Flatliners

Flat, flat, flat. Flat, gloriously flat. Superflat. I’ve always wondered whether or not trade paperback collections cannibalized sales of monthly “floppy” comic books. Looking at the sales of The Walking Dead, it looks as if trade paperback collections don’t eat into the monthly sales of traditional comic books in their "pamphlet" format. But more on that later. Let’s take a moment to put flat, at least in the floppy context, into perspective.

Are flat, steady sales really all that interesting? Maybe. Since looking at a relatively straight line of sales figures for The Walking Dead is well, kind of…flat, I thought I’d compare it side by side with the sales figures for Superman:



While it is true that Superman outsells The Walking Dead, it is interesting to note that sales for the former title have been in free fall, and more importantly, Superman has a cultural resonance and a legacy that The Walking Dead doesn’t. With all the toys, merchandise, cartoons, television series, and movies out there, it’s surprising that circulation has been in a steady decline for the last fourteen months. If sales figures on Superman are anything to go by, the core audience for that title probably isn’t that significantly larger than the audience for The Walking Dead.

The trade paperback sales for The Walking Dead indicate that there is a larger audience for the title beyond that of the floppy readership. All trade paperback volumes and hardcover compilations combined account for roughly 33% of all sales of The Walking Dead comic book series. No trade paperback volume or hardcover compilation ever comes close to exceeding sales of the monthly title.



While the combined sales for all trade paperback volumes and hardcover compilations don’t exceed – with two exceptions - those of the ongoing monthly series, Image (the company that publishes The Walking Dead) does manage to sell an impressive number of copies. January and August saw the release of new trade paperback collections. Some combination of trade paperback followers and die-hard collectors of the series helped gave a boost to the sales of the new trade paperback collections released in January and August.



Given the length of the series (it has been around for over five years) I’ll assume that the number of people buying “Volume 1” of the trade paperback collections are probably all new readers. The total sales figures for each of the trade paperback volumes over the course of the year bear out this hypothesis. There is some evidence of attrition as there is a drop in sales for each volume, but chances are that if a reader likes the first volume, that reader will continue to buy more.



What about the future of The Walking Dead, once the series has reached its inevitable end? If sales of Watchmen or V for Vendetta are anything to go by, The Walking Dead should be generating a steady stream of revenue for Image long after the series has run its course.



Nota Bene Watchmen made its film debut in 2009, so V for Vendetta is probably closer to the norm in terms of sales. As with previous posts, all sales figures can be found here. Please keep in mind that all the sales figures pulled from this website represent estimates from independent comic book shops, and do not take into account sales figures from online retailers like Amazon, independent bookstores, news stands, or big box retailers like Borders.