Forum - View topicManga Prices Going Up a Dollar or More?
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freshkazuki
 Posts: 235 Location: Texas |
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I bought volume 1 of Lives today and I didn't even pay attention because I bought 2 other volumes of manga, but the price was $12.99 for this book. And I'm left wondering why? It's the same size as Tokyopop's $10.99 titles and with the same page count. I know Del Rey used to charge more for their larger sized mature books, and Viz does the same with their Ikki line, but nothing differentiates this book from any of Tokyopop's other manga. So why am I paying $2 more?
And what's up with Yen prices these days? High School of the Dead cost $13.99? What's so special about that title? And the cost of Omamori Himari went up a dollar as well. Volume 1 was $10.99 while Volume 2 that just came out is $11.99. Am I missing something? Are they just thinking nobody is going to notice? Has anyone else noticed this or am I crazy? To me, $14 is pushing the envelope for manga. That's like back in the old days when Viz was releasing those trade sized Maison Ikkoku and Inuyasha titles for $15-$17. Are we headed back there price wise? Because if we are, the manga market will be truly finished. Have Tokyopop or Yen commented on these price increases? Ironically, DC and Marvel are LOWERING prices on their books because sales are down. What sense does it make to RAISE prices for the same amount of content and quality? I've learned my lesson. Before I pick up a manga volume, I'm gonna check the price. You can't just go by size or publisher anymore. If I'm gonna be overcharged, at least give me something special. Either make the book bigger or include color plates, more pages....SOMETHING. I guess everyone is switching over to the Dark Horse rip-off pricing model. And while I have them on my mind, Thanks for bringing out Eden and finishing it! Great job Dark Horse. |
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timesteel
 Posts: 202 Location: California |
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ya I noticed this too Viz's tittles used to be 7.99 now there like 10 bucks.
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Paploo
Posts: 1875 |
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Yes, Marvel/DC are lowering their prices on some titles by $1, but that's after sales declines lead them to increase some titles to 3.99, and put niche titles at 3.99. They're doing it as a marketing move, while also cutting back by 2 pages an issue to make the 2.99 an issue thing more feasible.
Meanwhile ,titles from other publishers have been 3.50-5.95 an issue for over a decade now, because prices in that range make sales of 2000 to 9000 copies an issue profitable [or break even]. That includes b+w comics. Comics pricing has always depended on sales levels, and when some series are selling in the 1000 copy range per issue/volume [manga included], it's not that unusual for prices to climb up or lower depending on sales. Basically, it all depends on sales, or expected sales, and what price works with which range. VIZ might not be able to make the titles in their SigIkki line work at 9.95 a volume, but at 13.95 a volume, they can tap into a core audience who doesn't mind paying 14 a volume for something that's outside the usual offerings. Publishing Cross Game as 2 volume doubles for 14.95 a set is another way to take a title that might be risky and format it in a way that catches the right number of fans at a price that lets them keep publishing it successfully. Stuff like Yen Press and TPop marking up later volumes of series by a few bucks or Del Rey/Kodansha reworking series as omnibuses isn't a case of them "pushing the envelope", but just trying to keep publishing the series in question. I'd rather pay 2 bucks extra for a given book then have the series get cancelled. $15 bucks for a b+w graphic novel is pretty much the norm in non-japanese comics. Most GN's put out by Oni Press or SLG or other pubs in the 200 page range are around that price, except when they expect higher sales [9.95 GN's tend to be around 100 pages]. Manga's always been pretty low priced since the boom started, and $15 isn't really that unusual of a price, and in most cases with manga, is usually accompanied by a high page count [2-3 vols of content] or high production quality [just look at the lovely hardcovers Fantagraphics is doing, or the french flaps and large trim on SigIkki titles] ps--- most of DH's titles are marketed at older fans, as are the SigIkki books, who are more apt to have less issues with higher prices. I imagine that might be what Yen's aiming for with HSOTD- the market that buys Gantz and Berserk for $13 a volume, and has lead both to have fairly high sales. As for titles getting put on hiatus, well it all depends on sales- if sales/demand keep going on previous volumes and they feel like going back to it, they might bring the book back, like DH did with GhostTalkers Daydream, or TP has done with omnibuses of Suppli and Pick of the Litter Omnibuses [or their new Print on Demand program for titles that've gone OOP that don't merit a new mass market printing] |
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TitanXL
 Posts: 4036 |
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Just to clarify, Marvel/DC recently RAISED prices to 3.99 (as in, about a year or two ago), and it's only the bad sales in the past year or two that prompted them to lower SOME of them down to 2.99 (back to what they originally were). And on top of that, they're cutting the page count down by like 15%-20%, so it's more or less the same price, but for less content. And Dark Horse has always been over-priced. |
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littlegreenwolf
 Posts: 4796 Location: Seattle, WA |
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First off you can't compare a periodical (monthly comic) with an actual print run (made to last shelf book). Someone mentioned why Marvel did what they did already, but their graphic novel prices aren't going down, so they're not a good example of "the other guys are going cheaper, why can't they with manga?"
