ICv2 sat down with publisher Del Rey Manga Dallas Middaugh to talk about the current state of the manga industry, among other things:
Manga publishing is becoming just like every other segment of publishing–the more successful a publishing segment is, the more people want to publish in that segment. What that means is that you have a number of books that rise to the top. For us it’s books like Negima and Tsubasa; for the market in general, clearly it’s books like Naruto and Fruits Basket. Those books continue to do stronger and stronger and stronger, and our books are no exception to that.
You were asking if that’s a problem for the consumer that there are too many books out there. As a reader of manga myself, I can’t ever feel that that’s a problem. I think when consumers have a wide variety of books to choose from, you can really publish a lot of different types of books to reach different tastes. I think for the most part it’s a very positive thing, but there is a limit to the amount of shelf space in bookstores. And the more books that are published, the more we’ll see a diffusion of sales for those mid- and lower level books.
