Free manga online – Will it boost sales?
June 27, 2009 by J!-ENT
The Daily Yomiuri’s Kenichi Sato recently wrote an article on the recent transition of manga going free online. Here is an excerpt from that article:
More and more publishers are allowing readers to access their manga for free on the Internet. Why are they so generous when sales of comic magazines continue to dwindle?
Kodansha Ltd. stunned manga fans on May 22 by releasing the full contents of Morning 2, a monthly magazine carrying the hit manga series Seinto Onisan (Saint Young Men) by Hikaru Nakamura, free on the Net. It was the very day when the 22nd issue of the printed version with the same contents hit store shelves. Kodansha is going to offer the full contents of the 420 yen magazine for free up to the 24th issue, to be published on July 22.
The company initially worried that a free online offer could mislead readers into believing they can always enjoy manga for free, but the sales of the 22nd issue actually rose by 25 percent as it came with a premium for magazine buyers.
It is rare for manga magazine contents to be released both on the Net and in print at the same time. But there are a number of Web sites offering original manga works for free, such as Futabasha Publishers Ltd.’s Web Comic High! and Square Enix Co.’s Gan Gan Online.
Behind Kodansha’s move is the fact that manga magazine sales have been in decline for more than 13 years, while comics compiled into books are selling relatively well. “We’re in a time when comic magazines are suffering bleak sales, and publishers are trying to secure profits by publishing manga they carried in their magazines in book format,” said Goichi Nonaka, editor in chief of Futabasha’s comic planning and editorial department.
“Web comics enable publishers to build up the popularity of some works to the point at which it becomes feasible to release them in book format, while saving printing costs in the meantime,” Nonaka explained.
The publishers are not charging online manga readers because of strong public expectations that online information is always free. It contrasts with the mobile phone comic market, which in fiscal 2007, according to Impress R&D, expanded tenfold to 22.9 billion yen over fiscal 2005, thanks to an established charging system.
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