Why Manga Doesn’t Sell Overseas
While I used to buy manga when I first started this anime-craze – but not anymore now. And it looks like Manga isn’t a big hit in the US. Head of Square Enix’s anime and manga publishing arm, 田口浩司 / Kouji Taguchi, has given what he sees as the reasons why manga sales in the US are still dwarfed by Japanese sales.
Square Enix is responsible for Saki and Fullmetal Alchemist by the way.
Speaking in an interview given at the recent “CoFesta” (Japan International Contents Festival), he replied:
The best sellers in the US were Full Metal Alchemist and Naruto, but these only sold a tenth to a twentieth of what they sold in Japan.
I think the main reasons are as follows:
1. Fewer copies are printed and those that are get sold at a much higher price, from $8.99 to $12.99.
2. Children don’t get as much money, their allowances are just smaller.
3. The other reason is location. If you live in Tokyo there will be 3 bookshops nearby, which you can easily cycle to. In the US there aren’t any, they can only buy on a weekly trip to the mall. Even if anime is highly popular, they just don’t visit the stores to buy manga often.
He focused on distribution issues which resulted in the lower sales of manga overseas, compared to Japan. Clearly he forgot to state that Western tastes are different? :D
Publishers such as Shueisha, Kodansha, Shogakukan and Kadokawa are setting up a digital platform on the PSP for distributing manga.
In Japan the prices are cheap and there are many stores, so I don’t think it will catch on.
But in the US, the prices will be reasonable and there are no stores, so I think maybe customers will like it.
Readers located in the US, will you buy the digital copies of the manga if you have the means to? The only reason I can think of as to why manga isn’t selling well overseas is – It takes ages for translation of the manga to be completed, and by the time they are completed, Japan might be volumes ahead while the US release is still stuck at Volume 1 ><.
Personally I prefer a manga in my hands – reading it by flipping page by page. I can’t imagine myself reading a manga and using my mouse to scroll to the next page ><.
Image Source: [1] Source: SankakuComplex [NSFW]
Not as public/popular internationally yet, but darn those people that copy the manga style and make it American style crap or stuff like that.
I’ve almost stopped buying manga for one reason – space. Just looking at one bookcase, there are 30+ volumes of Inuyasha with more on the way, 20+ of X/1999, 12 for Cardcaptor Sakura, and around 20 Evangelion-related ones.
I don’t really enjoy reading manga on my computer — I give it a shot every week when Viz puts up a new chapter of Rin-ne, but it’s not my ideal experience. I don’t know if the dedicated ebook readers would provide a better experience, but if it did I might very well start buying more manga again.
In my country its very difficult to buy or to get a manga copy. Even when you ask for manga, the sales person asks: whut??
well for one, mainstream america isn’t anywhere near being crazed about anime or manga. they are competing with something that has also existed for quite a while: comic books (Marvel, Capcom, stuff like spiderman and superman). Culture-wise, manga isn’t something average kids read.
Now, that’s not to say there aren’t crazy people in the u.s. They do have anime conventions, otakus, and cosplaying. The demographics often revert to asians who have been overseas or who those who study japanese, eat japanese, and submerse themselves in everything anime-manga like. but thinking about it, i could give a number of reasons why things dont seem big.
eg. i knew a lot of asians who loved manga. but they also may have bought it overseas or shipped it from overseas (maybe you’re right, they’re slow in translating and marketing internationally). Not to mention it’s not a big thing in big retail stores (availability). Age? yeah, i buy that argument. Kids aren’t going to spend their allowance on manga if they can get an icecream bar or that Hannah Montana thingamajig (eg Disney’s hold on movies vs anime popularity). But staying on manga, why read manga when you have facebook and youtube and the TV or the DS with Moving Pictures? I find a lot of the newer generations are addicted to technology and read a bit less if they’re playing WoW all the time. And I work at a library so yes, I do find books, in general, are less interesting to customers. Which brings me to my last point. Kids can read manga at barnes and nobles or their local library who orders them. Much of the time, people dont even buy it afterwards. The truth hurts.
for me, im not a reading type. manga, comic, the newspaper funnies, books, textbooks, whatever. i like anime but have never read a manga or comic. im too lazy (and as you know, watching movies require a significantly lower amount of brain power as opposed to reading!)
I’ve always been someone who enjoys having the Manga in my hand as well. I don’t like reading them online. I dunno about Manga not doing well here in the states… i haven’t seen an indication of that at least where i live, and i will keep buying them.
I do agree with your first point. I remember Manga ranging in price from $7.95 – $11.95 usd, but i’ve seen a lot of the lower priced ones (or ones that are usually lower) moving up to $9.99 as of late. I haven’t seen an $8.99 in a while… Either way, i think price is the biggest issue, but it does take people 5 years to translate one volume into english, which i don’t understand since online it takes a few days at most. Anyway, i didn’t think the margin for sales was that large between Japan and the US…. i would have expected the US to do fairly well since we’re basically the biggest consumers of most Anime/Manga-related things outside of Japan.
I just hope Tsubasa Chronicles doesn’t die before the last volume…. i would shoot the american publishing company for that…. there’s so much more i could say on this XD
I considered posting this myself~
I agree with it 100%
The closest book store is about a 45 min DRIVE away at the mall, when I was little we would only go 3-4 times a year. Even at this bookstore usually they only had random volumes… never a complete set… they could probably order more in… but I wouldn’t have the free time to go back up anytime soon.
