For "indy" comics publishers, the mainstream booktrade has likewise been a boon. While largely snubbed in the Direct Market, books published by Drawn and Quarterly, Fantagraphics, Slave Labor, Top Shelf and other such publishers have found new homes on bookstore shelves, and produced some rather astonishing successes — Chris Ware's Jimmy Corrigan (Pantheon) sold over 80,000 copies despite being a $30 hardcover, while Daniel Clowes' Ghost World and Joe Sacco's non-fiction works Palestine and Safe Area Gorazde became breakout hits for Fantagraphics Books, a company particularly hard-hit by low sales in comic-book shops (Ghost World has sold over 100,000 copies to date, of which roughly a tenth went to Direct Market retailers). Many indy and art-comics publishers now depend on the bookstore trade for half or more of their total sales, while such publishers as Simon & Schuster and Reed Press have expressed a newfound interest in getting into the game themselves.

This time around, the inroads graphic novels have made into the bookstore trade look considerably more permanent than the previous attempt in the late 1980s. The New York Daily News quotes BookScan representatives as stating that the format now accounts for 2.5% of the overall adult fiction market. If that sounds like small-potatoes, consider this — according to ICv2, $100 million in graphic novels were sold last year, a 33% increase over sales for 2001. Furthermore, it estimates that 2002 sales were evenly divided between the Direct Market and the bookstore trade. While ICv2 is predicting 2003 sales to increase by 20% this year, it is also predicting that the majority of that increase will occur in bookstores rather than comics shops; this despite a current sluggishness in much of the book market.

Which brings us to Marvel Comics. Like virtually every other major comics publisher, Marvel has seen sales in the bookstore market rise. According to the company's 10-K report for 2002, mass market sales reached $7.0 million in 2002, a considerable jump from just $1.1 million in 2001. With this figure in hand, a little creative deduction can explain away the company's desire to make further inroads into the bookstore market. As just noted, the GN market was worth $100 million last year, with half of it in bookstore sales. Of that $50 million, Marvel was therefore able to capture just 14% of the market in 2002. For a company used to dominating the sales arena to the extent Marvel has — it's generally agreed that Marvel held 41% of the Direct Market last year — that 14% must look like one piss-poor market share. It's even more difficult to acquire sales-figures for most other comics companies, which are by-and-large privately held and therefore excempt from having to file the sorts of documents that Marvel must, but assuming for the sake of argument that DC does an equivalent business in bookstores and indy/non-genre publishers take up a collective 20% of the playing field, that still leaves a full 50% of the market to publishers of... oh, what is the word? I had it just a moment ago. It starts with an "M"...