Japan's Monthly Manga and Light Novel Rankings for September
Rank / Monthly sales by copies / Titles
Manga
*1. 607,543 Tokyo Ghoul:re Vol.8
*2. 456,232 Boku no Hero Academia Vol.10
*3. 399,036 Shokugeki no Souma Vol.20
*4. 317,040 Kochira Katsushikaku Kameari Kouenmae Hashutsujo Vol.200 Special Edition
*5. 315,591 Owari no Seraph Vol.12
*6. 304,311 World Trigger Vol.16
*7. 247,256 Mahoutsukai no Yome Vol.6
*8. 236,321 Fairy Tail Vol.57
*9. 203,477 Kekkai Sensen: Back 2 Back Vol.2
10. 188,418 Major 2nd Vol.6
11. 186,844 Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun Vol.8
12. 180,360 Kimi ni Todoke Vol.27
13. 171,233 Ten Count Vol.5
14. 165,793 Shingeki no Kyojin Vol.20
15. 162,786 Yowamushi Pedal Vol.46
16. 157,372 Skip Beat! Vol.39
17. 157,020 Handa-kun Vol.7
18. 156,030 Tokyo Tarareba-jou Vol.6
19. 140,159 Nanatsu no Taizai Vol.22
20. 139,479 Uchuu Kyoudai Vol.29
Light Novels
*1. 460,783 Kimi no Na wa. (Kadokawa Bunko)
*2. 134,630 Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei Vol.20
*3. *93,263 Kimi no Na wa. Another Side: Earthbound
*4. *85,489 Kimi no Na wa. (Kadokawa Tsubasa Bunko)
*5. *83,556 Kagerou Daze Vol.7
*6. *54,685 No Game No Life Vol.9
*7. *54,209 Kotonoha no Niwa
*8. *45,629 Byousoku 5 Centimeter (Kadokawa Bunko)
*9. *38,670 Sword Art Online Vol.18
10. *36,637 Date A Live Vol.15
11. *34,582 Tensei shitara Slime Datta Ken Vol.8
12. *34,309 Re:Zero kara Hajimeru Isekai Seikatsu Vol.9
13. *32,628 Hataraku Maou-sama! 0 Vol.2
14. *31,379 Shinsetsu Ookami to Koushinryou: Ookami to Youhishi
15. *31,355 Ookami to Koushinryou Vol.18
16. *25,081 Goblin Slayer Vol.3
17. *23,759 Ensemble Stars! Kasei yo Ten made Todoke
18. *21,179 Okitegami Kyouko no Kakeibo
19. *20,709 Heavy Object Vol.12
20. *18,737 Hidan no Aria Vol.23
Source: Oricon Youtaijou
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20 of 51 Comments Recent Comments
Very very few are. Some magazines contain side stories or teasers but other than Fujimi Dragon Book and a few Fujimi Fantasia Bunko titles that are serialised in Dragon Magazine, and to a lesser extent series published in Shueisha's Cobalt magazine, it's become almost unheard of for a series to be released like that (and has been for a while now as well).
Is a typical range for novels, EXCLUDING the portion taken by the retailer and distributor.
As I previously stated, ebooks are not included in Oricon's sales figures and make up a large proportion of light novel sales. Also, light novels have slightly better long tails than manga and far better than anime discs do. For mega-hits we see those long tails, like we do if a series reranks for whatever reason. For lower sellers we don't. Oricon may report from most major stores, but the lists we get don't include most sales, and the lower selling the series is the lower the proportion of sales that we see.
Would be on the higher end. About 600 yen would be typical. Take about a third of that off for distributor/retailer share (usually slightly higher than this but it's an easy figure to work with) and then take 10% of that gives 40 yen per book. I don't know if the illustrator's pay comes from the same share of the pie as the author's - if it does it would reduce the figure.
Does the illustrator has any kind of rights of the work? If it doesn't than it doesn't receives any kind of royalties from it, unless it is in the deal made. Still that wouldn't come from the 10% of the author/right holder.
Oct 17, 2016 4:42 AM by hpulley
OMG JUST LOOK AT THE SALES OF TEN COUNT!! MORE THAN I EXPECTED!$ AWESOME!!