I was never given money when I was little… I had to go through my mom or grandparents to get them to buy anything… and since they usually had very little money also anything they thought was stupid they’d say no to xD (“comics” would be in that catagory). And generally we had to convince them to buy other things like Video Games (Much more expensive) and… clothes lol o____O And then there’s the fact that they’re just so expensive for just a short book… I don’t want to spend a fortune collecting one series for $12 a volume >.<
I really do love the feeling of manga in my hand… But its just not something I can afford.
Of course buying them Used online might help… but that isn’t helping the DIEING INDUSTRY here Dx
Clearly their biggest issue is just you don’t see manga anywhere… People that don’t see manga don’t buy manga…
Its really the same flaw with the anime industry at this point as well… they don’t show anime on tv during hours people actually see it.
Of course our anime is cheaper over here and it still doesn’t sell well hahahaha, but people tend to not buy series if they haven’t seen them on TV first… and they don’t air on TV.
Well…
Here in sweden there’s is ONLY one anime/manga store and all anime and manga is extremely .expensive.
So if you ask me it’s cuz of the monopoly and the fact that I’m not rich.
-enjoyed the article!
I have to agree here… getting Manga can be hard (never really was a comic book fan). A couple of the local big name bookstores carry some issues but not all. In some cases they may have the 1st volume and nothing else even when there are other volumes available. Prices to me are a little silly ($8 – $14) so I look for discounted rates online and have been able to save between 1 to 6 dollars compared to the book stores. I need only to wait for the delivery. I jot down some of the titles that interest me and may read part of them online to see if it is worth while to add them to my collection. I many cases I have to rely on Manga reviews to even be aware the title exists.
Anime titles are the same way, I shy away from titles I have never seen / heard of. I do write the name down if the description looks worth while. If I can catch an episode and I think it was good, most-likely I will pickup the collection as a whole (if not insanely price like Evangelion or Blood+) Again I shop online and save up to $10 in some cases on titles I am interested in. Here to I rely on reviews / ANN to know titles exist. Just going to the local Mega electronics outlet that sells some anime is not a complete view of what is available.
I have been exposing my kids to anime that I think is kid friendly (little / no violence, language, etc) and they do take to it. They have a higher level of patience for subtitles it seems. Same for Manga. They have shared with their friends too. Perhaps increasing the demand will help?
I see that Funimation will be adding a VOD outlet on AT&T’s U-Verse service sometime and has done so on Dish Network as well as a couple of cable outlets here in the States. At least their titles will get some air time. Anime network shows a few but not much in their VOD releases (VOD = Video On Demand)
@ Seinime: You mean comics? Or? o.O
@ MorpheusDreamweaver: I can understand how you feel. I only stopped buying manga because I’m running out of space, and figurines expenses really kill me and I watch anime more than manga now o.o. I have over 100-200 manga I think, not sure, since I lost count. LOL.
@ phossil: Here we have translated manga – English and Chinese. The chinese versions are released earlier than the English one (I have no idea why >< ) but yeah, the Chinese ver is out quickly after the Japanese Version :)
@ atmchino: I kinda agree with you there. When I was younger, used to read a lot, like EVERYTHING. now as I'm older, technology really gets in the way of my life, and I use it for almost everything I do, yes even watching anime that I am procrastinating my reading of manga - that I don't read anymore ^^". My manga is from local stores, so I guess the problem with the States is that the manga cost expensive, translation is slow. Here, 1 manga cost me 5 SGD which is like 3-4USD (in Chinese btw). For the english version it cost more, like 8-9 SGD, which is around 6-7USD? Fairly reasonable. Translations should be out within 1 month of the Japanese release. I guess I should be thankful we are able to get manga easily, but truth is I know lots of SG fans do not even bother purchasing manga... Well most of us.. LOL.. ><
@ kurando: Basically you're wrong. I don't think the US is the largest consumer outside of Japan. There are other countries like Taiwan, HK, Singapore too. Basically we have the choice of ENGLISH/CHINESE Manga (well for SG) - For Taiwan, HK I'm guessing Chinese manga. There are a lot of fans who buys manga/anime in Taiwan, HK. Friends of mine actually went there for holiday, and guess what they brought back? Anime stuff. Anyway I don't know much of US folks who do regularly purchase anime stuff. Maybe that is why the range is quite huge. Do you even purchase other stuff besides manga? Figurines? Character goods? Those hardcore ones in the States are those who have animeblogs, and those blog readers I guess... I got a chance to talk to a few "fans" like last year. Apparently all they care were leeching free anime, reading free manga and they can't see the sense to pay 5,000 yen for a Single/Album/Figurine. -_- Thats really sad :(
@ bluesnow: I guess with the farrrrrr location, you can buy online? I will purchase online if I can't find it readily in Singapore, and I'm plain lazy to travel to and fro town just to get my manga :3. Yeah I know of your family bg, so not expecting you to buy anything at all, living is what you should be doing blue XD
@ Eviliu: that sucks. Any chance of getting online? Monopoly powers always kill the industry!!!
@ loneotaku: cool, I didn't know you have kids :D. Yeah I do what you do too. I only have a few manga collection I'm currently following. I can't be bothered to collect anymore because there are just TOO many titles!! So yeah =/. Shall concentrate my power on music and anime. Lol.
@ Zen: When I was younger we didn’t have a computer xD
And… I’m saving up for a car now. I won’t have any real money till I graduate from college and hopefully get a job xD
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