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NEWS: BusinessWeek Mag Reports on Manga Popularity in Europe


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Bunk



Joined: 06 Sep 2004
Posts: 21
PostPosted: Sat Dec 29, 2007 1:24 am Reply with quote
My friend moved to France a couple months ago to work, and just last week she told me how popular comic books were in France. She was shocked. She said there are huge comic book sections in the French book stores, and instead of kids sitting down reading them, it's adults.

It's cool.
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dormcat
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Joined: 08 Dec 2003
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PostPosted: Sat Dec 29, 2007 1:30 am Reply with quote
How many countries were the word "Europe" in this report referring to? The report only mentioned France, Germany, and UK.

A per capita statistics might be more useful.
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tebalith



Joined: 17 Oct 2004
Posts: 134
PostPosted: Sat Dec 29, 2007 4:40 am Reply with quote
Yeah, referring to the "European" market is kind of useless, since this lumps together different countries with different languages and, accordingly, a different number and choice of manga...
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hentai4me



Joined: 25 Oct 2005
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PostPosted: Sat Dec 29, 2007 5:07 am Reply with quote
Well judging from the recent article stating that Japan is pumping some millions of yen into promoting Manga in Eastern Europe that those countries are not quite to the same level as other European countries (Western) but that they certainly have the potential to be big players.

Europe though is pretty difficult to define...Israel and Armenia take part in European sporting events, Turkey could soon be a member of the EU, many dependent islands that are carry overs from European colonialism from around the world are all part of the EU, but Norway, Iceland and Switzerland are not and they are definitely on the continent...

My suspicion is that 'Europe' here refers to the more affluent parts like in western Europe, Italy, UK, France, Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, Sweden, etc...
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Hybridchild



Joined: 06 Dec 2007
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Location: Dublin, Ireland
PostPosted: Sat Dec 29, 2007 7:06 am Reply with quote
Generally when business articles refer to Europe they mean the EU with most focusing on the 15 established countries, not all including the 10 (soon to be 12) newer members. The reason for this is that economic information for EU countries is easy to obtain from the EU government.
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Gundam Junkie



Joined: 01 Jul 2007
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Location: Great Britain; with an emphisis on Great
PostPosted: Sat Dec 29, 2007 9:35 am Reply with quote
When the refers to 'Europe' I hope that does not include us, (UK).
I don't like the idea of being considered a part of Europe.

I read on Anime UK News a few weeks back on a The Times article on the rising popularity of Manga in Britain.
It was quite an interesting read.

Manga is seriously going mainstream if it's being mentioned in a broadsheet as renowned as The Times.
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CitizenGeek



Joined: 02 Jul 2007
Posts: 136
Location: Ireland
PostPosted: Sat Dec 29, 2007 10:31 am Reply with quote
France is very different to the UK and Ireland, from what I know about that place. Animations and comics aren't thought of as soley for children over there, which is pretty much the case here. The government of France even subsidises culture like comics over there.

Anyway, those are some very surprising figures, especially considering the populations of Germany and France combined don't even come close to the population of the US. Nice to see Europe getting more attention from the industry, too!

Gundam Junkie wrote:
When the refers to 'Europe' I hope that does not include us, (UK).
I don't like the idea of being considered a part of Europe.


O_o

But the UK is part of Europe, it's a geographical fact.
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Tempest
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PostPosted: Sat Dec 29, 2007 11:05 am Reply with quote
The articles refers to all of Europe. Manga is strongest in French speaking countries (France, Switzerland, Belgium, Monaco, Andora) where in the past, manga sales were higher than in the United States. Back in the 90s, when there wasn't a lot of Manga available in North America, I would read imported manga from France. As mentioned in the article, it is also very popular in Germany.

Not mentioned in the article, are Italy and Spain, where manga is also quite popular, and the UK where it is becoming popular.

Per capita, if you look at the French and German markets, the sales are roughly double that, per capita, as North America.

-t
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Ktimene's Lover



Joined: 23 Apr 2005
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PostPosted: Sat Dec 29, 2007 11:27 am Reply with quote
Who would've guessed it'd be Europe? I thought for sure that the USA would be second biggest market for manga after Japan. France and Germany have $212 million in sales versus our 1/5 of $1,000,000,000 sales?