Yasssss! Ikr!!!! Theres a future of Yaoi mangas!
I'm so happy that ten count is selling so great, CD drama is so sexy as well. <3
Oct 17, 2016 3:54 AM by removed-user
Popularity of manga and LN as medium are significantly different.Most people grown up with reading manga in Japan while LN is rather queer hobby for nerds.
Eee... Well, I did "more or less" said, and you're saying if LN's (or under their original term description: shousetsu) a modern medium is, like the smartphones and etc. Lol, shousetsu's does give/exist in Japan along with manga's since centuries...
But let's be honest, I did the selling charts of manga's and LN's on different forums/sources checked: There you can quiet see, that the selling at the both mediums more or less the same are, at all both parties you see titles, where some successfully selling and some badly. What I wanna with this say, is, that LN's will always less favorized for a full adaptations, even if they having the required source materials for and the perfect selling results, like at S&W, Horizon and Highschool DxD. - E.g. Horizon: Horizon sells pretty, like their merchandise (from stickers to PVC figures and etc.), and they're currently on vol. 9 - the both seasons was with the first two vols adapted, they had then quiet at least season 3 and 4 adapted meanwhile... But instead that this LN series also his/her chances gets in the anime area, getting the Shounen-title manga's in row their adaptations...>_>
@hpulley
LN and Novel are different,novel is broad term including LN.I said "LN" is seen rather queer hobby of nerds instead of "Novel"
If you mean Novel instead of LN,then it is true Novel market size is similar to(still smaller than)what manga market is.
I don't understand what you want to say but even most popular LN such as Haruhi,Toaru series,Sword art online are rather niche compared with popular shonen manga such as One piece,Hajime no ippo,Fma so it is very natural they tend to have less episode counts.
Oct 16, 2016 5:39 PM by umashikaneko
OMG JUST LOOK AT THE SALES OF TEN COUNT!! MORE THAN I EXPECTED!$ AWESOME!!
Yasssss! Ikr!!!! Theres a future of Yaoi mangas!
Oct 16, 2016 4:00 PM by Machination
Very very few are. Some magazines contain side stories or teasers but other than Fujimi Dragon Book and a few Fujimi Fantasia Bunko titles that are serialised in Dragon Magazine, and to a lesser extent series published in Shueisha's Cobalt magazine, it's become almost unheard of for a series to be released like that (and has been for a while now as well).
Is a typical range for novels, EXCLUDING the portion taken by the retailer and distributor.
As I previously stated, ebooks are not included in Oricon's sales figures and make up a large proportion of light novel sales. Also, light novels have slightly better long tails than manga and far better than anime discs do. For mega-hits we see those long tails, like we do if a series reranks for whatever reason. For lower sellers we don't. Oricon may report from most major stores, but the lists we get don't include most sales, and the lower selling the series is the lower the proportion of sales that we see.
Would be on the higher end. About 600 yen would be typical. Take about a third of that off for distributor/retailer share (usually slightly higher than this but it's an easy figure to work with) and then take 10% of that gives 40 yen per book. I don't know if the illustrator's pay comes from the same share of the pie as the author's - if it does it would reduce the figure.
Does the illustrator has any kind of rights of the work? If it doesn't than it doesn't receives any kind of royalties from it, unless it is in the deal made. Still that wouldn't come from the 10% of the author/right holder.
Oct 16, 2016 12:21 PM by bigivelfhq
Popularity of manga and LN as medium are significantly different.Most people grown up with reading manga in Japan while LN is rather queer hobby for nerds.
Eee... Well, I did "more or less" said, and you're saying if LN's (or under their original term description: shousetsu) a modern medium is, like the smartphones and etc. Lol, shousetsu's does give/exist in Japan along with manga's since centuries...
