I just saw the latest report on comic books/graphic novel/manga sales and its VERY surprising. 2021 sales in North America were 60% up overall from 2020.
That is indeed a surprising and pleasing increase from last year. And should bring some positive effects for comic book creators.
However, this is a very unusual increase, not at all normal for the last 20 years or so. and unlikely to happen next year (though I hope it does go up a lot in next year's report too). By comparison the increase level in the 2020 report, by the same group, was only 6% (though thats pretty good for most industries). So what has happened that it suddenly increased to 10 times that? Very surprising. I dont know. Does anyone have an explanation?
Also, a key point often overlooked in all the talk of sales increases: the key thing is that these sales have to translate to actual increase in the money us comic book creators get to help us pay our bills and feed our kids. And it often comes out to a very small real world increase. Just a matter of a few hundred dollars more per year. So such figures of strong growth rates hide the fact that creators are often still in rather poor situations. And we need to face that and help improve it.
https://www.comichron.com/yearlycomicssales/industrywide/2021-industrywide.html
That is indeed a surprising and pleasing increase from last year. And should bring some positive effects for comic book creators.
However, this is a very unusual increase, not at all normal for the last 20 years or so. and unlikely to happen next year (though I hope it does go up a lot in next year's report too). By comparison the increase level in the 2020 report, by the same group, was only 6% (though thats pretty good for most industries). So what has happened that it suddenly increased to 10 times that? Very surprising. I dont know. Does anyone have an explanation?
Also, a key point often overlooked in all the talk of sales increases: the key thing is that these sales have to translate to actual increase in the money us comic book creators get to help us pay our bills and feed our kids. And it often comes out to a very small real world increase. Just a matter of a few hundred dollars more per year. So such figures of strong growth rates hide the fact that creators are often still in rather poor situations. And we need to face that and help improve it.
https://www.comichron.com/yearlycomicssales/industrywide/2021-industrywide.html
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