The New Wave of Graphic Novels

Sunday, January 4th, 2015

Graphic-novel sales are outpacing the overall trade-book market, and their audience has expanded to include more women and younger readers, the Wall Street Journal reports:

Graphic-novel sales increased 4% to $415 million in 2013, including comics stores, bookstores and online booksellers but excluding e-books. Preliminary data indicate that in 2014 graphic-novel sales grew at an even faster clip, according to Milton Griepp, a market analyst and CEO of the trade publication ICv2.

By contrast, overall print-book sales through retail stores and book clubs fell by 2.5% to 501.6 million units in 2013, following a blockbuster year in 2012, according to a Publisher’s Weekly analysis of data from Nielsen BookScan.

[...]

Graphic novels also lend themselves beautifully to being read on tablets such as iPads — and even smartphones. Digital sales for comics and graphic novels totaled $90 million in 2013 compared with $70 million in 2012.

Leave a Reply