As someone said earlier, it's all about supply and demand. More people buying manga? You can print more books at a cheaper price. Less people buying manga? So in other words they're pretty much not getting the nice "discount" the high sales would allow. Printing books costs money, and with readership dropping over the last couple years, and long running series sales dropping along with them, a lot of companies have been printing on a lost profit. Tokyopop is just getting out of a bad time financially, so it's not surprising me they're playing it safe. Complain what you will, but the economy is still getting out of a recession, the dollar isn't what it used to, and I show my age by saying this but I think it's a good example to the issue: I have quite a number of old Chix/Mixx comics from Tokyopop from the mid-late 90s, as well as some rather old unflipped Viz comics as well, and do you know how much they sold for? 12.99-16.99. I could be wrong, but I think that Blood: The Last Vampire 2002 gn I have sold for around 19. The Tokyopop stuff was a far lesser product (alas, just about most of the early stuff fell apart glue-wise) but I still bought it. Manga was a niche product, being sold to a few amount of people, so it cost more to produce. It seems to be turning back into that. And Darkhorse, outside of a few manga who get different treatment for some reason, has quality standards to live up to with being a comic publisher in general, and I have no problem paying what they ask for said quality. My Shadow Star and Blade of the Immortal GNs may be about 10 years old now and flipped, but they still look brand new, have yet to yellow, great paper and ink quality, and have quality binding. I'll be happy to continue paying 14.95 for the same quality. Unfortunately Trigun, Berserk, and Hellsing are yellowing, but I paid slightly less for them, and wonder if them working with DMP has anything to do with those release standards. |
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freshkazuki
Posts: 235 Location: Texas |
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Where's the outrage?
Apparently, so far everybody thinks this is ok. I buy a lot of manga. If the average price of a manga becomes $13 I will not be buying a lot of manga. If it becomes $15 will buy nothing. The $9.99 price point was what CAUSED the manga boom, not the other way around. Thanks to Del Rey to breaking the tradition and starting the gradual upward climb. This will only cause a further decline in manga sales. In fact, it just might kill it. My main point was that these prices are climbing with no warning whatsoever. No announcement. Not even a shadow of a reason. I thought Yen would be busting at the seams with money after the Twilight graphic novel. And I guess Tokyopop has been up to something since last month when they started that boring looking black strip at the bottom of their books. If you think $15 is a reasonable price for manga, go right ahead and buy them. I won't. Now, if they're double volumes, yeah, that's cool. I do not yearn for the "good old days". And just because you're an adult, that makes that price more palatable? Money is money no matter what age you are. If anything, this will add even more pirates to the scan scene. And yes, Marvel and DC realize that they screwed up by upping prices. DC is going all the way. Marvel is a bit greedy. Shouldn't the manga companies learn something from that? The economy is screwed. Your reader base is shrinking (at least the paying ones), and you want to punish them? Everybody's jumped off the fad wagon and now you want to raise prices on the real readers that are left over? And if you want to compare US comics to manga, do it with the Showcase or Marvel Essentials compilations, which are in black and white and on cheap paper, which do run $15-$20 but contain upwards of 500 pages. Don't compare to glossy color comic trades. And do they really want to save money? Get rid of everyone working on a manga volume except the editor, letterer (or is it already a computer?), and translator. That's all you need. These books cost $5 in their original form. When a novel comes out in translation in the US, the US publishers do not triple the price. It comes out for the equivalent of its price in its original country. A $25 book in France is going to sell for $25 here, not $75. If a trade paperback comes out in England for $15, its not going to be $45 when it comes out in the US. And if these US manga publishers are going to be charging US trade prices, I want them on glossy paper and in color and in larger size. |
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Altacia
Posts: 286 |
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I've been noticing the steady increase, It's quite annoying..
