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Japanese Manga Book Market Rises to Record 282 Billion Yen
posted on by Egan Loo
Oricon presented its "Annual Market Report" for book sales in 2014 on Friday. The reports covers book sales in Japan from December 30, 2013 to December 28, 2014. While the entire book market slumped, the market for compiled manga book volumes rose to 281.51 billion yen (about US$2.3792 billion). That is 104.0% of the 2013 market and the second year in a row in which the market grew. It is also the highest annual total since Oricon began posting its book ranking charts in 2008.
The number of compiled manga book volumes sold also rose to a record 500,482,000, or 101.3% of the number sold in 2013. Attack on Titan in particular helped boost sales, but there were many titles that increased sales after getting an anime or live-action adapation. Other examples include One Piece, Haikyu!!, Tokyo Ghoul, and The Seven Deadly Sins.
By comparison, the entire book market slipped to 1.02813 trillion yen (US$8.69918 billion), or 99% of 2013's total. The number of books sold totaled 1.177757 billion, or 97.3% of 2013's total.
The three main segments of Japan's book market are regular books, trade paperback (bunko), and compiled manga book volumes. Regular books sold 497,617,000 (95.1% of 2013) for 624.31 billion yen (US$5.2798 billion, 97.5% of 2013). The bunko market sold 79,658,000 (92.9% of 2013) for 122.31 billion yen (US$1.0343 billion, 96.0% of 2013).
Source: Oricon
Update: Typo fixed. Thanks, enurtsol
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