American sales of Japanese-style comics, or manga, have dropped 43 percent since their heyday in 2007, even further than American sales of American comics.
Apparently Borders’ bankruptcy did not help, because Borders led the way in selling manga and may have represented a third of all manga sales in the US.
Manga sales aren’t great in Japan though, either. They peaked in their homeland in 1995.
While manga publishing is dying, as a business, the product is still popular — just not with paying customers. So-called “scanlation” aggregators make the pirated product available online for free, and the old-school publishers haven’t adapted.
As usual, the fans analyzing the problem don’t understand fixed costs, variable costs, and bundling:
One problem is that Japanese manga publishers still rely on magazines to launch new titles, and the magazine model itself is obsolete. If you’re buying songs on iTunes, you don’t need to buy an entire album when all you want is one song. And there’s no way I’m signing up for Starz network when I only want to watch Torchwood: Miracle Day.
In the same way, manga readers can’t be expected to buy an entire 400-page manga magazine anymore when they only want to read their one favorite title.
It doesn’t cost the publishers one-tenth as much to produce just the 40 pages you want to read. Again, really, you’re not paying for the channels you never watch.