Yet, I choose not to complain due to the simple fact that a person never has to pay full price if they seek out deals. Ordering from Barnes & Noble you can almost always get any Manga for under 10 dollars, Borders sends out coupons nearly every week and the list really goes on.... Just have to start getting creative or cut back on the buying. |
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Tamaria
 Posts: 1512 Location: De Achterhoek |
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I doubt it. You seem to ignore the fact that manga is getting cheaper as well. Did you notice all those omnibusses? Yeah, they cost $15-20, but you get 600 pages in return. Manga isn't becoming more expensive, individual titles are moving towards their natural price points. Popular series will become cheaper (usually as a omnibus rerelease) and niche titles will become more expensive. Besides, there's still plenty of room to get manga at a discount.
Translations cost money and a foreign book may have a much smaller audience in the US than in its country of origin. Oh and just for fun, I looked up some translated novels on Amazon. A softcover Discovery of Heaven costs $20? That's ridiculous! The coverprice for a hardcover is €12,50 in the Netherlands 
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Moomintroll
 Posts: 1600 Location: Nottingham (UK) |
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Because you didn't shop around online? Amazon.com, for example, has it for about $4 less than you paid for it.
If only! What you call the Dark Horse "rip-off" pricing model involves higher production standards than most manga publishers and generally excellent translations / retouch / quality control.
Dark Horse put Eden on hold because not enough people were buying it to make it profitable and they aren't a charity. In any case, they have now said they will be completing the series but it'll probably be a pretty long wait.
Inflation means that there was never any chance that the price of manga was going to remain fixed forever any more than the price of anything else stays fixed forever. Inflation + a shrinking market = faster price rises than we might otherwise see but it was always going to happen one way or another at some point.
Working adults generally earn a lot more than children, teens and students. How expensive something seems to be is relative to how affordable it is to you and that depends on how much you earn. It's not unusual for me to buy things on a whim that would have been major purchases that I'd need to save up for when I was a kid.
a) That's not all of the people you need. You need marketing people and licensing people and design people and technical people and admin people and retouch artists and so on and so forth. Publishing is rather more involved than amateur scans. b) Pretty much all of the publishers (particularly Viz and Tokyopop) have already laid off as many people as they could over the past few years. c) Calling for people to lose their jobs in order that you can save a dollar is not very classy.
The market for manga in the US is tiny relative to that in Japan. Expecting the same price points without the same economies of scale is asinine - all the publishers would go bankrupt and no manga would be being published in English at all. You might as well ask that Marvel and DC sell their comic books at 25c like they did in the good old days. Not going to happen.
Hah! If only! Humanoids just released a new English edition of The Incal. It costs $99.95 for 300 pages.
How many companies - in any industry - actively advertise price rises?
It was $15.95. Which is about eight times as much as I paid for it. 
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marie-antoinette
 Posts: 4136 Location: Ottawa, Canada |
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Um, no it's not, at all. I started buying manga just at the beginning of the boom and the prices have dropped a few dollars since then BECAUSE enough people were buying them to support such a move. Now ... not so much. If we want these companies to stay alive (and I don't know about you but I certainly do) then we need to pay the price that will allow them to do so. And as people have pointed out, you can often find them at discounted prices online (where the store is the one taking the hit on profits). So yeah, we deal. That's why you're the only one feeling the OUTRAGE and also the one whose ideas are pretty out of line with the rest of us. |
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littlegreenwolf
Posts: 4796 Location: Seattle, WA |
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Your problem is you seem to not understand supply and demand, how a crap economy effects publishers, and most obviously that a novel release does not equal a graphic novel release.
