A recent look at the
print sales for Weekly Shonen Jump caused a bit of a stir in the Western anime/manga fandom. With such a sizable decline, speculation ran rampant that its cause was due to a lack of replacement titles for two of the "Big 3" (Naruto, Bleach and One Piece) which recently concluded. It seems those speculations were right on the mark.
A new study from the Research Institute for Publications in Japan has revealed that they believe "
Factors such as the completion of popular works supporting the market and the fact that no new hit work has been published" has contributed to a 14.4% decline in paper manga sales. In contrast, digital sales rose 17.2% Overall, total manga sales across print and digital were down 2.8%
In summary:
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In 2017, digital manga sales surpassed paper manga sales for the first time and the drop of 14.4% in print sales was the biggest decline since the Publication Research Institute in Japan began tracking statistics
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Digital: ￥171.1 billion yen/$1.591 billion USD (17.2 % increase)
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Paper: ￥166.6 billion yen/$1.549 billion USD (14.4% decrease)
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Total: ￥337.7 billion yen/$/$3.14 billion USD (2.8% decrease)
Additional sourcing via
www.japantimes.co.jp