Quote:
Manga publisher Tokyopop, which maintains a German office, calculates that some 70% of all comics sold in that country originate in Japan, while according to figures assembled by the French Association of Comic Critics and Journalists, some 40 different publishers released 1,152 individual volumes of manga in that country throughout the course of 2007. In the United States, 2007 saw the publication of 1,468 volumes, and this number is projected to grow to over 1,700 next year.

That's a lot of volumes. I guess that Germany and other parts of Europe may be more in terms of money quantity but by sales of tankoubon volume, we outsell them.
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CitizenGeek



Joined: 02 Jul 2007
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Location: Ireland
PostPosted: Sat Dec 29, 2007 12:00 pm Reply with quote
tempest wrote:
Not mentioned in the article, are Italy and Spain, where manga is also quite popular, and the UK where it is becoming popular.


Not sure about Italy, but I noticed that manga (and anime) are very popular in Spain when I visited Barcelona in the summer of this year. Every book shop had a sizable manga selection and there were at least 3 shops dedicated entirely to anime and manga.

Also, "mangas"? Doesn't the plural for manga stay the same as it in singular?
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dormcat
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PostPosted: Sat Dec 29, 2007 12:12 pm Reply with quote
tempest wrote:
Per capita, if you look at the French and German markets, the sales are roughly double that, per capita, as North America.

As expected. I'm also interested in how sales per capita would compare with those of East/SE Asian nations/regions outside Japan e.g. S. Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, The Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, etc. (those are where manga are popular that I'm aware of).

Ctimene's Lover wrote:
Who would've guessed it'd be Europe?

Everyone but Americans. Razz Twisted Evil
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hentai4me



Joined: 25 Oct 2005
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Location: England. Robin is so Cute!
PostPosted: Sat Dec 29, 2007 1:19 pm Reply with quote
Ctimene's Lover wrote:

That's a lot of volumes. I guess that Germany and other parts of Europe may be more in terms of money quantity but by sales of tankoubon volume, we outsell them.


Well America gets everything cheaper than Europe (in a general sense with exceptions, obviously) but the fact that America gets so many more volumes released than Europe and still makes less money kind of implies that the number of people buying manga is greater in Europe than the US.
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KyuuA4



Joined: 28 Sep 2006
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Location: America, where anime and manga can be made
PostPosted: Sat Dec 29, 2007 1:34 pm Reply with quote
From linked article wrote:
In Germany, where comic-book reading has traditionally been less widespread, manga now accounts for 70% of all comics sales, says Joachim Kaps, managing director of Hamburg-based Tokyopop, a manga publisher. "manga is one of the biggest success stories of publishing of the last decade." So successful, in fact, that Germany is now producing and exporting its own manga.


Amazing what a market can do. Now, I'm rather curious as to what these works look like. As far as I know, German manga isn't found in US bookshelves.
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Dargonxtc



Joined: 13 Apr 2006
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PostPosted: Sat Dec 29, 2007 2:26 pm Reply with quote
KyuuA4 wrote:
Amazing what a market can do. Now, I'm rather curious as to what these works look like. As far as I know, German manga isn't found in US bookshelves.


You ever hear of Gothic Sports?


As far as the news goes it's not surprising. Even though America has more population, a much smaller amount(percentage wise) of people actually read manga on a regular basis. Where as Europe, especially France has a little bit of a longer history of reading Japanese comics. So the titles they do sell, I am sure all sell well. Where as here we are still trying to find the proper niche. Although the last I checked the French pay a little more on average, but not enough to cause a huge difference.
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Egan Loo



Joined: 25 Feb 2005
Posts: 1320
PostPosted: Sat Dec 29, 2007 2:30 pm Reply with quote
dormcat wrote:
How many countries were the word "Europe" in this report referring to? The report only mentioned France, Germany, and UK.

A per capita statistics might be more useful.


I didn't find the original JETRO report that BusinessWeek references, but I did find an earlier one (PDF format) in Japanese. There's also a 2006 English-language report (PDF) about the Japanese publishing industry as a whole.
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