Poll: Price of English manga releases

Street Musician Joined: 13 Oct 2002 Posts: 402

Just a quick poll, what does everyone think about the price of English translated published manga.

Taking into account:
Price compared to original Japanese release
Paper/ etc quality
Localization quality (translations, etc)
Publisher committment (ie speed of releases, actually completing the series)

I choose 'expensive'.

Posted: Wed Jul 20, 2005 5:39 pm

There are lots of lengthy discussions to be had, but to keep it quick, I say...

If you only compare the actual prices and physical qualities of the books (as listed above), English manga seems expensive.

If you compare the manga industry in both countries, looking at market size, company size, nature of sales, etc. then I think that English manga is pretty economically priced.
I'm cheating and looking at those things too.

I wouldn't be surprised if there wasn't a single publishing industry worldwide that offered products as high-quality for such a low price, as the Japanese manga industry.

Posted: Wed Jul 20, 2005 10:38 pm

We, in Poland, have mangas published in pretty good quality [white paper and shitz], and in much more reasonable prices then in US. But that must be cause nobody would buy any manga if it would cost as much as US releases.

Posted: Thu Jul 21, 2005 12:56 pm

I look at it pretty simply.

At most, a single volume of manga will take 45 minutes to read. For the same price, I can get a couple hours of enjoyment out of a novel.

Of course, books are overpriced now too.... God damn it all.

Posted: Thu Jul 21, 2005 4:57 pm

I'll have to agree with petr. Domestic manga releases here (as in Sweden) are significantly cheaper.
And the amount of people who can actually read the the language is, what? Maybe 1% of the amount of people who read English, tops...

Now, if only someone could persuade the people publishing manga here to not only do complete crap.

Street Musician Joined: 16 Feb 2003 Posts: 530

stephen wrote:

I wouldn't be surprised if there wasn't a single publishing industry worldwide that offered products as high-quality for such a low price, as the Japanese manga industry.

It should be noted that the Japanese publishers pay a fairly steep price for their very high quality-to-price ratio: the sales of weekly/monthly magazines (exluding the ones that move 100,000 copies a week) are for the most part write-offs in terms of profits, and publishers (as well as authors) have to look to individual book sales for their financial windfall. (for a fairly easy-to-understand explanation read Suzuki Miso's "Zeni")

Street Musician Joined: 13 Oct 2002 Posts: 402

Quote:

If you compare the manga industry in both countries, looking at market size, company size, nature of sales, etc. then I think that English manga is pretty economically priced.

Quote:

We, in Poland, have mangas published in pretty good quality [white paper and shitz], and in much more reasonable prices then in US. But that must be cause nobody would buy any manga if it would cost as much as US releases.

Well, as petr said, there's plenty of foreign companies that manage to publish manga way cheaper than english companies. And I imagine the entire (worldwide) english market size should be at least 2-3X that the Polish market.
I'm wondering if the high cost is due that english manga companies tend to make a totally huge production out of manga publishing. ie i'm holding in my hand my most recent purchase (Firefighter Daigo by Viz : 9.95 US$) and in the credits, there is a whole list of jobs involved which are
english adaptation, translation, touchup and lettering, graphic design, editor, managing editor, editorial editor, president of sales and marketing and etc etc the list continues.
I imagine paying people for all these jobs raise the costs significantly.
Granted I don't exactly know the process involved in manga business, but back in my country the only thing involved would be to translate, edit, then publish the darn thing.[/i]

Posted: Fri Jul 22, 2005 9:48 pm

Quote:

Well, as petr said, there's plenty of foreign companies that manage to publish manga way cheaper than english companies. And I imagine the entire (worldwide) english market size should be at least 2-3X that the Polish market.

2-3 times? hah, polish manga publishing companies are selling max a couple thousands of each vol. Much less, for the less popular titles. English manga market must be at least 9-10 times bigger. And now imagine all the ppl whou would buy english releases all over the world if they would be at least 2 times cheaper. I would.

Groupie Joined: 03 Apr 2004 Posts: 118

Hmmm, I think its reasonable. Though of course I wish it was cheaper.

Groupie Joined: 08 May 2003 Posts: 120

petr wrote:

We, in Poland, have mangas published in pretty good quality [white paper and shitz], and in much more reasonable prices then in US. But that must be cause nobody would buy any manga if it would cost as much as US releases.

Exactly. Poland is a country of low prices in general if you compare it to the US, so it's only natural that they cost less.

In Sweden manga COULD be a bit cheaper. It can be a pain to buy a few series at once when you give the casheer everything you have in your wallet, including a photo of your girlfriend.

As for the US releases, I have to import those, and they're ALMOST twice the price of the local releases, so I guess it's not that bad. If you think about import costs, shipping and all, I'd think it's not all that tough on US buyers. Just recently I bought Genshiken Vol.1 and coughing up the cash wasn't all that hard. Overall quality is good.

Posted: Mon Jul 25, 2005 12:01 am

Hah. I saw Genshiken in a bookstore here (American Bookstore, along with TenTen, Negima and Tsubasa Chronicles Sad

) and i didnt buy it cause it was double price of polish releases...maybe i would buy it if it was Planetes or No.5 - i really need to like particular title to pay so much money for it.

Fan Boy Joined: 13 Jan 2004 Posts: 8

Japanese wholesale price is higher, and there are no returns. In the US, ever since the depression, bookstores can return to the publisher, for a full refund, books that don't sell. In Japan they only print as many books as the bookstores order, and don't have to worry about warehousing or any stuff like that, so there's not as many middlemen to take out their chunk of the pie. Also, when you print tons of books, the price per book to print is much lower than when you print only a few thousand. There are plenty of books in the US market that get 8,000 copies printed, or less...the market is just not as great as you might think. There are quite a few titles that are barely profitable with the amount of demand there is for them, which is hopefully made up for by the profits on those books that get huge press runs because they're insanely popular.

Posted: Wed Jul 27, 2005 10:27 pm

I always wanted to ask about it...Which manga is the most popular one, and how many copies of it are printed? :]

Groupie Joined: 08 May 2003 Posts: 120

Ordered first volumes of Madara and Beck today. And I can't say I paid all that much for them. Just thought I'd let you know Smile

Roadie Joined: 15 Jan 2004 Posts: 66

Quote:

Japanese wholesale price is higher, and there are no returns. In the US, ever since the depression, bookstores can return to the publisher, for a full refund, books that don't sell. In Japan they only print as many books as the bookstores order, and don't have to worry about warehousing or any stuff like that, so there's not as many middlemen to take out their chunk of the pie. Also, when you print tons of books, the price per book to print is much lower than when you print only a few thousand. There are plenty of books in the US market that get 8,000 copies printed, or less...the market is just not as great as you might think. There are quite a few titles that are barely profitable with the amount of demand there is for them, which is hopefully made up for by the profits on those books that get huge press runs because they're insanely popular.

Another problem with the US market from what I've heard (correct me if I'm wrong) is distribution is much more difficult for 2 reasons.

1) The country is much larger than Japan so getting books from the factories to the bookstores is much more difficult.

2) There is a monopoly on comics distribution from Diamond Distributors, which makes distribution costs all the more expensive, thus bringing up costs of the final product.

Evaluating the expense of the US manga market is difficult, particularly since so much of the manga released these days is very low quality... Tokyopop's translations and quality checking for instance is notoriously bad.