The past year may have been another tough one for the book industry for a variety of reasons, but one thing remains: the manga boom will continue into 2022. According to a report by the “book report” It is mainly thanks to the continuing high demand for manga comics that fiction is the only product group in 2022 to be above the previous year in terms of sales and turnover, despite the crisis. As comics, manga are assigned to fiction, not to children’s or young adult books, which is probably due to the wide range of content of the stories, because the manga literature originally from Japan consists of hundreds of sub-genres, ranging from children’s fairy tales with big-eyed characters to explicitly pornographic books.
According to the book report, sales of manga in Germany increased by 75 percent in 2021 compared to 2020, despite the pandemic. The publisher Kazé Manga, which only publishes manga, was able to more than double its sales in 2021, as the company announced to the stock exchange. The German Book Trade Association is observing and confirming the trend. This can be read from the publication numbers alone: in 2017, for example, 945 new releases were counted in manga comics, in 2021 there were already 1185.
The anime adaptations also contribute to the success of the comics
Mangas are also becoming increasingly important for trade fairs and events. 75,000 visitors came to the big manga and anime convention DoKomi in Düsseldorf in June this year, a record. The bookstore chain Thalia opened a pop-up store next to a branch in Offenbach in July, which until the end of 2022 will only offer books from the extended manga range and related items such as figures. In 2023, the Manga Comic Con will take place parallel to the Leipzig Book Fair, larger than before.
In Germany, it is mainly large publishers such as Carlsen, Egmont and Panini that publish manga comics. Kazé and Tokyopop, for example, specialize in manga. In this country, since “Heidi” and “Wickie and the strong men” above all the animated film equivalent of the manga is known, the anime. And the anime adaptations, in turn, increase the sales of the corresponding books, such as the dark fantasy series “Jujutsu Kaisen”, which is one of Kazé’s most successful series.