Even though the top three titles were DCs, the two top dollar books for July were the two Marvel books in the 20, Civil War II #3 and #4 because of their $4.99 cover price, 67% higher than the price for the DC books.
It’s worth noting that all of the DC issues in the top ranks were returnable, with Diamond applying a reserve against sales for the future returns to calculate its sales indexes (on which our sales estimates are based). So the final numbers may vary from the estimates reported here, in unknown directions and by unknown quantities.
DC Co-Publishers Dan DiDio and Jim Lee explained what DC expects on returns in an ICv2 interview a few weeks back (see "ICv2 Interview: Jim Lee and Dan DiDio at San Diego Comic-Con – Part 1").
ICv2: Do you have any read on how the returns are going to go? We’ve heard from some retailers that they won’t have any returns and from others that there will be massive returns.
DiDio: There’s a number of forums where the retailers can work out shifting some of the inventory around, leveling out. We hope some of that of takes care of it. And we have certain percentages budgeted for the returnability based on the returns we received during the New 52. So it’s going to be disproportionate. Some people are going to return nothing, some titles are going to get a very high return, some titles are going to get a low return. You’re always going to get that balancing act going on.
You think it’ll come out about how you expected overall?
DiDio: That’s what we hope for. I’ll think we’ll see low returns on the #1s. Second and third month books, we might see a higher percentage. And by the fourth month, people are going to see what the rhythm is of their store. What we’re seeing already is a level of adjustment going on for the August numbers. Even though these books are returnable, you see them being even more conservative in their ordering, but still twice as high as where we expected them to be.
Lee: I was talking to retailers years ago and I was shocked when they told me that they ordered just for their pull customers or just enough to sell out that very first week. The whole idea behind returnability is 'stock the books.' This is going to be a three-month rollout. We’ll take the hit if you have too many, but at the end of the day, we want to super-saturate the marketplace. We’d rather get returns than none, because that means everyone had enough copies on the racks.
For an analysis of the dollar trends in July, see "DC Tops Marvel's Market Share in Stores for July."
For our estimates of actual sales by Diamond U.S. from comic specialty stores on comic books shipped during July, see "Top 300 Comics Actual -- July 2016."
For our estimates of actual sales by Diamond U.S. from comic specialty stores on graphic novels shipped during July, see "Top 300 Graphic Novels -- July 2016."
For our estimates of actual sales by Diamond U.S. from comic specialty stores on comic books shipped during June, see "Top 300 Comics Actual--June 2016."
For our estimates of actual sales by Diamond U.S. from comic specialty stores on graphic novels shipped during June, see "Top 300 Graphic Novels Actual--June 2016."
For our index to our reports on the top comic and graphic novel preorders for January 2000 through July 2016, see "ICv2's Top 300 Comics and Top 300 GNs Index."