The head of Square Enix’s anime and manga publishing arm, 田口浩司 / Kouji Taguchi, responsible for producing such anime as Saki and Full Metal Alchemist, has given what he sees as the reasons why manga sales in the US are still dwarfed by Japanese sales.
Speaking in an interview given at the recent “CoFesta” (Japan International Contents Festival), he had this to say:
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.
It is interesting that he would (quite sensibly) cite pricing and distribution as the key factors holding down sales, rather than focus on the supposed tastes of Japanese audiences versus international ones.
The success of franchises such as Pokémon in the US seems to demonstrate mass market acceptance is more a question of marketing than of content issues, and presumably the same generalisations hold true of the other major markets.
He mentions digital distribution may be the way forward:
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.
Similar schemes exist for the iPhone/iPod, but Apple’s notoriously restrictive content censorship and the lack of involvement from Japanese publishers probably make this platform less appealing.
He also mentions that overseas phones simply do not yet have the features to properly handle manga; in Japan this form of distribution has been growing rapidly.
I read the english translation of the manga in my country, Malaysia. The localized version sucked and are heavily censored even if they’re cheap about RM4-Rm7.50 (USD1.30-USD2.50).
(I recall a scene in the Dragonball manga where they added a black bra for Bulma).
The really good English translated one is about RM30+ (USD10) whcih is pretty steep for most people. Plus these books are sold at specialist bookstores which are found in the capital as far as I know.
yeah, One Piece volume 60 translation is bad , very bad.
I live in Florida, United States. I lived in Japan from 1990 – 1994. I loved Japan alot, though I was oo young to notice all the characters / cartoons there. I was more into that badass food known as sushi! – Anyway… As I got older I started looking into manga / anime… Ironically I was turned off by it. But when I was 17 I saw a VHS series alled La Blue Girl. Hit 18 bought the DVD set for all 6 episodes for like 120 bucks. I cut lawns to make money.
After seeing hentai / I totally started looking into other things. Suffice to say. As of Yesterday… I now own 120 hentai DVD’s ( Uncensored Only – can’t find the censored ones here nor have away to get a region free DVD player / I own about 2 book selves of manga / hentai and other. I have about All volumes of Dragon Ball / Bleach / Witch Blade / Rin / etc etc… I just wish all I buy would show these companies especially the hentai ones there are fans overseas like me who do buy hentai. And none hentai like.
I hate censorship just as much as the next person reguardless of country. The problem is priacy. Morons in the US who say its A-Ok to show people being killed on TV / and blood gore all over the place. But god forbid, we see some cartoon monsters having sex with a none living character… Sigh. I’m powerless in the end I guess. I buy my stuff, I have “VERY” few things ‘free’. I believe if you love it, you buy it. Pixy-soft title: As known in English to me “Anti-Demon ninjas” – I wanted to see the whole series, uncensored of course.. But If I buy it, it has to be uncensored. I just can’t get past the pixels.
I understand it. But, if only peple in Japan and elsewhere could have it removed… Thus no more fears of reverse importing… And for people like me I could buy easier without fear of censorship / and the need to buy a region free dvd player which is damn above my budget.
Yeah, I can’t even get to a store that actually sells Manga pretty much at all…
Wal-Mart & Target just aren’t cutting it…
Biggest reason of course is that people don’t want to spend their money on crap.
The real reason is that the american publishers censor the manga and also you cant find a lot of titles in US. So who is guilty? the publishers
Huh not selling??? Is that the fact that happens on your countries guys?
On my country one manga is only around 1 to 1.5 US dollar so almost all people just buy manga everytime they like the manga.
These are my reasons for not buying more:
Selection: I have only 2 places to buy manga within a reasonable driving distance (25 minutes, one way). Books-A-Million and Waldenbooks. I do all my shopping at Waldenbooks because of the second reason on my list…
Price: Waldenbooks is the only place nearby that has good coupons. I won’t spend $8.99-$14.99 on a single volume of manga. Borders (Waldenbooks parent company) comes out with good coupons. Usually between 30-40% off of a single item. The problem goes back to the previous reason. Waldenbooks has a crappy selection. Sometimes they only get 1 or 2 copies of a new volume in. Sometimes they don’t even have new books on the shelf on the release date. I’m STILL waiting for them to have the Ultimate Edition of Fruits Basket #4 – the hardcover ones. It was supposed to have been released over a year ago.
Publisher Reliability: There’s no guarantee a US publisher will finish releasing a series if the sales aren’t good. If they don’t, my only recourse is scanlations. Foxy Lady #2 is being released at the end of June. Volume #1 was released over 18 months ago.
Publishing Time: With scanlators, I can sometimes read a manga weeks after it’s been released in Japan. It could take YEARS for it to show up “legally” in the US.