For the first time this month, we took a look at orders from pop culture stores to Diamond on the top ten magazine titles offered through the channel.  Sales were uniformly down, by percentages ranging from 7% to 19% on the seven titles for which we were able to compare November 2000 and November 2001 orders.  No category was immune; titles devoted to comics, toys, games, and anime all showed substantial drops. 

Dollars for the top ten magazine titles ordered through Diamond were only down 4%, reflecting a slightly different mix of titles between the two years and a $2 per issue price increase for Heavy Metal -- the oldest title on the list.  Heavy Metal was the only title to eke out a dollar sales increase in the face of circulation declines, due to that price increase. 

The trends we see for November 2001 vs. November 2001 orders from pop culture stores are consistent with over-all trends in magazine sales that we've been reporting for some time (see 'Magazine Circulations Down in first Half'), and those broad trends are continuing.  For example, long-time women's title Mademoiselle has just announced that it's folding, following Industry Standard, George, Working Woman, and a number of other titles that folded this year.  Hits to advertising sales in the wake of the September 11th attack on the U.S. and a continuing poor U.S. economy are expected to reinforce this trend. Magazine sales in pop culture stores have also been weak this year, based on year-over-year category trends reported by Diamond (see 'Diamond Releases Mid-Year Trends'). 

Here are our estimated initial orders to Diamond North America from pop culture stores on the seven magazine titles we were able to compare between November 2000 and November 2001.

Diamond is attempting to stem the decline in sales for the category by offering returnable newsstand magazines to its accounts -- a low risk way to expand selection for pop culture retailers (see 'Diamond Offers Returnable Magazines').

The quantities in this chart are ICv2 estimates of initial raw orders to Diamond North America on titles scheduled for shipment in November 2001. 

Our analysis is based on a combination of the information Diamond releases in Diamond Dialogue and actual order numbers provided to ICv2 from publisher sources.  By plugging in the circulation numbers we know and using the Diamond order index, all of the circulation numbers for comics and magazines ordered through Diamond and reported in Dialogue can be interpolated.  Since Diamond calculates its indexes based on initial advance orders from its US location only, we use publisher numbers for the same kind of orders to do our calculations.  This produces very accurate estimates of the initial orders for North American shops.  It is not an estimate of the total sales by publishers. 

As far as we know, all of these titles are also distributed through other distribution channels, and sales through Diamond are usually a minority of total sales, in some cases a relatively small minority.  Regardless, it's unlikely that sales are migrating from Diamond to other channels, so the declines here are probably indicative of over-all trends.    

The quantities above do not include advance reorders, late orders, or reorders placed with Diamond.

Most of the titles on this chart are also distributed to Europe by Diamond UK, which can account for significant sales for the publisher, ranging from 3-20% of the US numbers.   Sales by Diamond UK are not included in the numbers above.