Who Are the Digital Comic Book Fans on Facebook? – 10/27/11
A few hours ago I posted statistics of the self-identified comic book fans on Facebook. During this same time period, I also looked at who the fans of digital comics are. Are they different from the regular comic book fans? The answer is yes, yes they are. Using the same method, but different search terms I pulled the exact same data for comparison. The universe is much smaller to search from, but there’s enough that only at the extreme edges are there issues with the reporting.
Facebook Digital Comic Book Fan Population: Over 7,540 in the United States
You can see the number is much smaller than the 2.6 million population for the general comic book fans. The terms are much more narrow, searching for brands instead of generic terms. Keep in mind, these are the fans of Graphic.ly, comiXology, iVerse, etc., not web comics. That’s a whole other population in my opinion. The goal here is to try to figure out who buys digital comics.
Below you’ll see the breakdown of the population as well as a comparison to the general comic book fan population. You’ll see there’s some significant differences, much more than the smaller Spanish speaking population (only 1.59%, compared to the general’s 2.14%).
Gender and Education
Interestingly enough, digital fans skew much more male and are more educated than their mass fan brethren. The average population is 29.12% college grads while digital fans are 54.38% college grads. Men dominate as well, making up a little over 81% of the population.
Age is the second area you absolutely see a difference. The general population is primarily under the age of 40 and mostly under the age of 30, digital comic book fans are between 26 and 41 and peak in the 34-37 age. This is over a decade difference compared to the general population. The size of the populations are much evenly distributed between ages 22 and 45.
With an”older population” you’d expect there’d be a greater chance they’d be married and that’s reflected in the data. 41.33% is married compared to 21.19% of the general comic book fans. In digital, the married population has primarily grown out of the”single” status and partially out of the”in relationship” status.
You can see the digital has a pretty decent shift from the general comic book fan base. They’re interested in the opposite gender in greater percentages.