Jedi Council Forums - What is Star Wars' highest selling Book and Comic?

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Author	Topic: What is Star Wars' highest selling Book and Comic?
Randy_Stradley Title: Dark Horse Comics Editor and Author Registered: Apr '02	Date Posted: 11/9/06 5:05pm Subject: RE: What is Star Wars' highest selling Book and Comic?
	John's right, I believe, about the old Marvel numbers. Subscription copies used to be sent via Second Class Mail (I'm not sure that there even is such a thing any more), and some obscure U.S. Postal regulation required them to, once a year, publish circulation figures in their books. If I remember correctly, the number was an average of all the issues of that particular comic published during the year, but the "average" included all copies distributed. That meant every copy sent to a newsstand ditribution outlet was counted -- even if that copy never left the warehouse. I'm not positive, but it wouldn't surprise me if that number of "total impressions" was used to determine advertising rates. Creator royalties, when such a thing became available, were of course figured on actual sales, which were often considerably lower than the number of copies printed.
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JohnJacksonMiller Title: Writer: -Empire -KOTOR -Precipice Registered: May '05	Date Posted: 11/9/06 7:34pm Subject: RE: What is Star Wars' highest selling Book and Comic? - Date Edited: 11/9/06 7:50pm (4 edits total) Edited By: JohnJacksonMiller
	Did someone say Statements of Ownership? My favorite comics trivia topic! The Statement of Ownership, found in U.S. Code as Section 4369, Title 39, has been required of publishers who ship Second Class since the 19th Century. But it was only in 1960 that it became the Statement of Ownership and Circulation, as that was the year that publishers were first required to list their average paid circulation for the year. That is sold copies, distinct from print runs; while the Postal Service did require publishers then to publish their print runs as well, some, like Dell, didn't bother until a couple of years later. The USPS also required publishers to say how many copies were sold on average by subscription, which was the whole point of adding circulation to Section 4369. Since the USPS was cutting publishers a special rate by letting them ship Second Class, they wanted them to prove that their publications were actually requested, and not junk mail. In later years, the USPS would require many other statistics, including what the sales were for the most recent issue of the year in addition to the average issue. Today, Second Class is known as Periodical Class, and among major comics publishers only Marvel and Archie continue to use it; DC stopped in 1988. Wizard and most print magazine publishers continue to use it. I have filled out many of the forms myself in my magazine career. Historians using Statements of Ownership can compute things like the number of copies returned from dealers -- essentially, unsold copies which were destroyed -- and the percentage of the print run that was sold in any given year. The Statements are inspecific -- they give an average of a year rather than data for all the specific issues -- but it is some of the only hard information available for the 1960s and 1970s. Data from the 2,500 or so Statements of Ownership I have found appear in my aforementioned book, the Standard Catalog of Comic Books. The reliability of the Statements in the 1970s and onward is generally pretty good, given the comparisons I've been able to make with archival info from the publishers themselves. Looking at them across an entire year or range of years for a publisher, it's pretty easy to see when a figure is outside what we'd expect. There are more simple math errors than there are attempts at distortion, I find. Though those attempts are not unheard of: Charlton, it is said, basically made its data up -- though I would expect that was from lack of knowing it rather than intent. Again, nobody was looking at these things. Statements of Ownership were generally not used by publishers for advertising purposes -- they were simply an obscure postal obligation, as you say, Randy, and far more of interest to the fans who actually saw and read them. Advertising rates for Atlas/Marvel and National/DC were more likely to have been based on the reports of the Audit Bureau of Circulation, to which both belonged. (That's where the REAL data is -- locked up in the microfiche of the ABC's Chicago offices. I've sent a correspondent down there a few times to do some archaeology for my previous books.) I cite all statistics from the Statements in my book, but in all the sales charts we only use the "average paid circulation" figure, and not the print run, which is higher. The figures IntrepidMeredith cited were the paid copies for Star Wars; the print runs, which Marvel also cited, were higher. (Small correction: That 590,000 figure for Amazing Spider-Man in 1993 is actually the paid circ rather than the print run, as she mentioned. It was the highest reported average sales figure in that title's history, and came at the peak of the early 1990s boom.) Sadly, there is not Statement data for Star Wars before 1979; publishers did not usually have a second class license (or sell subscriptions) in the first two years of a title's run. I can say, however, that Star Wars #1-3 were the best selling comic books of the entire 1970s, period. There were two variant versions of the first printing of #1 and three for #2-3 -- and while they didn't add up to many copies -- perhaps 200,000 -- the two versions of Whitman bagged reprints that followed boosted the number of copies of those issues over 1 million each. They were the ONLY comics in the 1970s to top that mark. Star Wars would be the top selling title in the business for three more years -- and as former editor-in-chief Jim Shooter once said, Star Wars absolutely saved Marvel, which was close to being liquidated by its owners. Comics nearly died altogether in the mid-1970s, so you might say George Lucas helped save comics! As for absolute copies in print of the same story, it's very difficult to say. I would imagine things like the movie adaptations by Dark Horse have appeared in many, many different printings and formats around the world and in many languages. If it is calculable, I'd sure like to know. I can add it to my trivia wall! Back to writing... Best, John Jackson Miller Faraway Press -----signature----- Best, John Jackson Miller Fiction: http://www.farawaypress.com Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/jjmfaraway Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/johnjacksonmiller Research: http://www.comicschronicles.com Webcomic: http://www.swordandsarcasm.com
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Excellence Registered: Jul '02	Date Posted: 11/11/06 5:15am Subject: RE: What is Star Wars' highest selling Book and Comic?
	Thanks for the insight, everyone. I've always been fascinated by the world behind comics. -----signature----- Rock-a-by baby, on the treetop, Beaming with pride, the filth they hold, But when the wind blows, my temper implodes, High above a pit, filled with sharkticons, Down will come hardcover addicts, beaming no more. ©
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