Bookscan 2025: End of the Trail

For the last eight years Comicsbeat has been the home of Brian Hibbs’s Bookscan analysis, a detailed look at graphic novel sales that breaks down the bestsellers and publishing trends in both manga and traditional comics publishing. It’s one of the most important things we publish here at the Beat and has been an incredible resource for the industry. 

Sadly, we will no longer be able to publish this data for 2025 or beyond. 

Circana Bookscan, as it is now known, has changed their policies for providing us with the data for this analysis. Since 2017 Brian and I worked closely with Kristen McLean, Bookscan’s book data guru, and a familiar figure at comics industry events. Kristen was able to work out an arrangement where we had access to the data – and could publish the Top 20 books of the year – and could analyze it without putting it out in chart form. 

Unfortunately, Kristen has moved to a different part of Circana and the Bookscan department has been reorganized and downsized and will no longer allow us access to the data. 

Brian did his analysis for more than 20 years, and before doing it in partnership with Bookscan directly, he used leaked information. Unfortunately we’ve also been told that if we use leaked information we’ll face legal action. I thought about taking up a collection to purchase the data but I’m told it would cost mid-five figures – something I don’t think anyone in the industry could finance. 

To say I’m saddened and demoralized about this change is an understatement. Brian alluded to it in his Tilting at Windmills #300 column, but I wanted to make it official here. 

The changes at Circana Bookscan go back to the merger between The NPD Group (former home of Bookscan) and Information Resources which took place in 2023 after a private equity firm took control of both. As with many things in the world, the more accurate data becomes, due to digital collection and improved analysis, the more closely it is guarded, and the harder it is to come by. 

We’re still trying to work with Bookscan to get reports of any kind, but I’m told they are also making other uses of the graphic novel data harder to access as well. 

So, a tradition ends. And the comics industry is left with less sales information than ever. There are a few bright spots, however: ICv2 is still publishing charts via Bookscan, and we refer you to this as the most reliable ongoing data available to chart comics sales. 

Prana Direct Market Solutions, run by Atom Freeman, is collating single issue sales in its newsletter – to get that information you should sign up, if you haven’t already. These charts are in early days, but will become more robust as time passes. 

We’ll be collating the available information on 2024 sales a little later this week (Shorter version: Dogman again.) It’s very late, but as you can imagine this has been a major bummer on top of everything else going on. We’ll also spotlight some other data gathering efforts that are starting up or continuing as best we can. 

We’ll continue to make our past reports available for those who are interested. In some ways the 20-year history of Brian’s efforts have captured a vital period in the evolution of the comics market itself: from an industry that relied on comics shop periodical sales at the start to a wide ranging industry with multiple, robust sales channels, and a format that is widely accepted as a vital and profitable part of the publishing industry. We’re in another period of massive transition now, and new information hubs will surely arise. We’ll be sitting here with the popcorn. 

And as we wrap this up, everyone should give a huge thank you to Brian Hibbs. As we corresponded about this change he observed that not having to take the time to write his annual 20,000 word report would leave him time for other things. It was an immense task that took many, many hours, and was an invaluable service to the industry.  

It’s been a good run.