News

Survey: Manga Rental Struggles to Catch On in Japan

According to a survey conducted by Japanese entertainment industry statistics site Oricon, stores in Japan that rent manga to customers may not be the smashing success that some industry observers were hoping for. Despite efforts to promote manga rental, 41.4% of those polled said that they weren't aware of shops offering manga rental, compared to 24% who were and 34.6% who heard about manga rental, but did not know where and how to rent.

The business of manga and comic rental received a huge boost earlier this year when Tsutaya, one of Japan's largest CD and DVD rental chains, said that they would start offering manga rental at some of their stores across Japan. The typical cost for renting manga is 90 yen (about 80 cents in the US) per volume. Tsutaya is currently offering manga rental at a few of their stores as a test project, but plans to expand the service to more stores in August 2008.

As for the impact manga rental will have on the market, only 2.6% of those surveyed said that manga rental would cause them to purchase more manga, while 23.2% said that manga rental would probably cause them to purchase fewer manga. The remaining 74.2% expect that manga rental will not affect how much manga they purchase.

1,000 people in 4 different age groups participated in the survey, which was conducted in late March.

Source: Oricon Style