The Future of Manga panel at the ICv2 Insider Talks at New York Comic Con (see “ICv2 Insider Talks“) brought together two manga veterans who started out as competitors and are now collaborators: Jim Killen, former graphic novel buyer for Barnes & Noble, and Kurt Hassler, who held a similar position at Borders. Hassler is now the President of both Yen Press and Kadokawa Retail Ventures, which runs the Manga Spot chain of brick-and-mortar stores, and Killen is the Director of Retail Operations for the chain. The conversation was moderated by ICv2 founder and President Milton Griepp.
Kurt Hassler and Jim Killen
When Hassler spoke with ICv2 in August (see “Kurt Hassler on Manga Spot“), he told Griepp that Manga Spot came about because there were areas of the country that were underserved. “To what degree do you think people don’t have access to manga?,” Griepp asked at the Insider Talks. “Obviously, they could order it from Amazon if they wanted to. How much is that constraining the market, and how much opportunity is there?”
“The difference is, you can buy on Amazon, but you can shop in the store,” Killen said. “You can be presented with the totality of what’s published, of what’s available. You can talk to the salespeople. You can get recommendations. You can discuss what you’re what you’re interested in. The thing about the stores is engagement.”
“And discoverability,” Hassler added. “Online is great if you know what you’re looking for. Not so much if you’re browsing for something new or looking for recommendations.” With the demise of Borders, Waldenbooks, and B. Dalton, Hassler pointed out, as well as independent bookstores, the U.S. has lost about 2,000 bookstores.
As for comic shops, Griepp asked whether adding a big manga section would take away from other categories or have an additive effect.
“Manga is additive,” Hassler said, “and the more customers you’re bringing in, it’s supporting everything else that they can find on the shelf. I don’t think it’s ever a good idea to look at something like, ‘Oh, why is this getting all the attention?’ Whatever it is that’s getting them in the stores and discovering things is only good for everybody.”
When he took over as graphic novel buyer at Waldenbooks, Hassler said, he was given six months to prove the category could survive. “Manga is what saved the category,” he said, “so we gave manga more space. The other areas, the American comics, got more space. Maybe not as much, but they got more representation by virtue of the success of manga.”
“We were following the dollars” Killen said, “The customer that was coming back and spending more money and coming back more regularly was the manga audience.”
Part of that was catering to readers who had been underserved for years: Girls. “Sailor Moon tapped an audience in girls that was not being catered to at all by the traditional domestic comics market,” Hassler said. “That was not a small thing. You had Sailor Moon breaking new ground with a very new audience in the U.S. being wildly popular. Every time you did a reorder, you reordered double, triple, 10 times what you ordered before.”
Moving to the future, Griepp asked Killen and Hassler if they thought that anime would continue to grow as a category. Hassler saw it as a question of supply and demand, but as much quality as quantity. “They’re very much maxing out the capacity of the studios in terms of what they can produce, and the reality is, as much anime as you produce, there’s still only so many that really hit that A-level tier of enthusiasm with the fans,” he said.
Killen drew an analogy with the manga situation 20 years ago: “It was at that point where it was like every volume one of something sold. You couldn’t keep it in stock. But at the same time, the quality of those volume ones was starting to wane, and that gave us a drop in sales of manga, or at least a lot of new manga.”
Manga sales in Japan were soft last year, Griepp pointed out. What does that mean for the U.S.?
“That they’re going to keep really tapping external markets to continue the overall growth,” Hassler responded. “The Japanese market for manga has been down for years and years and years. And every publisher in Japan recognizes just how much foreign markets are contributing to their bottom line. So everyone’s very invested in keeping the world interested and tapping that growth.”
“We’re definitely seeing growth in Korean manhwa,” Killen added. “What Chinese stuff we have, we’re seeing growth there. So even if the content from Japan slows, we still have more content coming in and we’re bringing in new readers.”
“One of the best indicators is shows like this,” Hassler said. “These conventions grow year on year, so no matter what the overall trend is, whether it’s American comics or manga or manhwa, the general fan attention continues to rise.” Indeed, Killen remarked that when he walked into the convention center, the first 10 or 15 cosplayers he saw were all cosplaying manga characters.
“There’s a lot of Witch Hat Atelier out there,” Hassler added.
Digital accounts for about 75% of manga sales in Japan, Griepp noted, but the percentage is much lower in the U.S. In the U.S., Hassler said, “Readers really found that they appreciated having books as physical items, so digital relative to the total market plateaued somewhere around 25 to 30 percent, and it’s stayed there. For Japan, whatever the reason, I think digital is more accessible, but it’s also a market where piracy has not eaten into digital in the same way that we experience in North America. They have, at least within the Japanese market, more control over it, so it’s more of an industry in some ways than it has become in North America, particularly for comics, where piracy has really eaten into a big chunk of that business.”
Both Hassler and Killen agreed that the digital and print audiences overlap. “A lot of customers in the stores may start reading something digitally, but ultimately they want to own the physical manga,” Killen said. “It’s the same thing with streaming: There are people who start a series on Crunchyroll or Hulu or whatever, and then at the end of that season, instead of waiting, they want to find the manga because they want to read ahead.”
“A lot of it is fandom as artifact,” Hassler added. “You have those readers who start out digital, fall in love with something, and they want it on their shelves. They want the physical representation of their fandom as an artifact that they own. You see that with people who want the DVDs of the things they were streaming. People were willing to pay $200 for the deluxe package DVD or manga or comic. It becomes an expression of fandom to have the physical realization of that that you can look at and admire on the shelves, whether you’re reading the book or you’re buying the high-end version of it.”
Manga currently represents about 20% of the U.S. comics and graphic novel market, a bit more when only graphic novels are taken into consideration, Griepp pointed out, and he asked if they though there was a cap or if there is room for unlimited growth.
“I certainly think there’s growth,” Hassler said. “Wherever there are good stories, you’re going to find audiences, and I think there’s just a lot of great content coming out of Japan. They give authors and artists space to tell their own stories in a way that has really only been happening in the U.S. for a handful of years. I’d be hesitant to put a percentage on it, but I think the percentage could certainly grow from where it is now, but let’s just hope that the entire pool keeps growing and everybody’s doing better in the business, and we see the need for a Javits that’s twice this size to hold the fans downstairs.”
Source: ICV2
