This may put realistic parameters around comic sales...

[Dean S.]

Sold to readers might be tough.  But DC ordered up to one million copies around the time the trailer went public a few years ago in anticipation of movie goers heading to the bookstores.

Didn't Watchmen get a double-push?  I remember the movie helping, but I also remember that a lot of non-comics people bought it because it was also on that Time Magazine list of "the 100 greatest novels of all time".  I wonder if that was more influential in Watchmen sales than the movie since we haven't seen similar bumps for other comic properties.

[Nojfotra (Jonathan D. Gordon)]

Plus, the subject matter is someone that died very recently.  It's not a biography of one of the first settlers that mined for gold, but someone that the majority of the world talks about almost daily.

Dont you think some of the sales were hurt though by the fact that time/newsweek/rolling stone all had 15 page comprehensive bios. Its not like you had to pay for a hardcover book to get his life story last month

[David]

Dont you think some of the sales were hurt though by the fact that time/newsweek/rolling stone all had 15 page comprehensive bios.

Maybe?

I don't know, I see them as apples (oy, no pun intended) and oranges.  Magazines are disposable to me.  And might whet my appetite for the book.  But why bother with the articles if CNN, 60 Minutes, and countless other television shows also told the man's life story?  Hell, even TNT aired The Pirates of Silicon Valley a day or two after his death was made public.

I'd rather have the book.  Feels more personal to me.  More substantial.

But I can see where you're coming from.

[JMann]

<Everyone talks about how current comic sales is the death knell of the industry.  Let's compare it to one of the most anticipated prose books of the year...>

Hmmm.

Steve Jobs Biography sold 380,000 copies retails at $35.00 for 656 pages That's $13,300,000 in earnings for the week, and an unlimited shelf life.

Justice League 1 sold 185,776 copies (an anomaly) and retails at $3.99 for 24 pages of story.  That's $741,246.24 in earnings for the week, and a one week shelf life.