboxes until later this month.

The Top Ten list:

Top 10 Comics for March

	Description	Price	Vendor
1	Orphan Black #1	$3.99	IDW
2	Darth Vader #1	$4.99	Marvel
3	Spider-Gwen #1	$3.99	Marvel
4	Star Wars #2	$3.99	Marvel
5	Batman #39	$3.99	DC
6	Amazing Spider-Man #14	$3.99	Marvel
7	Darth Vader #2	$3.99	Marvel
8	Amazing Spider-Man #15	$3.99	Marvel
9	Silk #1	$3.99	Marvel
10	Justice League #39	$3.99	DC

While IDW's unit sales share went up, its dollar share did not — and as Diamond's market shares are based on dollars received, it appears that something was ordered in very large numbers and at a much deeper discount than average. That would tend, too, to suggest that Orphan Black #1 was helped out significantly by Loot Crate:

Market shares

Publisher	Dollar Share	Unit Share
Marvel	38.44%	39.33%
DC	25.91%	28.15%
Image	10.51%	10.61%
IDW	5.57%	8.06%
Dark Horse	3.48%	2.66%
Dynamite	2.63%	2.38%
Boom	2.12%	2.12%
Eaglemoss	0.95%	0.18%
Viz	0.89%	0.32%
Avatar	0.85%	0.64%
Other	8.64%	5.54%

So, taking nothing away from IDW or Orphan Black #1 — the chart appearance of which is perfectly in line with Diamond's practices, since Diamond did sell Loot Crate, a reseller, the copies in February — it appears likely this is another comic book, like Marvel's Rocket Raccoon #1 and Image's Walking Dead #132 before it, that would not have been the #1 book in the comic shop market alone. Loot Crate's orders recently appear to have been over a quarter of a million copies — and while that sum was only gravy for Marvel's Star Wars #1 in January, any other month, it easily creates a #1 in the comics market most months.

There was a different paradoxical situation created in December, when the Loot Crate included Batman #36, but that book saw no spike on the Diamond chart because Diamond evidently wasn't the intermediary. And Star Wars #1 appeared in the February Nerd Block, but we have no way of knowing whether those copies were counted with February or already reported in January.

Grab bags are nothing new in comics: three-packs were a major delivery system for Whitman in the 1970s. The scale of the sales relative to the rest of the market is what's different. I have from the start flagged comics with these large outside sales with asterisks (or rather, daggers) in the sales charts; it is important for readers ten and twenty years down the road to know why a particular book spiked so high. I've included the full figures, though, because there's no way to know how many copies came from Loot Crate, or Nerd Block, or whomever.

I tend to be skeptical that a grab-bag comic book sale is of equal "weight" with a purchase at a comic shop — while money changes hands for these boxes, no one took the affirmative step to purchase a specific comic book, and usually grab bags generate a lot of unwanted copies. (The three-packs of old always seemed to include that middle comic book no one wanted!) But the books are in circulation, and theoretically could increase the sales of later issues as introductions to the series. It's really the sheer volume of copies being ordered that's complicating the charts. Three hundred copies, no one would notice. Three hundred thousand copies makes an impact!

Diamond's position is even more complicated. It's selling the comics to the reseller Loot Crate — although it's unclear whether the same terms are in effect, if Diamond's making significantly less per copy than on its usual comics. It is also performing services for both the publishers of the books and the retail outlet buying them; it probably cannot either remove the Loot Crate sales from its list, which would under-report both Diamond and the publisher's performance — or segregate them into a separate listing, which would reveal how much Loot Crate was buying.

I think the best route would probably be if the books these firms bought were treated as special items, not included in the Top 300s but still counting toward the market shares for each publisher. Diamond did that after April 2002 (that month again!) which was the month the first Free Comic Book Day issues shipped; Diamond initially put them in the Top 300 list, where the low-cost books easily topped the charts. In years since, however, it has removed them — as well as stunt-pricing products, in the years after the mini-wave started by Batman: The Ten-Cent Adventure.

