April 2009 comic book sales rebound

Even in this economy comic book “sales increases versus the previous year were observed in all categories”

Diamond Comic Distributors recently released its charts of comics and trade paperbacks ordered by retailers in April 2009, and as reported earlier, the market appears to have made up some of the ground lost in the first three months of 2009. Sales increases versus the previous year were observed in all categories, including, just barely, unit sales of Diamond’s Top 300 comics.

The largest gain was seen in the widest category: overall orders for comic books, trade paperbacks, and magazines were up at least 14% in this five-ship-week month. The operative term is “at least,” as there is evidence to suggest it was higher still — but The Comics Chronicles approaches this statistic with some caution this month. At least one very large backlist promotion put a much larger than normal amount of volume in the system at much deeper discounts, causing the full retail value of orders in the “long tail” to increase far more than did orders in the Top 300 trades.