Friday, January 12, 2007

Slave Labor Dominates Sales Charts

I know you all read ¡Journalista! before coming here, so you've probably already seen Dirk's link to the Cold Cut Top 300 of 2006.

Slave Labor Graphics dominates, taking the first 36 positions on the list, with perennial seller Johnny the Homicidal Maniac taking 8 of the top 10. JtHM #1 is the top seller, a comic that first came out over a decade ago.

Unfortunately Cold Cut doesn't include actual sales figures, so we can't do a long tail analysis. I assume that most comic shops that use Cold Cut are doing so because the get better service (and price?) on back issues for the non-front-of-Previews stock than they can from Diamond.

Just a reminder that the true state of the comics industry sales-wise cannot be determined by looking at Diamond's sales charts alone. The true formula is:
Total Sales = Diamond + Cold Cut (and others) + Book Market + Newsstand + Subscriptions + Direct to Consumer (online and otherwise) + Foreign Sales

Not all comics-like-things make use of all of those distribution channels; but I imagine that Slave Labor is making a good deal of their sales through places other than Diamond.

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