The global pandemic has hit many industries hard and transformed the lives of just as many people who have rediscovered or embraced new passions during full lockdown. Among these, in addition to the tremendous popularity that streaming services have achieved, the attention paid to manga has emerged.
In recent years Manga have become an extremely popular product, and in 2020 there was a huge increase in sales worldwide. In fact, despite the paper crisis faced by many publishers, the works of mangaka and foreign authors continue to represent a sizeable chunk of the market that they’ve also wanted to talk about Ben Applegate and Mark DeVera.
Applegate, Director of Editorial Services at Penguin Random House, explained how he envisions the manga industry becoming more relevant. “COVID has certainly brought new fans to online communities, watching anime and reading manga and has probably gotten those who are already interested to read more. I don’t think we will go back to 2019 levels‘ the director commented, before clarifying: “I dare to say so Manga sales will stabilize in the middlemuch closer to 2021 levels than 2019 levels‘, only to reiterate that 2020 represented an unprecedented result.
According to DeVera, director of marketing and sales at Yen Press, many former niche genres have had opportunities to emerge thanks to the increased interest brought on by the pandemic, and this has evidently led to important growth for the sector in general. “There was one found great interest in Shojo and Boy’s Lovand just to name a few examples. I predict more and more categories will find their readers in our area.”
What are your thoughts on the growth of the manga industry? Have you read or followed any series since the pandemic broke out? Tell us in the comments. Keep in mind that the digital market for manga has also grown rapidly and we leave you with a global analysis of the Japanese animation industry.
