Below you'll find the sales estimates for comics and trade paperbacks sold in the direct market for April, 2019. The sales numbers below are estimates based on the information provided by Diamond Comics Distributors earlier this month. The history of sales estimates can be found on the ComicBookPage.com website.
There are a couple of things to keep in mind when reading this data. These numbers are just estimates for the sales through Diamond to direct market retailers. It does not include any sales outside of the Diamond channel such as newstands, book stores or overseas markets. Since the majority of habitual comic book readers are served through this sales channel, these numbers are a good indicator of the core sales trends at the retail level. While not all copies will sell to readers, each retailer is buying what they think they can sell so the trends at the retail level should be a close enough reflection of the sales trends at the reader level for the purposes of discussion.
The breakdowns are for just the top comics and top trades listed below. These are not the overall market share. I only deal with numbers that I can see and kick around in my ever evolving number crunching system. Sometimes the numbers get a bit battered and bruised in the process.
The estimated total sales for the top 300 comics was 5,838,322 comics which is down by 165,177 units from March and down by 977,087 units from April 2018. Marvel Comics had the largest percentage of the top 300 comics with 55.07% of the total units sold followed by DC Comics with 27.96%.
The top selling comic from Marvel Comics was _War of the Realms (2019)_ #1 in slot 1 with an estimated 187,851 units and for DC Comics was _Batman Who Laughs (2018)_ #4 in rank 3 with an estimated 103,645 units.
The estimated total sales for the top 300 trades was 206,780 trades which is down by 113,045 units from March and down by 111,185 units from April 2018.
Topping the trades list in April was _Magic Order v1_ by Image Comics with 4,743 units.
I'll be back later with an analysis of the numbers below.
If you'd like to listen to an in-depth discussion of the sales data, check out the Mayo Report episodes of the Comic Book Page podcast at www.ComicBookPage.com. In addition to those episodes, every Monday is a Weekly Comics Spotlight episode featuring a comic by DC, a comic by Marvel and a comic by some other publisher. We cover a wide variety of what is current being published. If you are looking for more or different comics to read, check out the latest Previews Spotlight episode which features clips from various comic book fans talking about the comics they love. With thousands of comics in Previews every month, Previews Spotlight episodes are a great way to find out about things which may have flown under your comic book radar.
DIAMOND OVERALL SHARES
TOP COMICS BREAKDOWN
TOP TRADES BREAKDOWN
TOP COMICS
Legend: Qty Rank = Quantity Rank, Index = Diamond Order Index, Pub = Publisher, # = Issue Number, R = Reorder, Est Sales = Estimated Sales, Prev Issue = Previous Issue, Prev Sales = Previous Issue Estimated Sales, WL = Weeks Late
The full top comics list can be found on the ComicBookPage website.
TOP TRADES
The full top trades list can be found on the ComicBookPage website.