The 2021 report on comics sales by Comichron and ICv2 is out, and it paints an overwhelmingly positive picture for the industry. 2021 was the best year ever for North American comics sales, which peaked at an impressive 2.075 billion, up by 62% from 2020. Best-selling manga such as My Hero Academia alongside graphic novels lead the charge, but traditional comics are also on the rise again.
Comichron and ICv2 have been working together to produce joint market estimates since 2013. Their analysis is divided between periodical comics, graphic novels, and digital download-to-own sales. All print figures are calculated based on the full retail price, not accounting for discounts or markups. The Comichron/ICv2 report has proved to be a great tool to analyze trends in the comics industry, and the data from last year is incredibly encouraging. Comics are as healthy as ever: the industry did not just come back to pre-pandemic sales levels, it completely shattered previous records.
In a tweet, Comichron broke down just how incredible last year's comic sales were. Comichron's founder John Jackson Miller commented on their 2021 sales estimates: “Publishers made more selling comics content than in any year in the history of the business, even when adjusted for inflation.” Graphic novels and manga are still the industry's most valuable assets (it should be remembered that Comichron classifies manga as graphic novels), with an impressive 76% growth across channels. Periodical comics, however, also did quite well, with a 53% growth compared to 2020. All types of retailers also registered a stable increase: sales through comic stores were up 60% from 2020, and the book channel (including fairs) grew by an astounding 81%. Digital sales registered a smaller increase, but they were coming off the colossal growth experienced in 2020 thanks to lockdowns.
Looking at the trends from the past decade, the comics industry has experienced a slow but steady growth, with a small setback in 2017. The pandemic did not have a big impact on this trend: despite fears of a catastrophe (especially when Diamond, the industry's biggest distributor, stopped shipping), sales remained stable in 2020 and actually increased a little from 2019. Thus, it was very hard to predict such an explosive growth: until now, the biggest year for comic book sales in the modern era was 1993, with 1.6 billion, which pales in comparison to 2021's 2.075. According to Miller, one of the reasons behind these numbers is that there are fewer releases compared to the pre-pandemic years, but customers are willing to spend more money on a smaller range of products.
This could signal a new trend for major publishers such as Marvel and DC, which were willing to put out as many titles as possible in the past to see what stuck with readers. These numbers, however, also confirm that manga are taking over the Western comic market. While the sales reports are very reassuring for the industry in general, confirming that comics have brilliantly bounced back from the pandemic crisis, Western publishers will have to come out with a new strategy to counter the "manga invasion". Still though, Comichron and ICv2's report proves that comics are on the rise!
Source: Comichron
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