We will see for sure on Monday where Orphan Black #1 is in the scheme of things: if its dollar ranking is beneath any of the $3.99 issues also on the list, we can presume most of its sales came from Loot Crate or elsewhere. (And when the Loot Crate for March reaches subscribers, we'll know either way.)

Okay, back to February in general. Retailers (storefront and otherwise) bought more than $42 million in comics and graphic novels from Diamond in the month, just a little less than January. The market was up 14% over last February, and it's up 13% for the year:

Comparative Sales Performance

	DOLLARS	UNITS
FEBRUARY 2015 VS. JANUARY 2014
Comics	3.22%	6.42%
Graphic Novels	-18.17%	-17.23%
Total Comics & GNs	-3.56%	4.53%
FEBRUARY 2015 VS. FEBRUARY 2014
Comics	20.42%	22.14%
Graphic Novels	0.08%	-12.28%
Total Comics & GNs	14.17%	19.18%
YEAR-TO-DATE 2015 VS. YEAR-TO-DATE 2014
Comics	15.20%	15.76%
Graphic Novels	8.64%	-0.34%
Total Comics & GNs	13.20%	14.43%

For readers wanting to know how much Loot Crate is impacting sales overall: the answer is that while it's clearly causing some impact at the top of the charts each month, in the overall figures, it tends to wash out. At Loot Crate's current sales levels it's kicking in about a million a month to the overall retail figure when a comic book is included; but Diamond is currently ahead by $10 million this year. So its contribution is considerable, but probably not determinative of whether the market is up or down.

Superman: Earth One Vol. 3 led the top-selling graphic novels:

Top Graphic Novels and Trade Paperbacks

	Description	Price	Vendor
1	Superman: Earth One Vol. 3 HC	$22.99	DC
2	Sex Criminals Vol. 2: Two Worlds One Cop	$14.99	Image
3	The Fade-Out Vol. 1	$9.99	Image
4	Saga Vol. 4	$14.99	Image
5	Chew Vol. 9: Chicken Tenders	$14.99	Image
6	Trees Vol. 1	$14.99	Image
7	The Walking Dead Vol. 11 HC	$34.99	Image
8	Ms. Marvel Vol. 1: No Normal	$15.99	Marvel
9	Saga Vol. 1	$9.99	Image
10	Kick-Ass 3	$24.99	Marvel

And, finally, we see that there weren't a whole lot of new releases this month, which is par for February. There were 25 more new releases this February than last February. IDW was actually seventh in the new-release volume list, lower than it often is; this again underscores the amount that Orphan Black's sales added.

New release volume

	Comics shipped	Graphic Novels shipped	Magazines shipped	Total shipped
DC	94	26	1	121
Marvel	79	28	0	107
Image	61	15	0	76
Dynamite	34	6	0	40
Boom	33	6	0	39
Dark Horse	27	9	0	36
IDW	23	8	0	31
Viz	0	25	0	25
Avatar	8	2	1	11
Eaglemoss	0	0	10	10
Other	99	96	26	221
Total	458	221	38	717

That's it. Back here Monday for the full estimates.

John Jackson Miller has tracked the comics industry for more than 20 years, including a decade editing the industry's retail trade magazine; he is the author of several guides to comics, as well as more than a hundred comic books for various franchises. He is the author of several novels including Star Wars: Kenobi, Star Wars: A New Dawn, and the upcoming Star Trek: The Next Generation - Takedown, now available. Visit his fiction site at http://www.farawaypress.com.

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July initial, June final comics orders online; IDW sets record

by John Jackson Miller

Diamond Comic Distributors released its initial sales report for July 2011 today, and I finally have the much-delayed June 2011 estimates online here at the site as well. (Writing three comics series and a novel, plus San Diego, was bound to have an impact over here.) Click to view the estimated comics sales figures for June 2011, and the initial comics sales report for July 2011.

