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Hi John,

I've been interested in learning more about how comic sales are tabulated. I have a question that I can probably assume what the answer is, but I wanted to make sure I have it right before I go any further.

When calculating year end totals on a book do you take into account all reorders and variants? I'm trying to figure out year to year numbers on certain titles and I'm getting different numbers than other sites I'm checking.

For instance, I'm doing some research on Amazing Spider-Man sales in 2004. I've read a number on another site where it claims that the title sold an average of 122,000+ copies per month that year, but when I go over the monthly numbers, I don't get anything that close, more in the 90,000 range.

What am I doing wrong here? Any help would be appreciated, as I have a real interest in learning more. Thanks!

When I calculate the year end totals, I do it two ways. The first is to total up the reported sales from the top 300 comic list that is released each month. Then I take that and compare it to the list of the top selling items for the year and guestimate the minimum number of unreported units that are needed for items to place where they did on that list.

Personally, I do not consider the guestimates of the unreported sales as real data since I don't have any solid data to back up those numbers.

I do include reorders and include variants if they had the same cover price. I consider variants with a different price as different items.

The problem you might be having is that you might be comparing different sets of numbers. For instance, the numbers in the Statement of Ownership that gets published each year in the various Marvel comic books will include sales outside of Diamond while the Diamond data will (obviously) only include the sales through Diamond.

And there is also the chance that a slightly different definition is being used for what is included in Amazing Spider-Man sales in 2004. Presumably it is going to only cover the 13 issues that were released in 2004 but it could include reorder activity from previously released issues if that data is available.

Based on a quick query against the data in my database, for the 13 issues of Amazing Spider-Man released in 2004 (#503 to #515), I'm getting average sales of 86,647 units per issue and 93,867 per month.

Which site are you getting the 122,000+ monthly average from?

I found the number on John Byrne's forum which originated on John Jackson Miller's site Comic Chronicles. John gives a figure of 123,540 per issue that year.

Here's the list that was given on Byrne's site for the years before and after...

2003 122,173
2004 123,540
2005 112,564

It seems pretty consistent, but I'm not sure where he got the figures from.

I think those are taken from the Statement of Ownership. They include sales outside of Diamond such as newsstand, subscription sales and things like that.

I've discovered that only Marvel and Archie still put out these Statements, so it would be easier to approximate using the Top 300, it would seem.