ICv2 has released its annual report on North American comic sales, and everything is down from its pandemic highs. Overall sales of comics and graphic novels fell 7%, with sales of $1.87 billion in 2023, down from $2.01 billion in 2022.
By format, graphic novels declined 7% and periodicals declined 6%, maintaining relative share. By pipeline, the results were similar, with comics stores down 8% and book pipeline down 7%. All figures represent comic and graphic novel sales in the United States and Canada.
While declining sales is never exciting, overall sales were still much higher than in 2019 – up 70% from that year. That’s still impressive.
“A single-digit percentage decline in the North American comics and graphic novel market in 2023 is a huge win,” says ICv2 President Milton Gripp Speaking of the report. “Many readers who discovered or rediscovered comics and graphic novels as a preferred form of entertainment during the COVID-19 pandemic have persisted, and despite a full return to normal daily activities post-pandemic, the market has remained strong over the past five years. is growing tremendously. It’s a testament to the power of media and the hard work everyone in the industry puts into building and maintaining these audiences.
Other trends in this report and companion piece to comic store channel sales:
• Funds raised through comics crowdfunding increased by 30%.
• ICv2 no longer tracks digital sales, as many sales are made through subscriptions to online comics services. The above figures do not include any digital figures and previous figures have been adjusted to remove digital sales.
• In comics stores, periodical comics sales fell 5.8% and graphic novel sales fell 11.9%, according to ComicHub global tracking.
• Compared with 2019, the situation is still very optimistic: new comic sales in comic stores in 2023 increased by 18% compared with 2019; graphic novel sales increased by 49%, and overall sales increased by 29%.
• The report contains a lengthy explanation of the graphical methodology because data from various distributors is difficult to obtain. ComicHub, which is used for comic store sales analysis, only tracks 125 stores, but ICv2 predicts its analysis using profile models that compare to the years Diamond and ComicHub track sales. The bookstore data comes from Circana BookScan, and the data from ComicHub has been deleted. Information from school book fairs and Kickstarter is also included in the appropriate channels.
While the above numbers aren’t exciting, they don’t justify the ongoing complaints about the supposed “death” of the American comics market. Despite a lot of complaints about periodical comics, comic store sales are down less than graphic novel sales (likely due to lower comic sales due to the lockdown explosion.) You can see this in Brian Hibbs’s BookScan analysis More on slowing comic book sales.
The last time I took a deep dive into journal sales trends, I created a chart of my own tracking journal sales. Since numbers have now been removed from these figures, it’s not an exact comparison – the numbers below include numbers until 2023, so the drop will be smaller with the numbers removed. But since I don’t have the adjusted numbers, let’s leave it at that for now. Add in 2023 sales of $410 million, and we get this chart:
As you can see, this isn’t a comic, and it’s not Dogman – issue sales have remained steady. When YouTubers sit back and scream about the death of comics, they just scream. They don’t show numbers. They don’t have data – they usually just make it up.
Now it’s worth noting that in my December article, retailers and observers Sales across all channels and formats are expected to decline by 20% in 2023. These numbers for ICv2 definitely don’t indicate that, and I’d like to investigate this difference further. These pessimistic predictions come from people who actually see the numbers, so I wouldn’t dismiss them out of hand. But the uncertainty centers mainly on comic shops. In terms of bookstore sales, we obtained very accurate data through Circana BookScan.
But since people love anecdotal numbers, here’s one from retail consultant Atom! Freeman the other day:
I just heard from a small chain retailer that their annual sales exceeded US$3 million for the first time.
Stop listening to the comic Doomscroll.
–atom! Freeman (@AtomBangFreeman) July 13, 2024
None of these numbers suggest comic book sales are collapsing. That is not true. But the business of producing and selling comics has become more complex, and the narratives more fragmented. We all owe a lot to Milton Gripp for putting together these numbers year after year. (Thanks to Brian Hibbs for your participation in the process.)
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