Christmas titles hold their position

91 Stomperud.Photo: Stian Lysberg Solum / NTB scanpix

After 200 years, Christmas comics are still popular, despite the fact that cartoon comic sales are down the rest of the year.

 

The total sales of editions of Norwegian Christmas comic books is 2.3 million, and there are many titles among the most popular, wrote Dagens Næringsliv newspaper.

‘The three best-selling Christmas comics are Pondus, Knoll & Tott and Stomperud, and this has been the case for many years. We do not go out with edition sales figures for each booklet, but in total there is a printed edition of the three largest of the 460,000 comics, said Anita Tveten, who is responsible for

Egmont’s Christmas comics. She says that Christmas comic book sales in Norway have increased by approximately 10% in the past ten years.

According to records from the Media Companies Association (MBL), the comic market fell by 3.5% from 2.6 million in circulation in 2015, to 2.5 million in 2016. However, neither this decline, nor the negative trend for magazines and papers seems to have affected Christmas comic book sales .

‘The sale of Christmas comic books is stable and holds its position better than magazines in general. It’s really strange’, said Bjørnar Westgaard in Vigmostad & Bjørke. In his portfolio, it’s Kapteinens jul, Jens von Bustenskjold, and Prøysens jul, which sell best, with a circulation of 141,000.

© NTB Scanpix / Norway Today