Posted in: Comics, Comics Publishers, Current News, Dark Horse Comics, Manga | Tagged: appleseed, Berserk, blade of the immortal, Crying Freeman, Hellsing, Lone Wolf & Cub, Oh My Goddess! Neon Genesis Evangelion, oldboy, san diego, sdcc

Over Half Of Dark Horse's Sales Are Manga But Less Than 2% Of Titles

Michael Gombos, Senior Director of Licensed Publications at Dark Horse stated "Manga is a very small part of our total titles published"....

The Manga Publishing Industry Roundtable was held on Thursday, the 20th of July from 5-6pm in Room 29AB at San Diego Comic-Con 2023. "One of the big surprises of 2020—2022 was the astronomical growth of manga sales. Although sales are levelling off, manga's sales strength in North America appears here to stay. Get a taste of what's hot, what's not, and what's next from the perspective of top publishing pros, including Kevin Hamric (vice president, marketing sales, VIZ Media), Ben Applegate (director, publisher services, Penguin Random House), Bobbie Chase (executive editor, WEBTOON Unscrolled), Ed Chavez (publisher, Denpa Books), Michael Gombos (director, international publishing and licensing, Dark Horse Comics), Jamie Kim (business development lead, Manta), and Matt Haasch (publisher, Starfruit Books). Moderated by Deb Aoki (Publishers Weekly, Mangasplaining)."

The headline came from Michael Gombos, Senior Director of Licensed Publications at Dark Horse, best known for the likes of Sin City, Hellboy and Star Wars, has a long-running line of manga titles going back to their earliest days. Such as Appleseed, Berserk, Blade Of The Immortal, Crying Freeman, Hellsing, Lone Wolf & Cub, Oh My Goddess! Neon Genesis Evangelion, Oldboy and Trigun. He told the room that "This is our third year running for setting sales records at Dark Horse. Manga is a very small part of our total titles published – about one to one and a half percent, but in 2021, it was 66% of our gross trade publishing revenue. In 2022, that's dipped to a paltry 52%."

Kevin Hamric, VP of Publishing Sales at Viz Media, which just published manga, said "the good news is we're still trending higher than 2020 sales. If that continues for the rest of the year, which we predict it will, it will be the third largest year in the history since we've been keeping the records of sales."

The return of physical sales and physical bookstores, like Barnes & Noble, have increased their manga sections, as have specialist stores such as Forbidden Planet, with sales growth outperforming Amazon. Now Target and Walmart sell manga, as do grocery stores. More places to sell such comics, lead to much greater sales overall.

While Jamie Kim, Business Development Lead from Manta, announced that Penguin Random House's Inklore imprint will publish the novel and graphic novel version of fantasy romance webtoon Under the Oak Tree.  Bobbie Chase, executive editor of Webtoon Unscrolled, confirmed Bleeding Cool's previous reports that that the publisher is increasing its yearly output to 24 titles per year going forward across YA and Adult categories, thanks to "strong sales and Amazon #1 statuses." And Kodansha announced the publication of a new manga series in North America first, Blood Blade by Oma Sei.  It will debut first in English, digitally on Kodansha.us, running weekly from October. Subscribers to the new Kodansha Reader Portal will get free access to the series until the release of the collected volume, which will be in the spring of 2024 and distributed by Penguin Random House.

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