Has there been any published data re the circulation/print runs of the earliest The Dragon issues?

The values seem pretty clearly established in The Acaeum, but I wonder just how rare they are...

Circulation data, by law (or at least U.S. law), must appear once per year in the actual magazine itself, so the historical data is certainly available.

Anyone with the Dragon Archive, for instance, could compile an annual chart of Dragon's circulation if they had the time and patience to go find the annual "Publisher's Statement" boxes. It would be a little bit like a treasure hunt, since most publishers bury their circulation info. in the back of an issue and use tiny type, but it would definitely be do-able.

curses !! beat me by 20 seconds    

Once Dragon went monthly, those reports likely appeared in the same month's issue every year ... in other words, if the Publisher's Statement appeared in the November 1981 issue, it's likely to also be in the November issue for 1982.

It's not an ironclad guarantee, of course, but it's the sort of thing that could help speed up the research process.

I did some looking around and although it does not appear to be mandatory, if the publisher wanted a bulk mailing permit from the USPS they had to have those reports filed.

It also served as verification for circulation claims when setting advertising rates.

Edit: this is the organization that collects those reports
http://www.accessabc.com/

Edit #2: I disagree Shane, I think that the crazed drow avatar was quite striking...

FoulFoot wrote:I've very interested in this!  As I've sold my collection, I'm not able to research this myself, but I'd appreciate anyone who can look up succeeding years.  I'm adding it to the "print run estimates" page as we speak, for the upcoming site update.

Foul

P.S.  That's a hint that the next site update is coming soon.

Is it April already

ShaneG.

These are figures from the left-hand column of the Dragon's annual circulation statement, which reports the average of the preceding 12 months:

1979: 10,636 (reported in issue #33)

1980: 15,616 (#44)

1981: 44,994 (#55)

1982: 71,666 (#67)

1983: 107,348 (#80)

1984: 120,080 (#91)

All of my later issues are in the garage ... if they haven't been tossed already. But there's no reason this research couldn't be carried out in both directions from here. Looking at the above issue numbers, Dragon filed its figures, on average, about every 11 issues, so there's no need to search every single issue. Also of note: all of the above circulation statements were found on either page 2 or page 3 of the magazine.

So you're saying go back into the hermetically-sealed vault, show my ID to the guard, and bring those issues back out?

*Sigh*

Okay, here we go ... reading left-to-right and looking at the top three rows of boxes:

1979: 10,636 / 11,000 ... 8,805 / 8,934 ... 1,711 / 1,951

1980: 15,616 / 25,000 ... 12,190 / 20,155 ... 3,237 / 4,558

1981: 44,994 / 60,000 ... 36,134 / 48,110 ... 8,536 / 11,531

1982: 71,666 / 80,000 ... 55,475 / 60,387 ... 15,736 / 19,029

1983: 107,348 / 118,000 ... 76,643 / 81,024 ... 25,769 / 31,186

1984: 120,080 / 124,821 ... 80,103 / 81,048 ... 34,231 / 36,973

+++++

Interesting stuff, actually. The subscription figures (the third set listed for each year) are lower than I'd thought they'd be ... I guess Dragon really was sold more through game stores, bookstores, comics shops, and (in bigger cities) newsstands. Now that I think about it, I never actually subscribed myself ...

So, if Jason's scan is from issue #12 and my list begins with #33, I'd say we're missing a publisher's statement from right around issue #23 or so. As soon as someone can confirm that (I sold off my low numbers three or so years ago; my earliest issue is #27), we'll have a pretty nice set of numbers showing the early growth of The Dragon.