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Retailers 'miss out on manga'

07.09.07 Caroline Horn

Booksellers are missing out on sales by failing to acknowledge consumer demand for manga, publishers have warned.

Publishers have been piling into the manga market for the past two years, with Little, Brown's Orbit the latest entrant through US list Yen Press this autumn. Random House launched its Tanoshimi imprint last year, while Orion's Gollancz started publishing manga in 2005, and Pan Macmillan signed an exclusive sales and distribution deal with manga publisher Tokyopop last summer.

"There is a lot of stock out there, but perhaps the growth in retail space allocated to manga is not keeping step with the amount of titles being published," said Orbit business manager George Walkley. "In any of the major chains, manga is being under-cooked in terms of space."

Tokyopop UK sales director Dennis McGuirk added: "The issue is about the amount of space dedicated to this sector by high street retailers—manga is not given a huge amount of space so fans are given a limited offering and need to seek out specialists or go online for purchases."

The UK graphic novel market was worth around £7.5m in 2006 but that compares with sales of £165m in the US, according to figures from Nielsen Book-Scan. "Growth in the UK has been slow and steady over the past five years, but in the US there has been an absolute explosion," said Walkley. "The disparity shows the potential development in the UK."

Borders, Waterstone's and Blackwell all point to growth in the sector over the past two years but are waiting to see how the market develops before dedicating more space to it. "If the genre continues to thrive, we will give it more space," said Kim Mackay, fiction buyer at Borders.

"The more publishers there are to push the market, the bigger it will get," added Marcus Gipps, general department manager at Blackwell's Charing Cross branch—one of the early supporters of manga.

Book Retail Caroline Horn Manga

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