MARKET SHARE: Everybody wins in January!

Diamond Comic Distributors has released the market and dollar share information for titles that shipped in January 2012, and there is good news for DC AND Marvel fans.

For fans of DC Comics, the good news is the company took the unit share top spot selling 39.86% of the books released during the month. In fact, the top ten comic books for January features nothing but DC titles.  That’s right, not a single Marvel book cracked the the top ten ranking.

Now for the Marvel fans, Marvel brought in more money during the month than any other publisher, making it the top dollar earner for the month.

On the down side, overall January sales slipped from the month before, with single issue comics falling 7% overall.  However, compared to 2011, sales are up by 32%, which is a huge increase, and good news for retailers and fans of the medium.

How does Diamond calculate the charts? It all starts at the comic book shop.

Data for Diamond’s sales charts — which include the monthly market shares and all top product charts — are compiled by Diamond Comic Distributors from a universe of over 3,500 comic book specialty shops located in North America and around the world. The account base includes brick-and-mortar comic book specialty shops, Internet merchants, and other specialty stores.

Unit and dollars sales are calculated based upon orders invoiced and shipped to Diamond accounts during any given month, which comprises initial pre-orders, advance reorders, and reorders, minus any copies that are received back from a title marked as returnable.

Please note that comics marked with an asterisk have had their reported quantities reduced due to retailer returnability, and thus may rank lower on the charts than their actual sales would reflect.

We’ll have the Top 300 comic listing next week.

via Diamond Comic Distributors