Posted in: Comics | Tagged: Comics, entertainment

Archie Comics In Third Place On Marketshare-Per-Comic In July 2016

Marvel SVP David Gabriel told ICV2 "We had a great June and yet people try to change the market share reports to report how we actually lost the June market share because they were figuring out other ways to calculate it.  That was a new one for us."

Shouldn't be that new, David, we had been doing it for a wee while. But yes, while in June, Marvel had a greater marketshare than DC Comics that's because they published more titles. The average market share per title for Marvel was below DC. Taken individually, DC's titles outperformed Marvel's in June.

And in July, when DC beat Marvel's marketshare with 2/3 the amount of titles, they really outperformed them. But it's not the only way this calculation changes the chart. Here's how it broke down for July. Here's the publisher market share charts, as supplied by Diamond Comic Distributors.

Based on Total Unit Sales of Products Invoiced in July 2016

And here's how many actual new comics they sold in July.

Now we do the thing that David Gabriel hates the most – apart from the Essentials line. We divide the marketshare by the number of titles published, to work out their average marketshare per title. Then multiplied by a hundred for comparison sake. And a lot changes. First, retail marketshare, the amount of dollars brought in, divided by titles published.

DC is even further in front of Marvel. Archie Comics is in third place – it make only have 1.35% marketshare but it took only ten titles to get it there. Dark Horse also beats Image on comics, though not when you include collections, knocking them back into fifth place. And Valiant and Oni also do better, knocking Dynamite back down

And Unit marketshare, basically how much marketshare per title based on how many actual copies were sold regardless of price, tells a similar story, though Valiant and Image both do better here.

And again that is a shockingly good performance from Archie. The power of Betty & Veronica…

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