Isnt anybody counting *total* sales?

We always hear how the available sales numbers are pre-orders only, in the U.S. only. Does no one keep track of what the rest of the sales are, incl. reorders (when applicable) and international orders? Why don't we ever see the full total? And just how different might the total sales numbers be...? Anyone?

- Tue

I've always wondered why no comics publisher has ever attempted tp put together some kind of survey of comic shops to track real sales to readers. Obviously you couldn't do every comic shop, but a Nielsen like sampling seems like it would be possible.

I posted some info about this in another thread ('Marvel is not necessarily doing better than DC'. Here it is:

Checking Diamond's own site I found the following: From the page http://www.diamondcomics.com/market_share.html -

'The Actual Dollar Market Share chart tracks all comics and magazine sales, including sales from initial orders, advance reorders, and reorders. November comics, graphic novels and magazine publisher actual dollar market share.

DC Comics 33% Marvel Comics 31.01% '

DC dollar values are almost 2% higher once reorders are factored in.

At Comicbookresources I found the following info. These figures were supplied to them by Diamond. From the page http://www.comicbookresources.com/news/newsitem.cgi? id=1763 -

'Actual Sales Based on All Orders and Reorders for Products Invoiced in November, 2002

Comics, Mgzns. & Graphic Novels dollar share DC COMICS 31.82% MARVEL COMICS 30.93%

Comics, Mgzns. & Graphic Novels unit share DC COMICS 33.18% MARVEL COMICS 38.46%

Hope this helps!

Count on lower Marvel sales with the new price increase.

No. Only the publishers have that information, and they consider it proprietary and a trade secret (understandably).

Yes, I noticed this, but it doesn't give any info on the final sales numbers of individual titles...

- Tue

Ohhh Johhannaaaaaaa!

How is your ass feeling this morning?

is there a reason for a comment like that??

However that tells us nothing about total sales, just total dollars. As DC books (on average) carry a higher price tag than Marvel (atleast until April when Marvel ups their prices) and DC publishes more high ticket items (such as Archive editions) as well as more items in general, DCs total dollars can be higher than Marvel while sales (including reorders) can (and most likely is) much lower than marvels on a per product basis (meaning Marvel probably makes more profit per product than DC).

Could you give the exact figures on this, please? DC has a greater range of price points (2.25, 2.50, 2.75, 2.95), so I'd be leery of guessing what the averages actually work out to be (because of the range of data involved). You may be right, but I'd like to be convinced.

Again, do we have the data to conclude this? Could be, could not be, but I'm leery of people just guessing that this is the case.

I actually looked at this back when DC raised their prices. Unfortunately I doubt I cared enough to save the work. But if I remember correctly, using the first month after DC raised their prices, the average price for a DC comic [counting only regular pamphlet sized books, ongoing or mini & discounting any promo (i.e. 9/10 cent issue) and only counting a title once even if two issues came out that month] was something like 10 to 15 cents more than Marvel. And if all the Wildstorm imprint was removed (which brought the number of titles published closer together, although DC still had more) DC and Marvel weren't noticeably different.

But don't anyone take my word for it (especially since I'm working from a very fuzzy memory on this) as this isn't that hard to do. Just grab your favorite solication list, enter each title & it's cover price into a spreadsheet. Have the sheet count the number of titles, total up all the cover prices and then divide the total cover price by the number of titles.

I agree. I also don't see how anyone will ever know this, as the actual profit being made isn't public knowledge. Cover price and the percentage that a company takes in from that is easy enough but finding out all the costs involved for publishing any one title (much less all titles) would seem to be a daunting task.