>>102196700The thing with the Walking Dead is entirely why Image had a really bad year in the bookstore market in 2017.
http://www.comicsbeat.com/tilting-at-windmills-268-looking-at-bookscan-2017-and-this-time-its-certified/>Image ComicsYear---- # of Placing Titles----Unit Sales----Dollar Sales
2014----47----691,804----$17,554,492
2015----71----878,262----$22,587,672
2016----72----908,655----$22,917,758
2017----52----556,196----$11,092,960
>Much of Image’s chart collapse is on the absolute freefall that has become “The Walking Dead” in 2017. “TWD” used to be Image’s huge juggernaut-like cash cow – just within last year’s Top 750, the 37 placing “TWD” titles sold more than a half-million copies for $17.5m dollars – but things have collapsed and this year the collective performance (on just 17 volumes) is down to just over 200k sold, for just $5.7m in sales. The best-selling “TWD” book is v27 at just over 36k, while v28 moves about 24k. But the real plummet is in the Compendium editions where volume 1 (#7) plunges down to under 19k sold, when it did 71k in the previous year, and hasn’t sold less than 60k in any of the last six years. Before you start shedding any tears for Kirkman and Adlard, don’t forget those compendia are reprints of reprints, and were (essentially) just “found money”, though this is a big potential cash flow crunch as they right-size inventory to adjust to the new reality.>n the full Long Tail chart, “The Walking Dead” about 266k copies for $7.1m – this is down massively from last year’s 405k and $16m, and that $8.9m in sales difference is the majority of Image’s $9.7m loss in the Long Tail chart below.DC themselves also had a rough year (as did Marvel) compared to 2016.
DC:
Year---- # of Placing Titles----Unit Sales---->Dollar Sales
2015----119----1,074,304----$21,701,088
2016----117----1,234,047----$23,203,071
2017----101----827,544----$15,234,525
>Marvel2016----60----555,715----$12,088,278
2017----50----378,689----$7,840,198