N.W. Ayer & Son

N.W. Ayer and Son's American Newspaper Annual and Directory was a directory to US newspapers and periodicals, arranged by state and city, published in the late 19th and 20th centuries. It was first published in 1880 and continued under the Ayer name until 1986. It really is just a directory listing and pretty dry material to sort through: names and addresses, founding date, circulation figures, etc. The reason you, the comic book fan, might be interested is because the listings include comic books publishers.

Their changing names and publishing configurations over the years can make sorting through and finding relevant information a bit tedious, if not downright difficult. Plus, the information listed is self-reported, so circulation figures can be a little suspect. But for edification purposes, here are three relevant pages from the 1963 edition featuring Dell, Marvel and National (DC)...

It's interesting to note that Marvel doesn't list ANY superhero comics. The timing could be such that the information is from before when Amazing Spider-Man, X-Men or Avengers launched, but after Incredible Hulk was going to be canceled. This would have been a VERY small window, though, and still doesn't account for why Fantastic Four isn't listed. My best guess is that they were still trying to hide the fact that they were publishing superhero comics in response to the successes DC was having. After all, Marvel's books were being distributed by Independent News at this point... a company which was owned by DC and had forced several publishing concessions on Marvel. (Such as limiting the number of titles they could publish in a month.)