2009 Manga Sales: Who Grew, Who Shrunk

I know, I know, it's February and you're probably kinda done with all those retrospectives, but Brian Hibbs just posted his Bookscan analysis for 2009. Based primarily on the top 750 comics of the year-- and these are bookstore titles rather than floppies, so manga is the majority here --it's always an interesting read for those of you who really dig the industry stuff. This year there's a lot of talk about why manga sales are slowing, although they're still the majority of the top 750 best-seller (451 of the 750), and a lot of talk about specific publishers.

For those of you without the time or inclination, here's a very quick summary.
 

Publisher	# in Top 750	# Titles Total	# Books Sold	# Books Sold vs '08
VIZ Media	283	2,793	4,819,407	-12.95%
TOKYOPOP	78	2,559	1,431,424	-43.09%
Del Rey Manga	49	480	767,728	-6.87%
Yen Press	19	211	330,962	+200.53%
Bandai Ent.	6	52	67,174	+181.65%
Dark Horse	6	455	226,497	-9.03%

 
Of the rest, only Digital Manga Publishing, Go! Comi, and Drawn & Quarterly placed any titles in the top 750 (3, 3, and 1, respectively). Which means: NO titles from CMX, Vertical, Aurora, or Seven Seas sold more than 3,887 copies. I, for one, hope to see some Vertical books on the list next year! (Black Jack and/or Chi, probably?)
 
Now, for those of you who would like a bit more detail and analysis...
  

#1 - VIZ

    VIZ is still the top manga pub, but their total amount sold has dropped significantly since 2007, even as their number of products has increased. In 2007 they sold about $55 million worth; in 2009 only $44 million. Naruto specifically seems to have past its peak; its top volume this year (#43) sold 61,144 copies, which is a great sell-- but in 2007, #13 sold 80k, and in 2008 #28 sold over 100,000 copies. No doubt VIZ is already scouting for potential replacements. 

 

#2 - TOKYOPOP

TOKYOPOP is still the Burger King to VIZ's MacDonalds with 78 titles in the top 750, but has seen an even bigger drop in sales since 2007: from $30 million to $15 million. Hibbs wonders if there's some behind-the-scenes reason for Tpop's decline, but I have to note that I think the company has basically been having trouble licensing strong titles.

It was announced in August of '09 that TOKYOPOP would be losing its titles from Kodansha, Japan's biggest publisher, but they were already down to only a few titles from there by that point anyway. Tpop's decline might be tied primarily to the decline in Kodansha titles. The numbers make that painfully clear: TOKYOPOP had almost as many books out as VIZ in 2009, but they simply didn't sell as strongly. 
 
Tpop has continued to license from other Japanese publishers (Gentousha, Hakusensha, etc), and to push their original works with varying degrees of success (and often with people outside of the core manga demographic). No doubt they're relying heavily on the Tpop-brokered Hollywood remake of their manhwa Priest, so I hope for their sake it doesn't flop.

#3 - Del Rey Manga

Del Rey Manga takes the #3 spot with 49 books in the top 750, but its biggest sellers are original tie-ins rather than the manga-- Ben 10 Alien Force, for example, and the Cartoon Network-branded Bakugan Battle Brawlers. Del Rey still saw a drop in sales, from $9 million to $8 million (but still higher than their 2007 sales). Their number of listed items continues to go up. I don't know if this is official policy or not, but it definitely seems like these big tie-ins carry the smaller-scale but beloved titles like Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei.

#4 - Yen Press

Yen Press is at #4 and is, one of very few manga companies on this list to grow in sales, from $147k in 2007 to $1.2 million in 2008 to $3.7 million in 2009. Of course, their biggest title is also a tie-in: Maximum Ride, though Haruhi and Soul Eater are selling quite well for them.

Speculation is, of course, that Yen Press's 2010 is going to have even better numbers for Yen, thanks primarily to the Twilight manga, which they're printing 350,000 books of to sell. Let me just note: the total number of units Yen sold of ALL titles in 2009 was about 331,000, so...this is a very big deal for them. In the event that the manga totally flopped, Yen would probably be in big trouble, but considering the massive preorders, I don't foresee that happening.
 

#5 - Bandai Entertainment and Dark Horse

The #5 publisher is a toss-up between Dark Horse and Bandai, which makes sense since neither is an entirely manga-focused company-- Dark Horse, of course, has its original comics, and Bandai has big-name manga but only ones related to its anime releases.  
     
Bandai is the only manga company besides Yen to see its sales improve, from $238k to $708k...but they only had 52 releases in 2009. Code Geass is Bandai's biggest title. I'm glad to see Bandai's manga doing well and hope they'll pick up more stuff (GURREN LAGANN GAKUEN-HEN. OH PLEEEEEEASE!)

As for Dark Horse: they sold about 455 manga volumes last year, and the Clover omnibus did pretty well for them. Their manga sales still dropped from $3.1 million to $2.9 million, however. Like TOKYOPOP, Dark Horse has lost some Kodansha titles, namely Akira and Ghost in the Shell (which Kodansha just reprinted-- and which did not make this list, mind). 
 
  

The Rest

Go! Comi and Digital Manga each have three titles in the top 750, and Drawn and Quarterly has one-- Yoshihiro Tatsumi's A Drifting Life, natch --and that's it for manga publishers. There's notably no sign of any CMX titles, nor Aurora, Seven Seas, or Vertical. Hopefully all of them will make it next year! Especially CMX-- Hibbs is left wondering why D.C. is still operating it given its poor sales records.