A sharp-eyed reader who had been doing his own analysis of our Top 100 Graphic Novel numbers let us know that our numbers did not agree with his for the year over year comparisons for December and full year 2005, and in reviewing the source of the differences, we discovered that we'd made a mistake in our calculations on the graphic novel year-over year growth rate in comic stores for seven months of 2005: May through August, and October through December. Specifically, we overstated the growth rate of the graphic novel portion of the comic market for those months, and for the quarters and year that contained them. We also overstated the growth rate of the graphic novel market for September 2004 over September 2003. The source of our error was related to a change in Diamond's reporting on its top graphic novel sales in early 2004.
While the over-all thrust of our 2005 analysis, that graphic novel sales growth outpaced that of comic periodicals, remains correct, the size of the difference was much smaller than we previously reported. Graphic novel year over year changes for individual months varied significantly in amount, and in some cases in direction, from what we originally reported. We apologize for the error.
We've corrected our reporting in the following articles:
December 2005
2005 Graphic Novel Sales in Comic Stores Up 10%
November 2005
Graphic Novels Drive Growth in November
October 2005
September 2005 (for quarterly analysis)
First Half Analysis
Graphic Novels Drove First Half Growth
August 2005
July 2005
June 2005
May 2005
Graphic Novels Can't Keep Dollars Growing in May
December 2004 (discussing full year comparisons)
September 2004
