Japan mags, TPs see drop in sales

Sankaku Complex picked up on a Japanese article about the decline of manga sales in Japan, with additional commentary which were insightful, but selective in scope yet overly broad in conclusions.

The bad news is that not only magazine sales have seen a drop, but also trade paperbacks.  The good news is… well, I’m not sure there is any, other than that “dire straits” may be too dramatic.

Some blame was again placed at the industry’s increasing focus on niche genres (just as comics is a spandex ghetto, manga is facing a crisis of the moe slum), but I think this is being overstated as a cause, when it’s really a symptom that is self-feeding.  Manga sales have gone down… it could be lower birth rates, or competition from other media, or internet piracy (come on guys, we don’t need to couch this in flowery language), or any combination of those.  But it all comes down to fewer companies being able to produce mainstream products, because a growing segment of mainstream audiences are no longer willing to pay for them despite increasing demand.  So instead, companies focus on a specific set of consumers who are willing to pay top dollar to own official releases – i.e. otaku (doujinshi already work on the same principle.  Fans regularly pay $10+ for 20-page parodies that have low print runs.)  I’ve mentioned this before… the less the masses support art directly, the more likely art will revert back to the patron system of old, where a few individuals dictate the direction of art.  In anime and manga, otaku are slowly becoming the church, the government, the rich merchant class.  The wealth of access the internet offers should counterbalance that in theory, but the lack of financial guarantees and zero threshhold for entry invariably means that most of what will be produced in the online realm will be amateurish in comparison for a while.

The original Japanese article also contained a profit/expense breakdown for a typical 40-page manga by Chin Nakamuchi Nakamura, based on an initial page rate of 9500 yen per page (roughly $100).  After all the costs are figured, including assistant pay, transportation, and materials, Nakamuchi Nakamura actually faced a net loss of 11008 yen for the first 40-page story, and a total net loss of 1579734 yen (~$16,000) at the completion of her trade paperback.  In order to complete her book, the artist had to borrow money from the publisher.  In the realm of professional manga, Nakamuchi’s Nakamura’s situation is not bad, or even unusual at all… this is what we here know as “advance against royalties.”  But it underscores an important role of the publisher, and serialization.  Manga artists are production studios unto themselves, and without magazine page rates and additional financial backing from publishers, artists would have a much harder time completing their work at all.  The publisher-less, paper-less internet economy cannot support this style of manga production currently, because profits from an ad-based model, the most popular monetization method on the web, begin as a trickle.  And since much of those expenses are not related to printing, but the most basic art production, moving to online distribution doesn’t mean a smaller initial investment of time and money on the part of the artist.

Without traditional publishers, manga will come out slower, since assistants would not be feasible.  Without the guarantee of advances, manga must become more expensive in order for the artist to recoup costs and basic living expenses faster.  Without a healthy mainstream audience willing to support the hobby directly, manga will become a mouthpiece of advertisers or reflect the tastes of a minority.  Unless internet publishing can be monetized in a more significant way, the road ahead for mangaka will be very dim and narrowing… the free internet isn’t going to do a thing for most of them.

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It’s another Osamu Tezuka recommendation list, but Chris Mautner’s top pick happens to be my own… the fourth volume of Phoenix.  (Incidentally, the story also has one of the best anime adaptations of Tezuka’s work.)

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“I slap on behalf of the month” is now my favorite collection of words ever.

Side note… if you absolutely have to use a free online JA->EN translation service, use Excite.  Keep the wording simple, and re-translate multiple times to find the best combination of words.  If you’re willing to pay, use myGengo.

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Takehiko Inoue: Shoe Designer.

Did you know that in commercials shown throughout Asia, the “E” in Nike is silent?

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Writer/editor/publisher Robin Bougie learns that Cinema Sewer, his comic/magazine hybrid about porn, cinema, and porn cinema, was recently torrented en masse.  A large thread follows.

You know, we’ve all had these sorts of discussions before, but Bougie’s position not just as publisher, but the primary writer and artist of his magazine, gives him a unique perspective and the right to say things that people like me (a strict publisher) or readers have no place to say.  Cinema Sewer is a product of genuine passion, one that seeks to keep alive a specific kind of publishing ethos that is dissappearing in this age of blogs.  You would know this the very moment you open an issue and you are greeted by the completely hand-written text.  Every aspect of the magazine is a product of deliberateness, every component carefully placed, every detail given a reason for being… and all of it is formatted for print.  The creator intended for his art and writing to be experienced with the smell of paper and the smudge of ink.  Uploading scans not only infringed upon Bougie’s rights as a publisher, but the very act of moving print to digital usurped his creative control as an artist.  In this case, print itself is a sort of media, not just the medium.  And scanning it was tantamount to defacing a painting with graffiti.

Edit: A related story, spotted via The Comics Reporter… a comic called Moving Pictures, serialized online and slated for print release from Top Shelf, was pulled from the web after its creators discovered someone had re-posted the comic to torrent sites.  I don’t follow the comic, but damn.  Ripping a free comic from a free site that’s not running a single ad?  Weak.

Edit 2: CWR notes that Bougie himself is guilty of some hypocrisy when it comes to downloading music and movies.