Digital Comics Sales Up Last Year?

Some of the sales figures are coming in from last year, and it looks like comics are still doing well across the board!
There are some figures on physical sales – including how much money they have generated. Digital comics, on the other hand, have generally risen by 4% and graphic novels dropping by only 2% (2018 was 8%).

Data from Comichron

  Estimated OVERALL North American Market size, including both print and digital estimates by Comichron and ICV2.com DIGITAL sales for Comics (not counting subscription services) in North America, as calculated by ICV2.com (est.):
2011 $715 million $25 million
2012 $805 million
$70 million
2013 $870 million
$90 million
2014 $935 million
$100 million
2015 $1.03 billion
$90 million
2016 $1.085 billion $90 million
2017 $1.015 billion $90 million
2018 $1.095 billion $100 million
2019 Estimate coming soon! Estimate coming soon!

A couple of points though.

As mentioned, there are no actual numbers attached to this, although digital comics sales seem to have been rising from $25m in 2011 to $100m last year.

Also, these figures are from just North America – this doesn’t count in Europe (and the UK), rising interest in India and the rise of Webtoons and the like.

The report from Goodreads is below:

Physical comic book sales increased by 2.23% in 2019 and generated $516.6 million. Digital comic sales were up nearly 4% in 2019, while graphic novel sales were down 2%. Both figures represented improvements over 2018, which saw comics up 2% and graphic novels down 8%.

Final figures for the entire year are not out yet, but we can do some quick math and estimate how much money digital comics were in 2019. We know that in 2018 digital comics made $100 million, so if they increased by 4% in 2019, this means that conservatively that the entire sector was worth $104 million.  In contrast digital manga sales in Japan accounted for $2.81 billion for the year.

Print comic books brought in the lionshare of revenue. In 2018 the format accounted for $1.095 billion and it increased slightly by $11.5 million in 2019.

Michael Kozlowski
Michael Kozlowski is the Editor in Chief of Good e-Reader. He has been writing about audiobooks and e-readers for the past ten years. His articles have been picked up by major and local news sources and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times.
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