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ICv2 Report: N. American Comics Market Decreased by 7% in 2023

Media news website ICv2 announced on July 15 that according to its estimations, comics and graphic novel sales went down approximately 7% in the United States and Canada in 2023. Comics and graphic novel sales to consumers in North America totaled roughly US$1.87 billion in 2023, down from US$2.01 billion in 2022.

ICv2 also noted that despite the decrease from 2022, comics and graphic novel sales have increased over 70% from 2019 when it totaled US$1.1 billion.

Comic book stores saw an 8% decline in sales, while the book channel, which includes ecommerce retailers such as Amazon and Barnes and Noble, saw a decline of 7%. Additionally, comic books and graphic novel projects on Kickstarter saw a 30% rise in revenue from backers in North America in 2023.

The website's analysis is based on data from Circana BookScan (formerly NPD Bookscan) and from POS system ComicHub for the comic store channel. The analysis also includes sales figures from school book fairs and Kickstarter.

ICv2 explained that its biggest change in methodology for the 2023 results is that the company has stopped reporting on download-to-own sales of digital comics. The company said regarding why it made this change, "The most important reason for making that change is that subscriptions for online access to comics are comprising an increasing part in digital sales, and that's a part of the market that's opaque to the public, and to us." ICv2 removed its digital download sales estimates from its previous years to provide comparability (such as in the chart above and in other numbers noted in the report). ICv2 had estimated digital download sales of comics at US$155 million in 2022.

According to NPD Bookscan, the United States saw an annual increase of 9% in manga sales in 2022.

The Beat reported in February 2022 that manga saw a 171.1% rise in volumes sold in 2021 from the previous year. NPD BookScan's graphic novel sales figures for 2021 found that the manga subcategory made up 76.71% of the volumes sold in the Adult Fiction category.

Circana BookScan collects weekly point-of-sale data on print books from over 16,000 locations including e-tailers, chains, mass merchandisers, independent bookstores, and more. Circana BookScan covers approximately 85% of the U.S. trade print book market. Some publishers classify titles that are primarily text, or art books, as graphic novels; ICv2 removes those titles during its research.

Source: Email correspondence