As people stated, translated novels aren't always cheap. It all comes down to how much a book sells, and who's behind the release. I can tell you now working at a bookstore and following it's English release that Girl With a Dragon tattoo for example did not start out as a mass market release. It started a limited "trial run" with a smaller imprint of trade paperbacks, then when that run sold out it was released in hardcover with a larger run. From there the sales were great so they released it a year later for trade paperback, and then a year later an even larger run for mass market. All this depends on how good sales are. If the sales aren't high enough in either the hardcover or trade paperback tier, they'll never get a mass market release. This is the general release model for all novels (except they usually start out in hardcover for domestic releases) and you can't compare it to a manga release. Manga are essential trade paperbacks, and trade paperbacks are not massive print runs, and mostly because of that they're not cheaper to print. Throw in the fact that they're not trade paperback novels, but graphic novels, and the printing price goes even higher than your typical trade paperback. That Marvel Essentials you mentioned? That's as close a mass market format a comic will get. Cheap paper, discount price, and do you know why Marvel can do that with such a low price (not that I'd want it for the crap paper and black and white anyway which it wasn't originally), they can do it because it's Spider Man, one of the best selling comics of all time, and that's what most of their essential titles are. They already know it has sold, it will sell, and over the years that entire print run will more that likely sell out because it's Spider Man. They could have printed off a good million of those for a cheap price (remember the bigger the print run, the cheaper to publish) and not be afraid to lose money because Spider Man is a guaranteed best seller. Marvel can't do this with every and any title in their library, they'd lose big money. And you seem to be forgetting that outside of the manga boom which gave you those 10 dollar book prices you like so much, more recently we had a manga bubble bust, meaning all those publishers suffered, and we lost a bunch. To survive in the economy and the dwindling buyers they have to raise prices. The bubble burst because companies started going nuts licensing anything they could get their hands on, and trying to release it all thinking it'd sell (ADV Manga with MagGarden titles for example sent that publisher to an early grave while at the same time saturating the market). The bubble bursting mean less sales, meaning smaller print runs, meaning the price HAS to go up. So you can no longer afford to buy 10 volumes a month anymore? Oh well, you now get to get wiser with your money and support the manga titles you REALLY love. The downside is you don't get to randomly try out a series by a random purchase anymore, but tough. That's what happens when you're part of a niche market. Complaining about it isn't going to make the prices cheaper, and you can just you're not going to buy 15 dollar manga anymore, but everyone else is going to because it's still an acceptable price for the product whether you think so or not, and we're fans of the series we're purchasing. Since you're under the impression that manga is cheaper in other countries and are pretty close to the price they go for in Japan - Naruto in France is going for 6.75 Euros. Converted into yen, that's 753.358. That's not exactly 429 yen. Converted into US currency, that 753.358 yen turns into around 9 dollars. Naruto is going for 10 dollars here, and we have a smaller comic market than France. A not as popular title, take Battle Angel Alita for example, is currently going for 7.62 euros. That's over 10 us dollars right now. |
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Jaymie
Posts: 915 |
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Tokyopop and Yen Press charge extra for ecchi and BL (exploitation ftw). All of the series you mentioned have much higher price ranges than their regular series because of their mature content.
Anyway, you have no right to complain. Canada has to pay an extra 2-3 dollars, and our dollar is currently worth more than the American dollar. What's up with that? |
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Tamaria
Posts: 1512 Location: De Achterhoek |
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To be fair, erotic manga are only printed in small quantities. Many (comic)bookstores don't stock these manga, so it's hard to sell them. Small print runs are relatively expensive, so the prices go up. It has been proven that yaoi manga have a small but loyal group of readers who are willing to pay $12-15 for one volume, so it all works out.
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_Emi_
 Posts: 498 Location: Langjökull |
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Not anymore it would seem. Do you know anything about this? And what did the initial release have that there would be a difference of 12 pages? |
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marie-antoinette
Posts: 4136 Location: Ottawa, Canada |
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Prices for books are set when the book is first picked up, generally about a year or so before it's published. All the budgeting for the title is done based off this price which is why, even when the economy changes, book prices don't reflect this until awhile later (which is probably why we didn't see an increase in manga prices earlier). |
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