Booming business

Graphic novels are big business, in case you didn’t know. But further encouraging those of us who love the medium and want to break into it, ICv2 has announced that sales of the books increased to nearly $300 million last year. That’s not shabby. Here’s some info from a story in Publisher’s Weekly:

There were about 2,800 book format comics published in 2006, up 12% from 2005. Out of that total, 1,200 are manga titles and 965 are American genre comics. Manga sales continue to sell very well and represented about $170 million-$200 million of total sales. Griepp reported that general bookstores sell the most graphic novels and continue to show the fastest growth. General bookstores were responsible for about $220 million in sales and the comics shop market reported about $110 million in sales. Manga growth did slow a bit, and Griepp blamed the Musicland bankruptcy for contributing to the slowdown.

Griepp reported that sales of graphic novels passed comics periodicals as “the most popular format,” in 2006. He reported that 2006 sales of comics periodicals was about $310 million.

You can read the full story here.