David Maybury | Blog

In contrast to the UK/Irish report of sales in Manga/Graphic Novels going up – the US is seeing the second of an annual drop in sales.

How about some number crunching:

• 2009 sales of manga were $140 million, a decline of 20% from the $175 million in sales in 2008.
• Comics periodical sales were down 3% to $310 million
• Combined comics and graphic novels sales in 2009 of $680 million, a total decline of 5% from 2008.
• Sales of graphic novels have surpassed sales of comics periodicals and book format comics represent 54% of the $680 million of combined sales
• The total number of titles released dropped 9% to 3162 titles in 2009.
  • 1115 manga titles (down from 1372 in 2008)
  • 1,580 superhero titles (up 17%)

The sales decline is seen as a long-tail effect of recession in conjunction with the closure of Barnes & Noble and Borders stores across the US.

Source: ICv2 publisher Milton Griepp’s white paper on the size of retail comics and graphic novel markets.

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*Today has been declared Comic Book Day on the blog – to celebrate the arrival of last weeks comic shipments. The missing releases will hit the shelves today – and don’t panic – this weeks comics are due in as normal on Thursday.

> The real Comic Book Day is May 1 <