Milton Griepp formed Capital City Distribution with John Davis in 1980, and since selling it in 1996, has gone on to become one of the comic industry’s leading consultants and is the CEO the pop culture website ICV2.
Every year at San Diego Comic Con he presents a white paper on the state of the industry, and this year was no exception. Heidi covers this in more depth, and it’s from her I’m pulling these figures and the details, but they were interesting enough to present here with additional commentary from me (whatever the hell that’s worth):
“GN sales were up 3% so far in 2011 — up more in bookstores, despite the Borders disaster, than in comics shops — while periodical sales were down 8%. The peak of sales for comics and GNs was 2006-2007. Coincidentally that was also a peak year for manga sales, which has declined significantly yet again. But the rate of decline has stabilized.”
“Griepp mentioned several economic factors at play: the economy in general, event fatigue, price cuts that were only partly effective, changes in management at Marvel and DC that led to uncertainty and distraction; and also a lack of quality product.”
Hmmm, lack of quality product? Well, as always here on the FPI blog we’d probably argue that one, but I think Mr Griepp is talking more about US Comics, and specifically about Marvel, DC et al.
“Griepp noted that the bookstore consumer is a different consumer from the Wednesday crowd: “The kind of costumer who shopped at bookstores was a casual consumer, wasn’t as committed, but more influenced by media and press and had some money to spend. They are less involved in the kind of editorial changes that motivate comic shop consumers and comics stores. The good news is there was a lot of them.” This crowd is fueled by their ability to go to a bookstore at any time or go shop on Amazon.”
The bookstore consumer different from comic shop consumer. Oh, yes, absolutely. The thing is, the bookstore consumer is far more likely to be a member of the “real mainstream”, rather than the mainstream in comic shops – which is still seen as superhero reading.
“One of the features of the White Paper is a title count showing how the number of books in every genre increased or declined from year to year. Here’s the run down for 2010:
Manga -11%
Genre (superhero) +6
Fiction even
Kids +67%
Humor +10
Other/misc +27
Total +4%”
The Manga figure is a strange one still. Have I missed the major op ed pieces that speculate just why Manga sales are falling so badly?
Can you spot the really big number in there? Kids up 67%. Sixty Seven percent.
Sixty seven percent that’s supporting the entire industry if these figures are in any way accurate. And yet, I’d be willing to bet the majority of these kids titles never see the inside of a comic shop. We’ve talked about this before on the FPI Blog, about why comic publishers and comic shops seem content to ignore children, and then have the temerity to wring their hands wondering where the next generation of comic fans are coming from. Well, if Griepp’s figures are even slightly accurate it seems we have an answer. A new generation of comic fans is finding a new generation of comics in the bookstores, and bypassing the comic shop almost completely.
“In digital the story was….growing. Duh. He estimated sales had doubled from 2009 in 2010 and are somewhere between $6 and $18 million a year. (Yes, a big span.) Although the growth is clearly spurred by iOS, Android and web sales are coming on strong.”
Wow – between $6 and $18 million. That’s not an estimate, that’s a ballpark guess.
Okay, so there we go. Digital up, comics in general just about up. Manga takes a big hit (again). And we have a wave of kids comics that I’d love to be able to find in the children’s department of my local comic shop.
Oh, wait. My local comic shop doesn’t have a children’s department. I’d love to hear from you if you’ve ever been into a comic shop with a dedicated children’s department. I think I’ve only heard of a couple of shops that had them. Most shops may have a couple of kids titles, maybe even on a shelf tucked away somewhere, but sadly I’ll bet most shops have Bone, Owly and their Simpsons graphic novels in the Indie section, and they’ve probably never heard of titles such as Babymouse, Geronimo Stilton, Guinea Pig Private Eye, Secret Science Alliance, Toon Books, Magic Trixie and so many more.
July 28th, 2011 at 3:25 pm
Not sure i’d be drawing any of those conclusions from a bunch of %’s – ‘lies, damn lies and statistics. Without the net sales figures %’s don’t mean anything. It’s very possible that kids comics could be up 67% and still be 5% or less of the market as a whole. If you take £1 and increase it by 67% you get £1.67 – that won’t change that much. Crucial part is how much is it in real revenue terms. I think there has been a lot of stuff written about the decline in Manga sales – given that Tokyo Pop have stopped printing books and Borders are just about to close I’m very surprised the decline isn’t more. Expect next years number to be a very significant fall. As for online sales – we aren’t talking billions – at $6million it’s still small fry but , of course, expect this to grow very significantly in years to come. I don’t know how much they counted in the comic price reductions but that has taken a fairly significant number of the periodicals sales with nothing else happening in that space. It will be interesting to see next years numbers for a look at what’s really going on there.
July 29th, 2011 at 12:35 pm
Spoilsport! Yes, I know what Kenny means – you can prove absolutely anything with statistics and we all know it. The problem we have in comics often is that we don’t have the statistics.
And point taken about the kids % number. But I still feel it’s an area that comic shops don’t serve as well as they could/should. Is there a single comic shop in the UK with a dedicated children’s section (and not just the odd shelf with a few suitable books)? I’ve seen a couple of examples in the US, but can’t remember which ones they were sadly.