Kristen McLean, Senior Executive Director, The Circana Entertainment Knowledge Group, and Brenna Connor, Circana’s Industry Analyst, U.S. Books, gave an overview of graphic novel sales in the book channel at the 2025 ComicsPRO Open House on October 23.
Overall, McLean said, the data shows that the market has stabilized around the higher post-pandemic level in the book channel, a contrast to recent growth in the comic store channel, as reported by ICv2 (see “ICv2 White Paper”).
In terms of how graphic novels are selling in the book channel, as tracked by BookScan,
- Unit sales of graphic novels came to 41 million in the 12 months ending in September 2025, a decrease of 4.7% compared to the same period a year prior.
- Kids’ graphic novels performed the best, with a 5% rise in unit sales, bringing them to 36% of the graphic novel category.
- Adult unit sales were down slightly, but their market share went up by 1.5%, to 61%.
- YA graphic novels took the biggest hit, with sales down by 1.1 million units, bringing them to 3% of the comics and graphic novel category, a year over year decline of 2.4% in market share.
Series were the biggest sellers in the kids’ graphic novel category, with Dog Man, Warriors, Wings of Fire, and The Baby-Sitters Club leading the pack in terms of both total sales and sales growth. Three of these four series are published by Graphix (Warriors, based on the juvenile novels of the same name, is from HarperAlley), and Graphix continues to dominate the category.
McLean attributed the drop in YA graphic novel sales to the decline in popularity of the two blockbuster properties, Heartstopper and Five Nights at Freddy’s, and the lack of another big seller to take their place.
Adult graphic novel categories that are growing include superheroes, crime and mystery, and horror. Light novels (which are often tied to manga, manhwa, and manhua) are growing as well. McLean attributed the growth in superhero sales in large part to the DC Compact Comics and Marvel Premier Editions. She cited a historical precedent, the introduction of pocket-sized paperbacks during the Depression. “That was when the mass market paperback really came into the market, because it was designed to be affordable,” she said. “It was designed to be a good edition of great works, and it was comfortable, and that’s what we’re seeing with these two series.” She also pointed to Invincible and DC’s Absolute editions as drivers of growth in this category.
Sales of horror graphic novels rose 25% year over year, and overall horror books up 18%, according to BookScan. Top horror graphic novels included Jujutsu Kaisen, Beneath the Trees Where Nobody Sees, and Tatsuki Fujimoto’s Goodbye Eri and Look Back.
Manga and other East Asian comics account for 40% of the Adult graphic novels category. BookScan combined manga, manhwa (from Korea), and manhua (from China) into a single category two years ago. Sales in that category have been declining, but, McLean said, that may be in part because publishers are assigning classifying these books by genre, such as mystery or romance, rather than simply as East Asian Comics. “Over the last 12 months … we’re seeing a lot of content coming out of Asia spreading out into a wider range of comic and graphic novel BISACs [category codes] rather than being clustered in manga,” McLean said, “so that 40% I think really underrepresents the true impact of East Asian content in the overall adult comics and graphic novels market.”
The East Asian series that showed the biggest growth in 2024 were Dandadan, Solo Leveling, Blue Lock, Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, Delicious in Dungeon, and Sakamoto Days.
“People ask all the time whether we’re going to see a drop in the manga market like we did back in the Borders [bankruptcy] days,” McLean said. “And my opinion is, no, we’re not. Partly that’s because there is an incredible wave of Asian content that is hitting the global market, not just the US market. I think what we’re seeing here, particularly for manga, is a stabilization and consolidation of the core fanship for manga that is new since 2019… I really think [manga] is here to stay, and this is just a normalization.” Manga sales remain at 144% of where they were in 2019, according to BookScan.
Love and Deepspace
The trend that McLean calls “East Asian energy” goes far beyond bookstores. Pokémon is the number one toy property in nine of the 12 countries that Circana tracks for toys, she said, and the number one growth property worldwide, but there’s plenty of new content, including the Netflix film KPop Demon Hunters (see “‘Monopoly Deal: KPop Demon Hunters’”), the hit Chinese game Love and Deepspace, and Labubu, alongside still-popular properties such as Hello Kitty, One Piece, and the Korean band Black Pink.Source: ICv2
