Top 400 Comics Actual–May 2014
Warning. This is very wonk-ish. I was going to say “wonky,” but that’s already a word.
Anyway: ICv2 has the latest Diamond sales chart + estimated sales numbers up, for May 2014. As it says on the site, “Sales Estimates for May Based on Diamond Indexes and Publisher Title Data.”
We’ve heard before from creators and publishers that these estimates are usually off from the reality, and significantly lower than the actual numbers, but this is one of the first times where we can compare the estimates with actual numbers… or, at least, almost actual numbers.
ICv2 estimate that Trees #1, by Warren Ellis and Jason Howard, sold 31,926 copies. However, in his recent Orbital Operations newsletter, Ellis wrote that “we sold around 44,000 copies of TREES #1.” So does that mean that ICv2 is under-estimating sales by 10K or so?
Probably not. The ICv2 numbers are for North America only, for a start; they’re also not including re-orders, to the best of my knowledge, and I’m pretty sure that Ellis is including both re-orders and international sales. But then again, so will publishers when making decisions about the profitability of books and whether or not to cancel them etc.
Maybe something to bear in mind next time ICv2 says that a book’s selling 18,000 and people – myself included! – start thinking “Cancellation! Cancellation!”