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Forum - View topicNEWS: Manga Sales Successes
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TiredGamer
 Posts: 246 Location: Florida |
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No other manga made
... an article that's incomplete? I don't think manga make incomplete articles, but maybe they're teaching manga new tricks now. 
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AstroNerdBoy
 Posts: 413 Location: Denver, CO |
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I'm glad Fruits Basket is doing so well in the bookselling. The translators for that deserve much props for keeping it real! Volume 7 was a really good one since Uo-chan's past is explored including her friendship with Tohru.
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AnimeHeretic
 Posts: 179 |
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Seems plausible, as the manga seems to have much more space than the rest of the graphic novels in most bookstores where I live. Of course some, like Persepolis and Maus are found in non-fiction, so that might skew it-- though I doubt that it would enough to change the results...
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Bethachu
 Posts: 10 Location: LA-LA land |
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Manga just isn't edging out graphic novels--it's edging out a lot of other things for shelf space, too. Every time I go to Borders another shelf has been absorbed by manga and that poor Poetry section just gets slimmer and slimmer. I've heard that it's an interesting problem for the retailers, because they need to carry old and new volumes of various manga series AND multiple copies AND new volumes come out all the time. It makes me happy that demand is high enough to justify the selection!
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radicaledward
 Posts: 776 |
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It is interesting to watch manga cause a paradigm shift in the bookstores around here, most people are aware that manga is not just comic books, and the bookstores are seem to realize that "if you stock it, they will buy it" in they most people will not start buying it until they see it in the bookstore. Likewise, most of the manga I have bought I either flipped through in the bookstore, of found out about through word of mouth.
As for how they are displaying it in the stores near me - either they put the smaller 4 foot bookcase in the alcoves that just had tables before, or they took over a less popular section and moved what was there to taller bookcases along the wall (and sent back what wasn't selling). |
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Arachne
 Posts: 35 Location: Charlotte |
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I work at my local Borders, and I'm proud of the fact that we have the largest manga section and selection in the city. Borders and Waldenbooks (we're part of the same company) really have made a commitment to manga and manga fans.
Everytime time I go to the main comic shop in town, they always bitch about the strange fact that manga fans don't suport the local comic shops like the American comic book fans. They don't understand that there is no reason for us to shop there- just because both are "comics", the cultures surrounding them are very different. So we have no financal reason to support their shops, because they are not important to culture and the survival of manga in America. And the fact that Fruits Basket has hit 93 on the best seller's list is proof of the differences. Comics is about limiting yourself to the hardcore fanboys and collectors, making it more of a hobby than an activity- it's more about buying and owning certain comics than the enjoyment of actually just reading them. But manga doesn't come out in special limited varient covers, were you must bag and board and CGC grade everything. It's about reading and enjoying the stories and art, and it is natural for manga fans and manga companies to go to the bookstores, because that is how you're going to reach the widest audience, and make the world at large aware of your product. The funny thing is, is now the American companies, like DC and Marvel see the Bookscan lists, the best seller's lists, and the money manga makes, and is now trying to make products to attract the manga audience. But it won't work, because the collector mentality is still there, and until the American companies change (most importantly by dropping the monthly comic issue format), we will keep hearing more about the mainstream appeal and success of manga. Here's to the success of manga! ~Arachne~ |
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Tenchi
 Posts: 4536 Location: Ottawa... now I'm an ex-Anglo Montrealer. |
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I think the "perspective" one needs to take into account here is that February is a fairly slow month for bookstores, so it's relatively easy for niche stuff to show up towards the bottom of the Top 100, where the total number of books sold is a small fraction of the volume of the books sold at the top of the list. The manga-reading niche certainly is fairly robust, but, in real terms, Stephen King, J.K. Rowling, and Michael Crichton have no reason to fear imported comic books crowding them off the bookstore shelves any time soon.
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isaacada1
 Posts: 779 Location: Snohomish, WA |
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A much more comprehensive review of manga sales in North America can be found here.
http://www.newsarama.com/pages/Tilting/Tilting14.htm |
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slickwataris
 Posts: 1334 Location: Carol Stream, Illinois |
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That was me who bought Rurouni Kenshin and Bleach, sorry. It was my 18th birthday on the 1th.
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potassium
 Posts: 102 |
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i'm surprised gravitation is so high on the list. i hadn't realized it had become so popular in the states.
not that that's a bad thing. |
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TiredGamer
Posts: 246 Location: Florida |
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Manga are more books than comics. They get published like paperbacks and they have all the same properties. American comics as a valid storytelling medium have been proven a failure. The public has voted with their dollars, and they want a story they can actually pick up and read without needing museum gloves or traversing dark rooms filled with stinky nerds.
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AnimeHeretic
Posts: 179 |
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Well, I know I was suprised at how big the reaction was to the Naruto anime. I didn't realize that that one was so fansubbed around that people would get mad at the interruption of the releases. WHen things are below the radar, they can come up with unexpected results... |
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Gusty
 Posts: 22 Location: Delaware, USA |
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I'm not. We're a country full of closet female perverts.
Seriously though, yaoi sells. I go to Otakon every year, and normally any yaoi doujinshi sells out on the first day. That niche has developed a rather rabid following in the US, and I for one am just not surprised. Why? Think of it-- before you first heard of yaoi, did the idea of two guys together occur to you as a common female fantasy the way two girls is for guys? No. Gay male pornography in the US is and was made for gay males. Not that I'm saying some women didn't pick it up, but not enough for people to think of it as a viable option to market to females. I'd go so far as to say 95% of the pornography buying population (any pornography) is male. Women had their romantic novels (that as far as I've ever seen, deal with heterosexual relationships-- typically with Fabio-esque dudes), and that was that. Then one day, a friend shows you something yaoi related. Gay romantic stories marketed to women? What a foreign concept! But... wait a second... this is kind of hot! I need more! Well hey, here's what's easiest to get... liscenced titles I can pick up down at ye old shopping mall! And thus, Gravitation and yaoi titles find a very willing fan base.
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Kagemusha
 Posts: 2783 Location: Boston |
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That all depends on what manga you want to support. Many bookstores I've been to don't bother carrying it if it isn't shonen or shojo.
That's a rather false statement. There are some hardcore fanboys out there who only buy every X-Men spinoff that ever comes out, but alot of comicbook readers are more open minded and sensible than that (more openminded than most manga fans I've met as well). A growing number of alternative comics and the more serious mainstream stuff is becoming popular among people who haven't even set foot in a comicbook store, as seen by the praise that mainstream publications have been giving them. And people seem to forget that Sandman: Endless Nights was on the NY Times bestseller list long before manga. You can't generalize comics based on the old steriotype of the fanboy (there still are alot of people like this though). |
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Tenchi
Posts: 4536 Location: Ottawa... now I'm an ex-Anglo Montrealer. |
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You don't know how right you are, mister. I went to Chapters over the weekend and was pleased to see that their selection of English manga now rivals their selection of French manga, until I looked at the titles and it was indeed all shounen and shoujo, and mainly the shelf-filler stuff that only sells in the thousands rather than the tens of thousands according to the Bookscan charts. There was nothing seinen, not even seinen that is fairly accessible to younger readers like Oh My Goddess or Ghost in the Shell or Cowboy Bebop and certainly nothing like Planetes (in English). Not that I have anything against shoujo or shounen (I was mainly at Chapters to buy volume 7 of Gals! in French, after all), it's just nearly everything on the shelves reeked of "we're getting close to the saturation point" mediocrity. |
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