But let's be honest, I did the selling charts of manga's and LN's on different forums/sources checked: There you can quiet see, that the selling at the both mediums more or less the same are, at all both parties you see titles, where some successfully selling and some badly. What I wanna with this say, is, that LN's will always less favorized for a full adaptations, even if they having the required source materials for and the perfect selling results, like at S&W, Horizon and Highschool DxD. - E.g. Horizon: Horizon sells pretty, like their merchandise (from stickers to PVC figures and etc.), and they're currently on vol. 9 - the both seasons was with the first two vols adapted, they had then quiet at least season 3 and 4 adapted meanwhile... But instead that this LN series also his/her chances gets in the anime area, getting the Shounen-title manga's in row their adaptations...>_>
@hpulley
Oct 16, 2016 12:12 PM by Tenryuu1
Very very few are. Some magazines contain side stories or teasers but other than Fujimi Dragon Book and a few Fujimi Fantasia Bunko titles that are serialised in Dragon Magazine, and to a lesser extent series published in Shueisha's Cobalt magazine, it's become almost unheard of for a series to be released like that (and has been for a while now as well).
Is a typical range for novels, EXCLUDING the portion taken by the retailer and distributor.
As I previously stated, ebooks are not included in Oricon's sales figures and make up a large proportion of light novel sales. Also, light novels have slightly better long tails than manga and far better than anime discs do. For mega-hits we see those long tails, like we do if a series reranks for whatever reason. For lower sellers we don't. Oricon may report from most major stores, but the lists we get don't include most sales, and the lower selling the series is the lower the proportion of sales that we see.
Would be on the higher end. About 600 yen would be typical. Take about a third of that off for distributor/retailer share (usually slightly higher than this but it's an easy figure to work with) and then take 10% of that gives 40 yen per book. I don't know if the illustrator's pay comes from the same share of the pie as the author's - if it does it would reduce the figure.
Oct 16, 2016 11:46 AM by kuuderes_shadow
I think the 5k level ones would get by fine, unless they get paid far less per sale than western authors.
You have to remember:
- Oricon sales don't report for all retailers.
- They don't include e-books at all, which make up a significant portion of light novel sales.
- The sales we see reported for a 5k seller would almost invariably only be the first week sales. Which would only be a small proportion of their eventual sales. Unfortunately we don't tend to see reranks of things that are flat sellers at around the 5k mark.
But flat sellers that rerank when an anime starts airing commonly show sales of about 2.5x the sales that new volumes get, which would indicate that this 5k seller is actually selling about 12.5k*. By Oricon standards. At a guess that could be about 30k in total? If you're releasing 4 books a year that would come to 120k books a year. Ignoring any additional royalties, advances and so forth, and assuming about 30-40 yen per book sold then that's 3.6-4.8 million yen per year which is more than enough to live on. Even if you cut a slice out of that for the illustrator.
On the other hand, selling 5k on the Oricon rankings means you're selling more than most light novels do...
... But then again low pay for writing is the norm everywhere.
*perhaps a bit less as this ignores the miniscule boost that comes from the attention a series garners from simple fact that a series is about to get an anime.
EDIT: lowered the yen/book rate to more accurately correlate to the book prices.
Anime adaptations don't give the author much more money unless the book sales go up too. Just the manuscript fee and royalties don't actually amount to much (which I know directly from asking some of them, the royalties end up about the same per disc as per book sold as the percentage for them is very small). Thus a manga/novel boost is worth way more to them.
Don't most light novel are first released in a magazine anthology like manga? If so then they receive a separate normal salary, just like mangaka. The fact that they don't need a specialized studio, paper(and other utensils) nor assistants means that they keep majority of the earnings.
Book royalties sales is around 10-15% of the actual sales(by sales means the books that aren't returned, if a library keeps the book in the shelves, the author receives that money).
I believe that Oricon reports at least 70-80% of sales(major retailers), just 10-20% is obviously not what it is reported(unless light novel reports are way worse than Manga and Disk reports).
How much does each volume of light novel costs? Around double of a manga right? around 640 yen.
10% of that is 64 yen per book. 5k copies means that per volume a 5k author gets 320k yen that is around 3200 dollars. 4 volumes per year means 1067 dollars per month and 12.8k per year. This is around half of the average yearly salary in Japan, and is only for the royalties of books.
For manga you need around 15k copies per volume to have a satisfactory salary just with the royalties, so I believe with Light novel is around half of that, 7.5k
Oct 16, 2016 10:50 AM by bigivelfhq
I still wonder how the 5K/volume Oricon sales level LN authors get by. At that level I assume they also work another job full or part time to make ends meet.
