DM's October Gains

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DM's October Gains

The business news and analysis site ICv2.com has released their version of October's Direct Market numbers, with their usual panache: overview, analysis, comics listed, graphic novels listed. I swear someone told me at some point that October would be the final month in a sustained late-summer surge. There's a definite upswing overall, driven by gains in both categories. The likely story of the year for direct market shops is going to be the month after month growth of the graphic novel portion of the business, which various lists indicates a concentration on big-publisher titles, action-adventure and a few bookstore sales elite manga titles. The comics stuff this month seems driven by the launch of DC's meta-fictionally haunted Infinite Crisis mini-series.

The site puts up a lot of old numbers, too, which means instead of solving sudoku puzzles you can sit around and make your own analysis charts. Like I have a theory that comics publishers have sacrificed a slow sustained growth strategy defined by invigoration of the entire line in favor of hot-shotting certain titles in a market that's not quite prepared capital-wise and building-reasdership wise to handle multiple big-sellers without sacrificing some sales further down the pecking order. With ICv2.com, I can sit at home and make charts like numbers of books that sell over certain amounts, year by year for the month in question, and feel reasonably satisfied with the results.

2005
Last Book Over 200,000: #1 -- Infinite Crisis #1
Last Book Over 150,000: #1 -- Infinite Crisis #1
Last Book Over 100,000: #4 -- Justice #2
Last Book Over 50,000: #32 -- Adventures of Superman #645
Last Book Over 25,000: #77 -- Cable/Deadpool #21
Last Book Over 10,000: #167 -- Supergirl #2
Last Book Over 5000: #209 -- Uncle Scrooge #347

Or: 1-1-4-32-77-167-209

2005 to 2001
2005: 01-01-04-032-077-167-209
2004: 00-00-05-022-090-157-209
2003: 00-01-10-036-104-206-264
2002: 00-00-02-027-074-158-176
2001: 00-00-04-019-095-176-208

It's way, way too rudimentary a manipulation to suggest that comics have taken a turn the last two years from the slow-growth strategy that was beginning to steamroll in '03 and have thus basically restored a crappier '01 market with a few top of line hits. For one thing, there's the issue of how much money is spent on GNs.

It's fun to suggest it anyway.

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