Adult Graphic Novel Sales In Bookstores Down 22.4% In 2023

Posted in: Comics, Current News | Tagged: graphic novel, writer’s weekly

Jim Milliot experiences for Publishers Weekly “helped by a 1.7% increase in the fourth quarter, unit sales of print books fell only 2.6% in 2023”

Article Summary

Print e-book gross sales noticed a minor fall of two.6% in 2023, exhibiting resilience available in the market.

Graphic novel gross sales in grownup fiction plummeted by 22.4% final 12 months.

Children’s titles by Dav Pilkey and Jeff Kinney soared in gross sales, with ‘Dog Man’ main.

Despite latest drops, e-book gross sales in 2023 have been nonetheless up 10% from the pre-pandemic 12 months 2019.

Jim Milliot experiences for Publishers Weekly that “helped by a 1.7% increase in the fourth quarter, unit sales of print books fell only 2.6% in 2023 from 2022 at outlets that report to Circana BookScan. The dip was less than many industry members had feared this summer, when sales were steadily declining and were down 4.1% after the first nine months of the year.”

Adult Graphic Novel Sales In Bookstores Down 22.4% In 2023 — Photo by morebyless CC BY 2.0 DEED

When it involves graphic novels, nonetheless, there are combined indicators. “Dav Pilkey‘s Dog Man: Twenty Thousand Fleas Under the Sea was the top seller in juvenile fiction, selling almost 1.1 million copies, while Jeff Kinney‘s newest Wimpy Kid title, No Brainer, sold more than 515,000 copies.”

But throughout the grownup fiction class, “graphic novel sales had the biggest decline, down 22.4%, but was still the third largest subcategory within adult fiction.” This might also be as a consequence of a swap from graphic novel publishers within the USA away from grownup fiction in the direction of kids, middle-grade and YA graphic novels, equivalent to Dog Man, Investi-Gators, and the works of Raina Telgemeier.

Overall, PW said that “Despite the 2023 sales drop of 2.6% and the more pronounced decline of 6.5% between 2021 and 2022, print unit sales in 2023 were still 10% ahead of the last prepandemic year in 2019. During 2023, most publishers took painful steps to address the overstaffing they engaged in to meet the higher sales of 2020–2022, and with the inflation-induced higher costs moderating in recent months it is hoped that the long sought-after new normal may finally settle in in 2024.”

The growth of youngsters’s graphic novels is fuelling all method of publishers extending into the comics medium. It just isn’t for nothing that youngsters’ graphic novels in bookstores are being known as the newsstand of the twenty-first century. But perhaps that is not persevering with to increase to adults as a lot as some might need hoped by now.

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