Dan Degnan, of Southside Comics, recently tweeted some statistics for 2019.
https://twitter.com/dan_degnan/status/1213319824140623872?s=21
Gross Sales were up 14.96% while Expenses increased by 5.67%. Growth was largely due to the webstore with a small in-store bump.
As with most stores, their top selling comic was Detective Comics #1. And Southside also had X-Men related books in 7 of the top 10 slots. The other two books that made up the top 10 were Amazing Spider-man #1 and Star Wars Rise of Kylo Ren #1.
Looking at the top 10 graphic novels sales by units, all of the books were published by either DC or Marvel.
Mr. Degnan had a mixed view about graphic novel sales.
Degnan believed graphic novel sales should be better. “Comic Shops are losing sales to Amazon prices. Publishers need to find a way to balance the field, otherwise I see comic shops ordering less and less graphic novels”
Degnan also believed that the current Young Adult (YA) content is great and sells. “There is an audience. And Amazon or scholastic can’t really beat comic shops in a noticeable price. This is the future audience for periodical comic books. Its there and its growing. That said, they are still a few years away from taking on a 30-50 dollar a week comic book habit. So until then, publishers need a plan. I’d love to see a concerted effort by publishers, diamond, and retailers to fix the current market so there is one for the upcoming YA audience.”
