Biggest Drop of Manga Sales In Japan

by dtshyk
Mar 16, 2010 6:27 PM | 45 Comments

According to The Research Institute for Publications (RIP), the yearly sales of manga (magazines and comic books) in 2009 was 418.7 billion yen and made a year-on-year decrease of 6.6%, which is the largest drop since the onset of RIP records.

Chart: Manga Sales in Japan 1991 - 2009

Manga Magazines: 191.3 billion yen (-9.4%)
Comic Books: 227.4 billion yen (-4.2%)

RIP attributes the drop to three reasons:
1. Effect of the economic recession
2. Spread of Manga Cafe
3. Small number of big hit titles

Sources: NHK, RIP

20 of 45 Comments Recent Comments

Supply and demand. Demand for manga drops. Demand for Anime increase. Ah, the free market system.

Mar 18, 2010 12:50 AM by sayian

This sucks. I'm not surprised though. All the more reason why I detest the greedy bastards who triggered the national-then-global recession in the first place. If I'm not mistaken, manga artists don't get payed a lot either unless I'm wrong.

Mar 17, 2010 8:19 PM by TerrorH3ctor

androidphantom said:
manga is slowly dying, unfortunately. i dont buy manga, never have. i plan to if i ever have any money to commit to it. oh noes its my fault. that KILLS manga

Manga and anime will never die.

Mar 17, 2010 5:59 PM by Drunk_Samurai

So people finally stopped caring about overlong series like Naruto and since they were casuals and didn't direct their buying power to anything else = zomghugedropinannualsales

Mar 17, 2010 5:33 PM by 108s9001

manga is slowly dying, unfortunately. i dont buy manga, never have. i plan to if i ever have any money to commit to it. oh noes its my fault. that KILLS manga

Mar 17, 2010 4:59 PM by androidphantom

what do u expect with capitalists running the world?

Mar 17, 2010 4:00 PM by renjikuchiki1

Piracy has nothing to do with bad manga sales in Japan.

Mar 17, 2010 1:40 PM by Drunk_Samurai

So RIP good manga sales I guess?

also

iiAnnie said:
1) Ever heard about the economy crisis?
2) You can read free manga online at hundreds of different websites.

This, but especially the first one. And I'm pretty sure there are a few sites in Japanese where you can download manga, probably even more than "a few". Just type "漫画" (manga in Japanese) with "download" in Japanese, but appearently I forgot how to write download in Japanese and not really willing to search it only for this post. And of course other variants, like "free" instead of "download", but I seriously suck at kanji/hiragana/whatever the fuck so yeah. And then there's of course the English and Chinese sites who offer free raw manga, don't forget about them. It's not "hard" to find at all if you use a certain search machine called "Google", yayay~

Mar 17, 2010 1:18 PM by Zonak

zenith_kim94 said:

rolddy said:
wtf it's still a lot of money

not so if converted to dollars. O.o

this kid thinks 4.6 billion dollars isn't a lot of money

either he's stupid, or he's stupid.

Mar 17, 2010 12:40 PM by CottonCandyLover

no money no honey! >.>

Mar 17, 2010 12:20 PM by TrooperUlquiora

kkslider5552000 said:

AfterGlow said:
there aren't any Japanese sites that hosts manga in Japanese (to my knowledge), since they would quickly get shut down by the publishing corporation's lawyers.

it's the internet, you can always find it if you look hard enough. You should know this.

Look for it hard and you'll might find it, this is the reason why the manga sales are dropping, derp.

It doesn't change the fact that it's not common, and the organisation that actually knows the deal doesn't list internet as any reason to why the sales are dropping.
Only a bunch of morons on MAL who don't know shit is.

Learn the difference between the manga market in Japan and the manga market outside of Japan.

Mar 17, 2010 11:07 AM by AfterGlow

I still buy all my manga, about $25-50 every two months. My shelf is happy. Anyways, until the recession is over I guess it'll keep dropping. If only we had Manga cafes.. I'm in love with the concept. But then sales would only drop further. :/

Mar 17, 2010 10:04 AM by Yup

AfterGlow said:
there aren't any Japanese sites that hosts manga in Japanese (to my knowledge), since they would quickly get shut down by the publishing corporation's lawyers.

it's the internet, you can always find it if you look hard enough. You should know this.

Mar 17, 2010 9:58 AM by kkslider5552000

i would say the internet is probably the bigger if not biggest reason for the better part of the last decade. free is just hard to compete with when you're charging.

Mar 17, 2010 8:47 AM by kisami

I don't see this as much of a surprise, not in this economy anyway. I don't know Japan's whole situation, but they are obviously making sure their necessities are being met, and not wasting their yen on manga.

Mar 17, 2010 8:23 AM by Retro8bit

LOL @ idiots who actually think that Japanese people prefer to go to some English site to read a small percentage of the manga that's available in Japan in English (a language that most Japanese people aren't very proficient in, especially not kids) and no, there aren't any Japanese sites that hosts manga in Japanese (to my knowledge), since they would quickly get shut down by the publishing corporation's lawyers.

Mar 17, 2010 8:20 AM by AfterGlow

I can't believe there are so many people reading manga on the computer.. I can barely stand a single chapter at a time ~~

Mar 17, 2010 7:47 AM by removed-user

Hello Internet.

Mar 17, 2010 7:28 AM by Edgey

Wonder if Book-Off has something to do with it...
I mean, when you can buy 2nd hand manga in near new quality for 104yen per manga, rather than spending between 300-1500yen for one manga (on average around 400yen) then you can see which is going to sell more. I'll bet 2nd hand manga sales aren't counted in the stats.

Mar 17, 2010 7:24 AM by rachelcabbit

ios said:
maybe they should change there name because the name RIP is killing there statistics XD

Absolutely. xD
RIP... oh, the irony. xD

This is... kinda bad news, but not really unexpected, due to the economy crisis and all. :/ Plus: People read less than before, it's a trend all over the world. Magazines and newspapers are pretty much doomed.

3. Small number of big hit titles

If you ask me, there are manga out there far better than the "big hits", but they just don't get the attention they deserve and aren't suitebale for the mass, I guess. :/

Mar 17, 2010 6:52 AM by kennikitty

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