I think the 5k level ones would get by fine, unless they get paid far less per sale than western authors.
You have to remember:
- Oricon sales don't report for all retailers.
- They don't include e-books at all, which make up a significant portion of light novel sales.
- The sales we see reported for a 5k seller would almost invariably only be the first week sales. Which would only be a small proportion of their eventual sales. Unfortunately we don't tend to see reranks of things that are flat sellers at around the 5k mark.
But flat sellers that rerank when an anime starts airing commonly show sales of about 2.5x the sales that new volumes get, which would indicate that this 5k seller is actually selling about 12.5k*. By Oricon standards. At a guess that could be about 30k in total? If you're releasing 4 books a year that would come to 120k books a year. Ignoring any additional royalties, advances and so forth, and assuming about 30-40 yen per book sold then that's 3.6-4.8 million yen per year which is more than enough to live on. Even if you cut a slice out of that for the illustrator.
On the other hand, selling 5k on the Oricon rankings means you're selling more than most light novels do...
... But then again low pay for writing is the norm everywhere.
*perhaps a bit less as this ignores the miniscule boost that comes from the attention a series garners from simple fact that a series is about to get an anime.
EDIT: lowered the yen/book rate to more accurately correlate to the book prices.
Anime adaptations don't give the author much more money unless the book sales go up too. Just the manuscript fee and royalties don't actually amount to much (which I know directly from asking some of them, the royalties end up about the same per disc as per book sold as the percentage for them is very small). Thus a manga/novel boost is worth way more to them.
Oct 16, 2016 5:00 AM by hpulley
I still wonder how the 5K/volume Oricon sales level LN authors get by. At that level I assume they also work another job full or part time to make ends meet.
I think the 5k level ones would get by fine, unless they get paid far less per sale than western authors.
You have to remember:
- Oricon sales don't report for all retailers.
- They don't include e-books at all, which make up a significant portion of light novel sales.
- The sales we see reported for a 5k seller would almost invariably only be the first week sales. Which would only be a small proportion of their eventual sales. Unfortunately we don't tend to see reranks of things that are flat sellers at around the 5k mark.
But flat sellers that rerank when an anime starts airing commonly show sales of about 2.5x the sales that new volumes get, which would indicate that this 5k seller is actually selling about 12.5k*. By Oricon standards. At a guess that could be about 30k in total? If you're releasing 4 books a year that would come to 120k books a year. Ignoring any additional royalties, advances and so forth, and assuming about 30-40 yen per book sold then that's 3.6-4.8 million yen per year which is more than enough to live on. Even if you cut a slice out of that for the illustrator.
On the other hand, selling 5k on the Oricon rankings means you're selling more than most light novels do...
... But then again low pay for writing is the norm everywhere.
*perhaps a bit less as this ignores the miniscule boost that comes from the attention a series garners from simple fact that a series is about to get an anime.
EDIT: lowered the yen/book rate to more accurately correlate to the book prices.
Oct 16, 2016 2:51 AM by kuuderes_shadow
Which you can see above. Aside from the odd outlier like Kimi no Na Wa, on average the best selling manga outsell the best selling light novels by a factor of 5-20x. The price is similar so it often makes me wonder as LN authors either get a higher percentage or are paid less than mangaka. It is simply easier to read manga, it is a much more accessible medium than light novels.
Almost certainly paid less, but then remember that most mangaka have several assistants that they have to employ, whereas novel writers don't. Also the cost of physically producing a novel is lower than the cost for a manga, so there is more money coming in from each sale even if the two products are sold at the same price.
I still wonder how the 5K/volume Oricon sales level LN authors get by. At that level I assume they also work another job full or part time to make ends meet.
Oct 16, 2016 2:15 AM by hpulley
It's not rape scenes, though. That was mutual, past chapter 25.
