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Circana Executive: Manga, Other 'East Asian Style Comics' Made Up Largest Share of Graphic Novel Sales from July 2023-June 2024

Media industry news website ICv2 reported on Friday on a presentation that Kristen McLean, Senior Executive Director The Circana Entertainment Knowledge Group, made at the ComicsPRO Open House event on Thursday, which included information about the state of the manga industry in the U.S. in the first half of 2024.

According to McLean, manga "and other East Asian style comics, such as manhwa" made up the largest share of graphic novel sales in the 12 months ending in June 2024, but manga also led the decline of graphic novels in the book channel.

Manga and manhwa made up 40% of the graphic novel market for the 12 months ending in June 2024. Print manga sales were also down 21% in the first half of 2024. McLean however speculated that manga fans that "accrued during the pandemic are not going away."

Manga series that showed the largest growth in the first half of 2024 included ones with anime adaptations, such as: Jujutsu Kaisen, The Apothecary Diaries, Delicious in Dungeon, One Piece: Ace's Story–The Manga, Frieren: Beyond Journey's End, and Demon Slayer: Kimetsu Academy.

Graphic novel sales overall were down 16% from 2022 to 2023, and down 12% in the first half of 2024 compared to the first half of 2023. ICv2 attributed to the decline to the post-pandemic spike of sales leveling off, but noted with the above numbers that the decline is slowing, and sales are still higher than in 2017.

The presentation also noted that the print book market in the U.S. as a whole is stable, with no change in sales in the first half of 2024 compared to the first half of 2023. In the first quarter of 2024, print books made up 64% of the trade book market, audiobooks made up 19%, and ebooks made up 17%.

ICv2's full report on McClean's presentation is available here.

ICv2 had reported in July that comics and graphic novel sales went down approximately 7% in the United States and Canada in 2023. However, despite the decrease from 2022, comics and graphic novel sales have increased over 70% from 2019 when it totaled US$1.1 billion.

The Beat reported in February 2022 that manga saw a 171.1% rise in volumes sold in 2021 from the previous year. NPD BookScan's graphic novel sales figures for 2021 found that the manga subcategory made up 76.71% of the volumes sold in the Adult Fiction category.

NPD BookScan became Circana Books in March 2023, following the merge of NPD Group and Information Resources, Inc. (IRI) in 2022. The company collects weekly point-of-sale data on print books from over 16,000 locations including e-tailers, chains, mass merchandisers, independent bookstores, and more. Circana BookScan covers approximately 85% of the U.S. trade print book market.

Source: ICv2 (Brigid Alverson)