The editor of Shueisha, Yuuta Momiyamawho manages online services Shonen Jump Plus Yes MANGA Plus of the magazine Weekly Shonen LeapHe wrote a blog post to explain why the editors of the Shonen Jump Plus internally manages sales abroad MANGA Plus.
First, he stated that it is customary for publishers to sell foreign publishing rights to foreign companies through the foreign licensing department, and that this system continues to produce positive results. However, MANGA Plus is managed directly by Shueisha as Momiyama wants it to be an integral part of Weekly Shonen Jump’s editorial focus.
According to Momiyama, the role of a manga magazine is “Offer new and interesting manga to the world“. To achieve this, Weekly shonen jump makes extensive use of surveys and reader comments. With the data from MANGA Plus, the editors can follow the international reception at a very early stage of the serialization. Since the international market is so important to the anime industry, the data from MANGA Plus is already being used to decide which titles to adapt to anime.
Momiyama also predicted that the overseas manga market will become even more important in the future. MANGA Plus currently has 5 million monthly active users. He also took a report from . note Kodansha which states that around 20 percent of manga sales currently come from abroad. At Shueisha, you’ve heard that manga sales abroad appear to have doubled in 2021 compared to the previous year. He raised the popularity of. emerged Kaijuu 8-gou (Monster # 8) in particular, whose first volume was sold 250,000 times in France alone, despite the higher price per manga unit compared to Japan. Momiyama predicted that the ratio of sales at home and abroad will converge within ten years.
In a September interview, Momiyama reiterated many points about the growth of the overseas market. Although the service MANGA Plus Contains advertising, he stated that the priority is to make the official version of a manga as accessible as possible, rather than monetizing the platform. He said the benefit of MANGA Plus As a simultaneous sales service, it not only prevents piracy, but also closes the temporary gap between domestic and international reception.
On the other hand, Momiyama said in an interview that translation costs are currently very high. He said that machine translation quality is still very poor, but that “it should get better in ten years“And added that”If we can produce high quality translations in many different languages, this will be a turning pointHe also highlighted the company’s lack of operational resources for each region and local censorship as problems, explaining that the company still lacks knowledge in these areas. Therefore, it is currently difficult to make the necessary changes and adjustments quickly .
Fountain: ANN
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