Still, I really hope Ten Count gets a proper anime, uncensored and fully adapted. They already fucked up Finder's "anime" with that animix, another series with great smut that would have a really good series cause it has continuous plot. Well, at least they are doing Super Lovers justice and it seems that S2 would follow-up on the innuendos actually.
lol how can it not be rape when one of them was literally saying "stop, stop" the whole entire scene
though this isn't a conversation to be had on this type of thread
I agree the sheer amount of top selling manga and LN are very different,but in addition to this I think 300k selling manga are read by a lot larger number of people than 300k selling LN.
Mostly because people read manga in various ways other than buying tankobon for examples rental manga,reading on magazines,manga cafe,even normal cafes too most likely have popular manga magazines to read such as WSJ/WSM/YJ.
Even if tanko bon selling 300k,chances are it is read by whole a lot more people possibly 3 to 5 millions people
To be fair some libraries have popular light novels and you can buy used books too though.
Oct 16, 2016 2:04 AM by umashikaneko
Popularity of manga and LN as medium are significantly different.Most people grown up with reading manga in Japan while LN is rather queer hobby for nerds.
Almost certainly paid less, but then remember that most mangaka have several assistants that they have to employ, whereas novel writers don't. Also the cost of physically producing a novel is lower than the cost for a manga, so there is more money coming in from each sale even if the two products are sold at the same price.
Oct 16, 2016 12:49 AM by kuuderes_shadow
Never, hopefully.
Ten Count started off great but then all I remember in the later chapters are a bunch of rape scenes.
It's not rape scenes, though. That was mutual, past chapter 25.
Still, I really hope Ten Count gets a proper anime, uncensored and fully adapted. They already fucked up Finder's "anime" with that animix, another series with great smut that would have a really good series cause it has continuous plot. Well, at least they are doing Super Lovers justice and it seems that S2 would follow-up on the innuendos actually.
lol how can it not be rape when one of them was literally saying "stop, stop" the whole entire scene
though this isn't a conversation to be had on this type of thread
Oct 15, 2016 10:14 PM by ixaa
Yaoi anime adaptation by DEEN when?
Never, hopefully.
Ten Count started off great but then all I remember in the later chapters are a bunch of rape scenes.
It's not rape scenes, though. That was mutual, past chapter 25.
Still, I really hope Ten Count gets a proper anime, uncensored and fully adapted. They already fucked up Finder's "anime" with that animix, another series with great smut that would have a really good series cause it has continuous plot. Well, at least they are doing Super Lovers justice and it seems that S2 would follow-up on the innuendos actually.
Oct 15, 2016 8:11 PM by Loyalty06
Ehmm... I'd be mad, if they the spin-off suddenly adapt would, because they would pretty much skip (Season 2 is just on the most interesting place ended, in the LN begins from there best part..., and if they this at the adaptation skip would...)...
And I'd not say that it for manga's rare is that they a full adaptation get - especially at Shounen Jump-titles... Really, the popularity level between the both mediums (LN and manga) is more or less the same, but nevertheless will the manga favorized in the adaptation area. Like already mentioned before: Shounen Jump-title manga series like Naruto, Dragon Ball, One Piece, etc. they getting their 10~20 seasons (what hundred of eps. means), but LN's only usualy max. 3 seasons... About fairness can't more speak...
Popularity of manga and LN as medium are significantly different.Most people grown up with reading manga in Japan while LN is rather queer hobby for nerds.
Oct 15, 2016 1:43 PM by hpulley
With just 1 more novel announced I didn't expect more anime. The spinoff novel made me interested but it is actually fairly rare for the original series to get more anime to promote the new series. It has been done, but not often. It is more common for the spinoff to get its own anime as it more directly promotes the spinoff.
Unfortunately it is well known that LN and manga adaptations only rarely adapt the entire work though recently there have been several cases of it happening so I think the chances are higher now than they were for S&W years ago. So perhaps it isn't true anymore that they never finish the adaptations; I certainly hope we see more complete works being animated.
Ehmm... I'd be mad, if they the spin-off suddenly adapt would, because they would pretty much skip (Season 2 is just on the most interesting place ended, in the LN begins from there best part..., and if they this at the adaptation skip would...)...
