Friday, January 03, 2020

Flying Colors 2019 Best-Selling Comics & Graphic Novels

Here's Flying Colors' best-sellers list of single issue comic books for 2019.

This list was assembled by total individual copy sales for each issue. When an issue featured variant editions, all sold copies were combined to make the total.


Breaking it out just a bit, the number of different issues for each publisher on the Flying Colors Top 100 for 2019:

DC: 52
Marvel: 42
Image: 4
IDW: 1
Boom: 1


                                
Top  25 Publishers at Flying Colors in 2019.

This list is in order by total dollars sold in 2019.

* The top five publishers represent 66% of total dollars.

* Flying Colors sold
comics and graphic novels from 291 *different* publishers in 2019!

In addition, Flying Colors sold "Other Cool Stuff" from another 100 or so manufacturers! 
 
The chart to the right is a list of best-selling graphic novels first released in the calendar year of 2019. 

The graphic below this one is a Best Sellers' list including graphic novels released prior to 2019. This is where you can see which back-list titles continue to chart long after their debuts.

This chart shows the enduring popularity of graphic novels primarily targeted to younger readers by Dav Pilkey (Dog Man), Raina Telgemeier (Guts, Smile, Sisters,  etc), Kaz Kibuishi (Amulet), and Jeff Smith (Bone).


 
In 2019, Flying Colors sold at least one copy of more than 5000 different graphic novel titles.

Roughly 2400 of those 5000 different graphic novels sold just one copy each.

That illustrates the difficult stocking choices we wrestle with every day.

One explanation:

Flying Colors is happy to do one-off special orders for those shopping with us in our Concord shop. 
 
It's a beautiful thing that comics and graphic novels are finding new readers every day and that publishers and creative pros are producing so much material aiming to find an audience.

What are my hopes for those seeing these lists?
* I hope you'll see a few titles on these lists to remind you of what to check out next time you visit Flying Colors. All of the comics and graphic novels here have resonated with lots of happy readers... hopefully you'll join them!

* Also, I hope everyone seeing these lists will understand the high-wire challenge it is for comic book specialty retailers--- like Flying Colors--- to have everything you want in stock whenever you visit us. 
We strongly encourage you to place advance orders to make sure you get just what you want.
 
Flying Colors provides a wide selection of current comics and graphic novels while maintaining a solid and deep core of frontlist and backlist graphic novels.  We're honored to keep earning your business. 


Since Flying Colors opened for biz on October 3, 1988, our goal is to have a well stocked, fun shop with top flight customer care. We hope to make every visit here a good time that makes you look forward to your next visit. We hope to see you soon in Flying Colors!



 

1 comment:

Brian Hibbs said...

That top six GNs is pretty dang impressive, my friend.

Wishing you all the success in 2020!

-B