This should be the biggest story in comic book fandom at the moment: Is Marvel making up sales numbers?. In a press release, Marvel claims that they had 42.9% of the Unit Share in January. Diamond's Pre-Order numbers say their share is only 40.13%. They also claim to have 38.7% of the Retail Share in January. Diamond's pre-order number: 32.76%.
So what's going on? I checked several websites trying to figure out the difference, and only got myself more confused by the various numbers out there. Diamond's Market Share website for January 2003 has DC firmly on top with 33% of the "actual dollar market share" with Marvel trailing at 31.01%. What? CBR has DC at 31.82% for dollar share, and Marvel at 30.93%. In addition, Marvel is apparently leading in unit sales, with 38.46% to DC's 33.18%. Oh, my poor brain. So where on Earth did the numbers in Marvel's press release come from?
I have a theory, but I don't have the math skills to try to confirm it. All of the lists I found show the sales and pre-orders for all comics, magazines, and graphic novels. What if Marvel is only talking about the top 300 comics in their press release? It might improve their numbers since DC has a number of graphic novels (including an Archive) coming out in January. The press release is worded so that the market share numbers being quoted could definitely apply to just the top 300 comics.
In any case, it looks like Marvel is playing with numbers to hide the fact that they are, in reality, slowly losing sales to DC.
What do you think? Am I totally off-base? Am I just not skilled enough to read the numbers? What is happening here?
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