And I'd not say that it for manga's rare is that they a full adaptation get - especially at Shounen Jump-titles... Really, the popularity level between the both mediums (LN and manga) is more or less the same, but nevertheless will the manga favorized in the adaptation area. Like already mentioned before: Shounen Jump-title manga series like Naruto, Dragon Ball, One Piece, etc. they getting their 10~20 seasons (what hundred of eps. means), but LN's only usualy max. 3 seasons... About fairness can't more speak...
Popularity of manga and LN as medium are significantly different.Most people grown up with reading manga in Japan while LN is rather queer hobby for nerds.
Oct 15, 2016 12:51 PM by umashikaneko
With just 1 more novel announced I didn't expect more anime. The spinoff novel made me interested but it is actually fairly rare for the original series to get more anime to promote the new series. It has been done, but not often. It is more common for the spinoff to get its own anime as it more directly promotes the spinoff.
Unfortunately it is well known that LN and manga adaptations only rarely adapt the entire work though recently there have been several cases of it happening so I think the chances are higher now than they were for S&W years ago. So perhaps it isn't true anymore that they never finish the adaptations; I certainly hope we see more complete works being animated.
Ehmm... I'd be mad, if they the spin-off suddenly adapt would, because they would pretty much skip (Season 2 is just on the most interesting place ended, in the LN begins from there best part..., and if they this at the adaptation skip would...)...
And I'd not say that it for manga's rare is that they a full adaptation get - especially at Shounen Jump-titles... Really, the popularity level between the both mediums (LN and manga) is more or less the same, but nevertheless will the manga favorized in the adaptation area. Like already mentioned before: Shounen Jump-title manga series like Naruto, Dragon Ball, One Piece, etc. they getting their 10~20 seasons (what hundred of eps. means), but LN's only usualy max. 3 seasons... About fairness can't more speak...
Oct 15, 2016 12:29 PM by Tenryuu1
01) Tokyo Ghoul:re (693 688)
02) My Hero Academia (604 992)
03) Food Wars (486 266)
04) A Silent Voice (437 322)
05) Kochi Kame (411 001)
06) World Trigger (346 140)
07) Seraph of The End (344 123)
08) The Ancient Magus Bride (305 911)
09) Fairy Tail (290 782)
10) Seven Deadly Sins (288 500)
11) Days (264 652)
12) L'Attaque des Titans (244 173)
13) Kingdom (240 555)
14) Major 2nd (228 399)
15) Barakamon - Spin-off - Handa-kun (222 157)
16) One Piece (214 617)
17) Gekkan Shôjo Nozaki-kun (211 703)
18) Blood Blockade Battlefront - Back 2 Back (210 746)
19) 10 Count (200 247)
20) Tokyo Tarareba Musume (195 846)
Oct 15, 2016 11:50 AM by chrisbj
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MoreWinter 2025
MoreSpring 2025
*1. 546,272 Shousetsu Kimi no Na wa.
*2. 144,859 Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei
*3. 118,925 Re:Zero Kara Hajimeru Isekai Seikatsu
*4. 93,263 Kimi no Na wa. ANOTHER SIDE: EARTHBOUND
*5. 92,313 Kagerou Daze
*6. 77,831 No Game No Life
*7. 77,219 Sword Art Online
*8. 54,209 Kotonoha no Niwa Novelisation
*9. 52,367 Tensei Shitara Slime Datta Ken
10. 45,629 Byousoku 5 Centimetre Novelisation
11. 37,528 Date A Live
12. 35,228 Ensemble Stars! Novelisation
13. 32,629 Goblin Slayer
14. 32,628 Hataraku Maou-sama! Tokubetsu-hen
15. 32,256 Kono Subarashii Sekai ni Shukufuku wo!
16. 31,836 Overlord
17. 31,379 Shinsetsu Ookami to Koushinryou
18. 31,355 Ookami to Koushinryou
19. 25,852 Boukyoku Tantei Series
20. 21,194 Gouka Kyakusen de Koi wa Hajimaru
(source: oricon via refugeechan)
Impressive back volume sales for Tensei Shitara Slime Datta Ken. And lol at Goblin Slayer beating Hataraku Maou-sama! Tokubetsu-hen by 1 sale.
Top 20 volumes and series for this and past months linked in my sig as always.
Oct 17, 2016 9:10 AM by kuuderes_shadow