Forum - View topicNEWS: ICv2: North American Manga Market to Drop 20% in 2010
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Jaymie
Posts: 915 |
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Most of the publishers have scaled back, which explains the sudden drop. Tokyopop cut its production in half, Del Rey has put many of its series on hiatus, and for others it released 3-in-1 omnibuses. Viz is just being Viz, but it has focused on its more obscure imprints recently.
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Kit-Tsukasa
Posts: 930 |
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Not to forget that a few recently went out of business. If anything, I'd say the issue is that it's hard to find some of the products. They're mostly available online, but at a general retail book store like Borders, Barnes and Noble, etc... recently, the variety has been very scarce. The lack of advertising makes it difficult for those who don't regularly follow release dates to pick up the title, let alone shop for it online. Books are not something one usually orders online for unless they're textbooks for school. |
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Scormio
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Yeah I'm not really too worried. Most of its just been because companies going out of business. Like this drop is probably because of DelRey not releasing jack for the past year.
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prdtan
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I've noticed the prices of the manga have jumped by at least 20-25%.
That probably put a damper on the number of books that people might buy. |
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dawgstar
 Posts: 34 |
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Yeah, that bubble sure was fun while it lasted, huh? I guess it'd be easy to throw one's hands up and run around in little circles, but then I realized just this week I bought the 55th volume of One Piece. Just keep buying your favorites, turning new people onto series if you think they'd like 'em, and keep plugging along.
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Cutiebunny
 Posts: 1767 |
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Am I the only one who is shocked that this article doesn't blame scanlations?
I'd say that there are a wide variety of reasons as to why the market is not doing as well. I think that the US industry needs to start offering the same incentives to buy its product as their counterparts do in Japan. In Japan, if you buy a monthly(or in some cases, weekly) magazine, there's generally a lot of bonus prizes such as pencils, keychains, pencil boxes and things of that nature. Some magazines offer hand drawn artwork done by their featured mangaka. I know that, if US distributors started to offer me these same incentives, I would buy a lot more manga. |
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DrunkMurray
Posts: 7 |
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If they'd expand their distribution to the kindle and drop the price a little($10 for an hours worth of reading is not something I can go for), I'd certainly buy. As it is the Amazon selection of digital manga is abysmal, and the few I've purchased have had terrible image quality.
Hell it doesn't even have to be Amazon, just give me somewhere I can digitally purchase manga and load it to the reader without much fuss and at a reasonable price, and I'll become a lifetime buyer. Unfortunately I'm guessing the e-reader manga demographic is small and not likely to boost sales much. |
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Paploo
Posts: 1875 |
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I looked into the formatting for kindle comics- they generally use a low-res file since it's a b+w reader, and 72 DPI looks best on it [print dpi=300 to 600 DPI, depending on the title/format... most manga are at the 600 DPI range when formatted for print]. They're not optimized for computer/labtop screen viewing- I use 100 dpi for my webcomics, as it looks much sharper, some use higher, and some webcomics use a higher res than that [I know Marvel's digital program uses a fairly high resultion for their flash based viewer- it's extremely sharp on the samples I browsed]. Mind you, while it looks grainy on a computer, from my understanding 72 DPI looks optimal on a Kindle and some cellphones, while a higher-res image would be harder to read on them from my understanding. http://www.comicsbeat.com/2010/10/07/icv2-conferees-happily-go-digital/ PS- those who want to rant about digital prices should read this- NTTSolmare's titles are primarily for Apple's Iphone/Ipad services, and the prices being higher might be due to Apple's restrictive pricing scheme, something comic publishers are apparently not happy about [from my understanding, Apple wants certain prices, and also takes a cut of said prices, which is why you'll find cheaper comics on things like comixology and graphic.ly as well as stuff like Marvel's digital subscription service]. I noticed the smaller range of titles they have on kindle are a little cheaper. Here's hoping killing off scanlation sites and offering more pay digital manga [there's been a ton of movement on this lately, likewise in domestic comics] helps offset the losses in print sales. animenewsnetwork.com/anncast/2010-04-23 Anyhoo, for those pondering a more scientific/specific explanation of how piracy affects sales, see this ANNCast |
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warnenANN
 Posts: 9 Location: South FL |
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I can see this, I buy 2-3 books a month now, used to buy up to 20 a few years ago.
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PetrifiedJello
Posts: 3782 |
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It's pretty difficult to take the words of a publishing employee discussing the losses of piracy when the company they work for posts news of an 18% increase in revenue. Oops. |
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Paploo
Posts: 1875 |
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Ed cited a specific example of one title that dropped in sales due to piracy, and went back up when they got it off the site hosting it. They're pretty diligent about combatting piracy, so I guess you just answered your own dillemma by pointing out their sales increases.
Also, I heard The Man has pudding, so you can stop hating The Man like a stereotypical hollywood movie paranoid slacker. Everyone loves pudding! Also, in the "being against piracy does not equal being against digital" category, Vertical is involved with the plans for an online, multilingual edition of Morning Magazine [which is where Chi's Sweet Home and Peepo Choo (via Morning2) originate] PS- Everyone should keep in mind that releasing less is due to people buying less- manga companies would not suddenly be making more profits if they released more manga. They're currently focusing on not overcrowding the market, and only publishing books where demand exists for it. Pumping out titles monthly or publishing 20 more licenses won't mean more sales- it'll just mean the same number of sales across more titles, with lower per title sales. |
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PetrifiedJello
Posts: 3782 |
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Some of us call this a "dead cat bounce". It's just like reading the recent news from the MPAA which stated by (illegally) forcing companies to wait 28 days to release rentals, their DVD sales increased. Also, don't put words in my mouth. I never stated I disliked publishers. I just said they're not the source I'm going to trust when it comes to piracy statistics. It's just like listening to the MPAA whine about losses due to piracy while announcing news of yet another record-breaking year in movie ticket sales. |
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Paploo
Posts: 1875 |
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It's a specific example- Black Jack sales kept increasing volume to volume, then dropped when MangaFox's douchey scanners scanned in Vertical's edition. Then Vertical fought with them to get their title removed. Suddenly, Black Jack sales go back up. How much more info do you need?
They're a small business with like 8 employees. Vertical is not exactly an Evil Empire here. And Ed's a longtime industry watcher prior to working for Vertical with http://www.mangacast.net . He knows his stuff, he talks regularly with japanese publishers, artists, domestic pubs, etc. He knows and has access to info you never will. If someone has experience and works in an industry, they know more then you about that industry. It's a fact. Call me when you've worked in publishing for an extensive period of time and have negociated licensed for numerous titles. He's constantly stated on twitter that Vertical passes on heavily scanlated titles, that some artists don't license titles due to piracy fears, and that Vertical has a very difficult time getting bootlegs removed from some sites- and msot of the time those scans are directly from their books, so are *their* translation work. Exactly what comics have you done? What part of the industry are you involved in? How many years have you been at it? Bring me some facts when you're done with the whole spectator sport thing. Last edited by Paploo on Thu Oct 07, 2010 9:36 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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ZeroDemio
 Posts: 74 |
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I can relate to that. After getting 34 volumes of Berserk and a bookshelf filled with manga, my primary goal is now to get the yet-to-be-released volumes of series I have. I still would buy a new manga series, but I already got a bunch I like. |
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Paploo
Posts: 1875 |
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I think that's part of why publishers have cut down- their core readers can only read/buy so many titles at once, so it's better to stick to continuing titles that sell, licensing shorter new series, and spacing out releases to make buying more titles easier. Manga's still profitable, they've just scaled back. That said, manga could still be bigger if the number of "core readers" expanded. |
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