Below you'll find the sales estimates for comics and trade paperbacks sold in the direct market for July, 2011. The sales numbers below are estimates based on the information provided by Diamond Comics Distributors earlier this month. Sales estimates for June, 2011 can be found here.

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 newsstands, 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 300 comics was 5,885,735 comics which is down by 129,356 units from June and down by 53,317 units from July 2010. Marvel Comics had the largest percentage of the top 300 comics with 46.75% of the total units sold followed by DC Comics with 36.44%.

The top selling comic from Marvel Comics was "Amazing Spider Man" #666 in slot 1 with an estimated 135,564 units and for DC Comics was "Flashpoint" #3 in rank 4 with an estimated 86,004 units.

The estimated total sales for the 300 trades was 322,978 trades which is down by 7,090 units from June and down by 62,939 units from July 2010.

Topping the trades list in July was "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen III Century #2 1969" by Top Shelf with 22,671 units.

I've got bar charts of this data over on my website: www.ComicBookPage.com. Every month I discuss the comic book and collected editions sales estimates on my Comic Book Page podcast.

I'll be back later with an analysis of the numbers below.

DIAMOND OVERALL SHARES

By UnitsMarket Share

By DollarsMARVEL COMICS43.59%39.43%DC COMICS34.76%30.55%IDW PUBLISHING3.76%5.32%IMAGE COMICS4.52%4.50%DARK HORSE COMICS2.74%3.69%DYNAMITE ENTERTAINMENT2.58%2.83%BOOM! STUDIOS1.36%1.57%EAGLEMOSS PUBLICATIONS LTD0.23%1.00%TOP SHELF PRODUCTIONS0.36%0.97%VIZ LLC0.40%0.94%ASPEN MLT INC1.15%0.84%RANDOM HOUSE0.20%0.75%AVATAR PRESS INC0.37%0.68%ZENESCOPE ENTERTAINMENT INC0.63%0.60%ARCHIE COMIC PUBLICATIONS0.51%0.49%HACHETTE BOOK GROUP USA0.14%0.47%ONI PRESS INC.0.20%0.41%BONGO COMICS0.45%0.37%BLUEWATER PRODUCTIONS0.16%0.16%BROADSWORD COMICS0.11%0.13%OTHER NON-TOP 201.78%4.31%