This piece continues my review (see yesterday’s post) of Xavier Guilbert’s analysis of sales figures in French comics for 2009, as published in the French comics magazine Du9. In this part, Guilbert looks at the role of manga in the French market, and at the success stories of 2009.
When you walk around in comic conventions in France and Belgium, people will typically cite the success of manga and anime as the reason for the decline in sales for traditional comics. However, in 2009 manga sales dropped by nearly 7 % in volume, and nearly 6 % in value. According to Guilbert, this only shows that manga has stabilised its position and importance in the French market, and may have reached its peak.
The reason for manga’s boom in 2001-2006 seems to be the fact that it touched on a new group of readers, largely neglected by traditional BD : the younger readers, and women. Moreover, it has been able to solidify its position by introducing a faster production cycle, and by completely positioning itself in a manga-anime subculture, which younger readers used to differentiate themselves from adults with their more traditionally Western cultural tastes and artifacts.
(Masashi Kishimoto’s Naruto, published in English by Viz Media)
Naturally, the big five publishers took this up, and the number of ongoing series between 2003 and 2009 boomed from 30 to 150. The big difference between traditional BD and manga, however, is the fact that the latter sector seems to be quite easily dominated by the latest hit, which in itself more often than not is aimed at younger readers. Remarkably Naruto on its own counts for one manga in seven sold in France. It reaches 250,000 issues sold per volume, compared to 85,000 for Soul Eater, the next in line, or 80,000 for One Piece, a relatively new series.
In order to be a success, it would seem that a manga needs to be new, and it needs to have a regular publishing schedule. For each new success (e.g. One Piece) it would seem that another, earlier hit has to make way (e.g. Death Note or Dragon Ball). Also, if the original publication schedule falters (e.g. Full Metal Alchemist), its fallback in sales follows its drop in publication regularity. This seems to be a trend that will continue in the next few years, as French titles catch up with the original Japanese, and have to slow down their publication schedule, which in turn has an influence on sales. And here the weakness of manga shows : whereas the traditional Franco-Belgian BD hit series continues to have a healthy (though slowly declining, see previous) success with its back catalogue, sales in Manga seem to almost exclusively focus on the latest issues.
(a more traditional selection of homegrown and imported BD in a Parisian bookstore, but manga claims a lot of shelf space of its own; pic from my Flickr)
Now, what were the big sellers of 2009 ? The top 10 shows no less than 4 Narutos, and quite a few traditional names. The new Astérix, le Livre D’or, hardly worth calling a new album, grossed nearly 600,000 issues, which is not even half of the previous issue (still huge sales to an Anglophone audience’s eyes though – Joe), Le ciel qui tome sur la tête, and the new Blake And Mortimer stops at not even half of that (230,000 issues, or 120,000 less than the previous issue). Further down the list, we see the relative success of marketing-driven derivations of successful stories (the XIII Mystery series, which drags on the XIII hit by Van Hamme and Vance), or new books that are published to coincide with the release of a film about the same characters (the latest Lucky Luke, or the Simpsons, with no less than five issues in the top 50 for a total sales figure of 300,000 issues).
Finally, it’s interesting to note which titles are missing from the top 50, even though they had very large print runs and were given a lot of commercial attention. There’s no Muréna in the list, or the Chat best-of. Even the latest Tardi, published by Casterman at 120,000 issues, is nowhere to be seen.
It’s going to be an interesting year ahead – I wonder if these economic facts will have an impact on comics as a medium, that even when the sector is going trough dire straits, comics keep on soaring artistically as they have been the past few years.
Wim Lockefeer lives in Belgium and thinks the sales market appears to have a lot more ups and downs than the Belgian topogrpahy does; you can read more of his comics musings on The Ephemerist blog
Thu, Feb 11, 2010
Comics and cartoons, From our Continental Correspondent