Of June 2011, the detailed report doesn't vary much from what I observed early on, from the road; Ultimate Spider-Man #160 vaulted to become the most-ordered comic book of 2011 thus far, and the new Walking Dead Vol. 14 lent an additional boost. A five-week month up against a four-week month from last year, the percentage drops were whittled down to the low single digits. Units continue to do better year-over-year than dollars, again due to the reductions in cover prices this year.

The periodical market continued to have considerable sales depth in June, with the 300th place item again topping 4,000 copies. But only 15 publishers had titles in the Top 300, which ties last June for the lowest number ever.

For July 2011, we again find a metric slew of Flashpoint titles at DC, and while graphic novels and trade paperbacks were off 10% year-to-year, the unit orders for comic books for the month are within a few thousand copies of what they were last July. Amazing Spider-Man #666 turned an unfortunate issue number into the #1 book of the month; I expect the estimate to come in somewhere near 140,000 copies. League of Extraordinary Gentlemen III Century #2 was the top bound edition,

The comparatives from Diamond are below, but as usual, I strongly urge against paying much mind to the first set of numbers, the month-to-month ones; there are problems comparing any two individual months, but the year-on-year numbers may be a little more enlightening. The year-to-date numbers, of course, are the best measure:

	DOLLARS	UNITS
JULY 2011 VS. JUNE 2011
COMICS	-5.26%	-4.59%
GRAPHIC NOVELS	-16.12%	-13.27%
TOTAL COMICS/GN	-8.94%	-5.33%
JULY 2011 VS. JULY 2010
COMICS	-4.27%	-0.52%
GRAPHIC NOVELS	-10.10%	-13.19%
TOTAL COMICS/GN	-6.17%	-1.64%
YEAR-TO-DATE 2011 VS. YEAR-TO-DATE 2010
COMICS	-7.26%	-6.46%
GRAPHIC NOVELS	-6.58%	-11.01%
TOTAL COMICS/GN	-7.04%	-6.85%

Notable, too, is IDW's dollar market share in July, which at 5.32% is the highest that publisher has ever tracked at Diamond. (Click to see other Diamond era sales records.)

The full Top 300s for Diamond for July should be along soon. July, of course, is of interest in part because of the retail order cycle: cash flow in July has something (but not everything) to say about how DC's relaunch will perform in September.

And September will be interesting for a further reason, as it will mark 15 years of my publishing integrated sales estimates; we'll be able to do 15-year sales comparisons with September 1996, which, coincidentally, was the month of the Jim Lee/Rob Liefeld "Heroes Reborn" relaunch at Marvel. We know that sales on those four titles were several times what their predecessors had been, but unfortunately, since we don't have full Marvel data from August 1996, we can't say whether those titles pulled sales from the rest of the line or not. The 2011 phenomenon is different in many ways, of course, larger scope being the most obvious. So September 1996 will be of limited utility as a comparison point — but beginning with that month, we'll at least have 15-year tracks for those interested.

Updated market share graphics -- now with IDW

The graphics section here on the site — including comics market shares across time and unit and dollar comics order trends, both recent and for the entire Diamond Exclusive Era — have been updated. I didn't intend to let this slide for so long, but other projects intervened.

In any event, an addition this time out can be found in the Diamond final order dollar market share graphics, which now include IDW. The "other" category in the graphics had been increasing in size lately due to IDW's growth — it topped 5% for the first time earlier this year — and so the change was due:


For the moment, the addition of IDW trendlines is limited to the Diamond Final Order graphics. It can and will be added to the narrower categories, but it's a labor-intensive proposition. Likewise, some data remains to be added to the market share graphics before 2003. IDW does not appear regularly in Diamond's Final Order charts before 2003, but there may be individual months here and there in which it made the list.

The reader will note that Crossgen remains in the market share graphic for the whole Diamond Exculsive Era (seen above as the brown line). The reason is similar: it's a big enough chunk of the miscellaneous grouping that the "other" category leaps quite a lot without it in the picture. It's also a case where the graphic itself appears to tell a story, which is what good graphics should do.