Marvel’s Star Wars To Sell More than 200,000 Copies in Collected Edition
Via ComicBook.com
The first collected edition of Marvel Comics’ Star Wars series will sell between 225,000 and 250,000 copies in its first printing, ComicBook.com has learned exclusively.
That’s about five times the average first volume trade collection of Marvel series, which average between 30,000 and 50,000 sales. That also means that Star Wars is retaining roughly the same number of readers from peridocals to trades, with sales of the first trade translating to roughly 20-25% of the sales of the series’ first issue.
When the series launched, Star Wars #1 sold over a million copies, becoming the top-selling single-issue comic book of the last twenty years. Star Wars also became the first-ever million-selling periodical comic book sold exclusively through direct market channels without the aid of newsstands.
Since January, Marvel Comics has confirmed for us that Star Wars comics have moved more than 5 million units in the direct market.
Of course, the trade paperback will be available outside of the direct market, opening up the best-selling series to the bookstore market for the first time.
“When Star Wars #1 was released at the beginning of the year we were thrilled at the reception and the record-setting sales numbers. Once again, Star Wars continues to skyrocket the Marvel name even higher with the anticipated pre-order print-run between 200K and 250K units for Star Wars Vol 1 TPB,” said David Gabriel, SVP Print, Sales and Marketing. “This is an unheard of number, but given the success that we’ve had with Star Wars since January, including the insurmountable 5MM units across all the Star Wars’ series, second prints and overprints, we don’t see any issue in reaching such a number of printed copies of this highly anticipated collected edition.”
The series, which takes place between the events of Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back and features all of the major characters from the film, launched in January. It is written by Jason Aaron, with artwork by John Cassaday. While Marvel handled the official adaptations of the original Star Wars trilogy and had a successful Star Wars series around the time of their theatrical release, 2015 will be the first time in decades that the publisher has handled the Star Wars license.
