Forum - View topicAny hope that manga will decrease in price outside Japan?
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Mankovic
Posts: 2 |
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I live in the UK, and the Manga is just so much more expensive than in Japan and even Germany and France. I notice when I buy manga like tokyo ghoul for example 1 volume is like 6-7 pounds, but in german is it 4 pounds? Why is getting it in english more expensive? I think the UK gets their manga from America so maybe they have to deliver it here but still the price is really frustrating. Manga in UK is usually 7-8 pounds which is just too much IMO. I heard that manga sales outside Japan increased in the last 2 years which is good. If manga keeps rising in popularity outside Japan could this mean we can get cheaper manga or not?
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Horkus
Posts: 3 |
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I feel like part of it has to do with print quality. Japanese release are very small, with honestly pretty crappy paper. Even looking at my English manga next to my French ones, the English ones are usually 15-20% larger. I suspect that due to the semi-universality of the English language, Japan might charge companies more for an English license compared to French or German. I would always expect manga to be more expensive outside of Japan though, just because companies have to pay for the license, which is expensive. It's even worse with digital, I feel. People expect ebooks to be fairly cheap, but publishers will probably still have to charge like 6 or 7 dollars to cover the license costs.
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littlegreenwolf
 Posts: 4796 Location: Seattle, WA |
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Double post
Last edited by littlegreenwolf on Fri Dec 04, 2015 2:48 am; edited 1 time in total |
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littlegreenwolf
Posts: 4796 Location: Seattle, WA |
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Manga unfortunately can't just turn from Japanese to another language and stay the same price.
For legit, physical manga you need to basically first license the manga, which can be pretty pricey to begin with. Then you need to pay the staff, which would be: Translators, quality checkers, project managers, graphic designers, etc. to turn it from Japanese to english. This right here is why digital manga can only get so cheap. People need to get a working wage. It takes about a month to go through editing a whole volume, not counting translating and then quality checks and advance copies with printers to check everything. These people involved are also not working part time, but earning living wages doing this full time. Then there's the printing, and shipping. Some printers have their own in house printer, others have to print them overseas. English manga printed in the US and then sent to Europe costs extra because of taxes and the price of shipping and distribution. Shipping from the US to Europe is NOT cheap, and individually can cost maybe 25 US dollars for a single heavy volume, on top of the price of the book. |
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Wandering Samurai
 Posts: 875 Location: USA |
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Translation and editing, and printing will add into why it costs more for manga outside of Japan. Add onto that international shipping is just killer when it comes to trying to send something somewhere. Hence why even Japanese manga will cost almost twice as much outside of Japan as compared to inside Japan. A friend of mine who lives in Texas happened upon a place that sells Japanese manga and the store owner there was charging $12 for a volume of Japanese One Piece.
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Jose Cruz
 Posts: 1773 Location: South America |
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In Brazil now manga costs around 3 dollars a volume. However, it is in portuguese.
It's easier to learn portuguese than japanese. And there are many titles in portuguese that haven't been published in the US as well. |
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Jose Cruz
Posts: 1773 Location: South America |
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Indeed. In Brazil it decreases in price.
Anime in the US decreases in price from Japan, doesn't it? |
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Alan45
 Village Elder Posts: 9840 Location: Virginia |
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Not likely.
The biggest thing that brings down the price per item is increased unit sales. That is the more you can sell of a title the cheaper it can be per volume. Unfortunately the boom has passed. The industry shows some signs of recovery (more titles being offered) but is unlikely to reach prior peak sales. Also the proliferation of different formats, omnibus volumes, hard backs, deluxe paper backs and varying trim sizes makes it hard to compare prices. Unless we have another boom (unlikely) I really doubt US prices will go anywhere but up. |
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Jose Cruz
Posts: 1773 Location: South America |
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American manga is very expensive partly because of the high quality of print used and paper as well. Brazilian manga is usually of lower quality print.
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