Tuesday, June 15, 2004

Manga nation: Writing for the San Francisco Chronicle, author Jeff Yang provides an in-depth look at manga's inroads into the United States:

"As startling as manga's recent Stateside success has been, the $110 million American industry still represents a rounding error in comparison to its Japanese counterpart. In its country of origin, more than a third of all print publications sold are manga titles; 1.5 billion manga magazines and books were purchased in 2000 alone, representing gross revenues of more than $4.7 billion. The most popular manga magazine, the phone-book-size Shonen Jump, sells more than 5.9 million copies per week. (That's almost half the circulation of Japan's largest newspaper, Asahi Shimbun -- and almost three times the circulation of the most popular U.S. paper, USA Today.)"