Manga selling well to females in America
Posted by Matt Dioguardi on June 15th, 2007
It would seem that Manga is doing so well in America that publishers now want to start publishing some homegrown manga, especially in the case of teenage females.
Here’s a neat video on the subject from the WSJ:
According to a related WSJ article:
Trade publication ICv2 puts the total comics and graphic novel market at about $640 million last year in the U.S. and Canada, with manga accounting for about $200 million of that figure. The manga category is expanding quickly. Total sales of manga books jumped 22% to 9.5 million units in 2006 from 7.8 million a year earlier, according to Nielsen BookScan, which collects point-of-sale information from 6,500 retail locations across the country, including those operated by Borders Group Inc. and Barnes & Noble Inc. The manga category in 2006 accounted for about two-thirds (68.5%) of all graphic novels sold in U.S. bookstores, up from slightly more than half (53.8%) in 2004, according to Nielsen BookScan. (The figures don’t include comic-book stores.)
All very cool. To read a little more about this I recommend you check out the Kokoro Media blog entry, where I found this information.