Revenue at IDW Publishing fell 12.1% in the fiscal year ended October 31, 2017, compared to fiscal 2016, parent company IDW Media reported. Sales in the year were $24.5 million, down from $27.9 million in 2016. The publishing unit includes IDW’s games business.
IDW attributed the decline to “a cyclically slow period in the comic book specialty market,” as well as its transition to Penguin Random House for distribution.
In releasing its financials, IDW said that with the distribution move to PRH completed and the scheduled release of titles such as Star Wars Adventures and Star Trek: Discovery, it expects sales in the publishing group to improve in fiscal 2018.
While revenue in the publishing group fell in the year, IDW said it made progress in monetizing the unit’s library of content through television programming deals. To that end, it cited its agreement with Hulu on the series Locke & Key (which is adapted from an IDW-published comic of the same name) as an example of how its publishing and entertainment units can work together.
In the current year, IDW said, it expects the publishing unit to “feed more proprietary content to fuel the accelerating growth of IDW Entertainment.” In fiscal 2017, revenue in the entertainment division increased slightly, rising to $16.2 million from $16.0 million in fiscal 2016.
For the entire company, revenue at IDW fell 7.5%, to $60.4 million, and it had a net loss of $797,000 compared to earnings of $3.7 million in fiscal 2016.
