Forum - View topicAre the french and german manga industries more robust than the english language one
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RAmmsoldat
 Posts: 1261 Location: North wales coast |
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I've been looking around to buy certain titles and whenever im looking it seems like the French and german language markets have had these titles for ages and yet they are not published in english. Examples are things like Vinland saga, oyasumi punpun, lucifer and the biscuit hammer.
I notice those markets get alot more titles and i also notice that they dont suffer the same messing about we english speaking fans get with series after series being left unfinished. somtimes its enough to make me want to learn french. |
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Tamaria
 Posts: 1512 Location: De Achterhoek |
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I think the volume of titles is similar, but the demographics are slightly different. For instance, seinen manga do really well in France, because there is a huge group of adults who like comics. It's a result of having a strong comic industry of their own. The German market has a slightly different focus. They didn't have much of a native comic industry before manga arrived, so the avarage German manga reader seems to be younger than the avarage French manga reader. Also worth noting is that over 50% of German manga readers is female, so you'll see more shoujo and josei titles there.
Oh, but titles do get canceled and companies do go under! The French market became saturated years ago and many 'filler' titles were dropped or forced to slow to a crawl. Several publishers folded. I think they're starting to find a new equilibrium now. Companies are no longer trying to find the new One Piece and instead focus on the classics and short series. Kinda like Vertical is doing in the US (and UK). The German market is more stable, but several companies have taken a hit in recent years. EMA went through some rough years when Inu Yasha's popularity faded and Tokyopop got a hold of many major Shonen Jump titles. But all in all, yeah, I do think it's probably the most stable market of the three. I think it's because industry and fandom go hand in hand in Germany, where as the English industry seems far removed from it. |
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MrXarnus
Posts: 79 |
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I couldn't probably have said it beter tha Tamaria.
What the US market lacks in manga, they gain in the anime department. Although the US anime market also took a hit, it's still the biggest market for anime in the world besides Japan ofcourse (both for physical products and streaming stuff...) |
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RAmmsoldat
Posts: 1261 Location: North wales coast |
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I often forget that france has a pretty good comic history. I notice the UK is lacking in manga publishers, dunno what thats about you'd think we'd have at least 1. I just get a bit wound up when i see pictures of somones french manga collection and they have alot more volumes of beck than i do and can buy stuff like kenichi. kinda stupid me complaining like this really as I've got more than enough manga to be playing catch up with without wanting more, i was just a bit curious due to the sheer volume of stuff i keep finding in my book searches that hasn't got an english language release. |
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MrXarnus
Posts: 79 |
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The english market formed a bubble around itself in the late 90's becaue of the popularity of a few showes like DBZ.
The french market on the other hand evolved bit by bit, and now there are over 25 manga publishers with no sine of stopping (well, atleast it feel's like that...) I can't tell you much about the german market. I bought my first 2 german manga's only a few weeks ago  .(Now I read stuff in dutch, english, french, german and even spanish for some reason, I can't even read spanish...)
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Tamaria
Posts: 1512 Location: De Achterhoek |
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Oh, yeah, before I forget, there's another big difference between the German/French industry and the American one. In Germany and France there's no 'super' publisher like Viz. Basically any publisher that has the money and connections can get the next big Shonen Shueisha/Shogakukan title. For instance, in France, Glénat publishes One Piece and Bleach, while Kana has Naruto and Yu-Gi-Oh. In Germany it's Tokyopop that had the money, connections and sense to license titles such as Death Note, D. Gray-man and Bakuman.
Most publishers do have alliances with one or more Japanese companies, of course, but it's not like in the US were Japanese publishers own (part of) these businesses. As a result, there's a certain balance of powers you won't find in the US.
Well, there were some, but those companies just re-published American editions. There's not much money to be made there because American editions are readily available in the UK anyway. New licenses? Too much risk. They'd still have to compete with established American publishers. And I bet licenses will cost a small fortune anyway because of the huge chance parallel import. |
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RAmmsoldat
Posts: 1261 Location: North wales coast |
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Im finding alot of this publisher stuff pretty interesting, I've been reading comics for so long and never really gave much thought to the production side outside of drawing the comics but alot of the issues the american publishers are facing is making me take note of the hoops they have to jump through and the issues that can arise.
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Moomintroll
 Posts: 1600 Location: Nottingham (UK) |
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That would be Fanfare / Ponent Mon. There have been various other UK publishers that have released manga in the past (Mandarin, Titan, Manga [as in the anime company], Tanoshimi, Boxtree and Gollancz all spring to mind...hell, I even have one published by the British Museum) but, as Tamaria said, there's no margin in it when the US editions are so readily available and usually cost less (due to both economies of scale and the exchange rate). It's also worth noting that the French have the same problems with stuff going out of print that we do - I've been putting together a list of French editions I want to import recently and a bunch of stuff is no longer available new. |
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st_owly
 Posts: 5234 Location: Edinburgh, Scotland |
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Tanoshimi and Gollancz were a waste of time. They just published almost the exact same things as the editions in the US, but with slightly different logos and British prices on the back. I imported the Del Rey editions of XXXholic because they had colour pages and the Tanoshimi ones didn't.
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Moomintroll
Posts: 1600 Location: Nottingham (UK) |
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They were useful for libraries since specialist library booksellers don't generally list grey market US imports. My library service is lucky enough to also have a dedicated comics retailer to buy from with comparable discounts but a lot of library services aren't so fortunate. Gollancz also occasionally put out stuff that was out of print and hard to find in the US - I got all of Maison Ikkoku from them for a fraction of what the OOP Viz editions would have cost. But, yeah, they didn't put out anything new. Nor did Titan, Manga or Boxtree for that matter; just re-branded editions of Dark Horse and Viz titles. It's a hell of a lot cheaper to sub-license somebody else's release than license, translate, edit and design your own release from scratch. |
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MrXarnus
Posts: 79 |
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What? It must be either of defunct publishers or from really bad selling series, since I never hear someone complain about this on french forums. (Except from defunct publishers and some bad selling series ofcourse...) |
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RAmmsoldat
Posts: 1261 Location: North wales coast |
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Im resorting to using the french and german amazon sites for buying english language books.
Get this, i just managed to snag volume 4 of air gear off ebay for a good price so i went to wishlist the rest of the volumes to see vol.14 getting a little pricey and the vol.15-17 omnibus with an asking price of £103 so i flipped a bit and went searching to find the omnibus on amazon.fe for around £15 in the marketplace. thing is the seller on the frnch site was the same seller from the english site except the prices were wildly different. WTF! 
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Moomintroll
Posts: 1600 Location: Nottingham (UK) |
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Well it's true that my tastes sometimes tend towards the obscure but...there are plenty of native French BD that are also out of print in France. And thousands of manga that are out of print in Japan. No publishing industry, comics or otherwise, can afford to keep its entire back catalogue in print indefinitely. |
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dormcat
Encyclopedia Editor
 Posts: 9903 Location: New Taipei City, Taiwan, ROC |
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Seconded, enough to encourage Tokyopop Germany to set up a (now defunct) website for Selena Lin way more informative, comprehensive, and prettier than the Sharp Point Press counterpart. |
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MrXarnus
Posts: 79 |
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I don't have that much problem's with OOP stuff since I buy most stuff when it comes out. I also just started making a list with stuff I want to buy from alot of foreign manga markets and when I see that a series is OOP, I don't even add it to my list. |
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