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Why are English licensed manga pricier?

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Post #394901 - Reply to (#394790) by xxkuroxx
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6:12 am, Jul 27 2010
Posts: 974


Quote from xxkuroxx
mayb coz they give english translator higher pay.....


this, because the living cost in USA obviously higher than in Malaysia.

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Post #394972 - Reply to (#394811) by smashed_head_angel
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9:42 am, Jul 27 2010
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Quote from smashed_head_angel
I think I didn't make my question clear. What I mean is why we can publish a Malay version cheap and the English version not.

Tora Aman the publisher of Detektif Conan do have license from Japan.


This doesn't primarily have to do with translation. The original price per volume in Japan is much higher than the Malaysian prices you've quoted. This is because paper, ink, labor, and everything else tend to be more expensive in Japan and the US than in Malaysia. Japanese publishers presumably charge Malaysian publishers a lower rate because this allows them to get some money from the Malaysian market instead of no money at all.

Many standard products are different prices in different countries: ipods, clothing, books, cars.

Also, Malaysian publishers could be using cheaper paper or binding, and they're probably selling a higher volume per series than US publishers.

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Local Prig
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9:52 am, Jul 27 2010
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Volume is the key here, I believe, though wealth certainly does play a vital role. Countries with greater levels of readership will sell more cheaply- you can only afford to market something at a lower rate if it's financially viable. There's a reason why Viz could sell its more popular shounen jump series at lower prices for a while, and it's less to do with printing quality, licenses, etc. than it is to do with the market.

Also, just a word to those of you who are chanting "support the mangaka directly" and all that. I'd have to dredge up the statistics from the abyss (i.e. find them again), but apparently most mangaka with overseas licensing make a lot more money selling overseas than they do domestically, so, from a logical standpoint it would make more sense to keep foreign demand high if you really want to support them. Just saying.

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12:15 pm, Jul 27 2010
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I guess different countries different prices do make sense. But I'm not so sure about the higher wages. Here is a US translator point of view.http://www.mangablog.net/?p=7492&cpage=2#comment-430 740

I would like to stress one point. Our manga quality is good and we even have dust jacket.

Last edited by smashed_head_angel at 10:43 am, Jul 28 2010

Post #395121 - Reply to (#394811) by smashed_head_angel
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10:33 pm, Jul 27 2010
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Quote from smashed_head_angel
I think I didn't make my question clear. What I mean is why we can publish a Malay version cheap and the English version not.

Tora Aman the publisher of Detektif Conan do have license from Japan.


i still have my doubt about the licensing (it ain't hard to type "Hak Cipta Terpelihara.." so and so and claim that the whole thing is legal. trust me when i tell you i know a few people who think this alone is enough to them to claim licensing rights to any media.) unless i see some official documents or trusted news on the matter.

here are some viable explanation i can think of, aside from economic status between nations;

1) shipping and tax; shouldn't be too hard to figure that out. most countries that i know of, my country included, that claim they have no tax usually means "oh, the tax is hidden in the price tag". so a CD that costs, say $22 with a $5 tax, puts the price tag at $27, and them telling you there is no tax.

2)paper quality; comparing my volumes of Evangelion, Vagabond and FMA with "Budak Getah" and HxH, there seems to be significant difference; the english volumes feel smoother, hence the higher quality. paper quality and their price may not seem much, but stack em' all together and they can make quite the difference in retail price (which may explain why that one volume of HxH, slimmer in looks and using a different paper than the rest, cost a tad bit more). another thing to take into consideration is the possibility that there may be some form of subsidiary between publishers and printing companies in Malaysia, overall making production of these volumes, in turn the retail price, cheaper.

3)Market; the US manga industry is relatively new. it has yet to reach that point where the ratio of their local consumers to the overall population would allow them to sell those volumes a tad bit cheaper, while balancing a decent profit annually. the Malaysian manga industry, while new as well, has to deal with a population of a rough estimation 30 million to U.S's 300 million; wouldn't take a lot of people and that much time to reach the point where manga would be popular enough to lower the price. also note that companies like Comic House had a chinese publication as well (if i remember well), that may as well contribute to said rapid rise in popularity.


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10:51 am, Jul 28 2010
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Another example, Tora Aman start publishing Doraemon since 1993. I don't think they can get away publishing without license for that long.

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Post #395243
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11:18 am, Jul 28 2010
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I don't know anything about the Malaysian manga market, but at least when comparing Japan prices and US prices, I think, as some have already mentioned, the size in audience is a very important factor. Everyone in Japan knows what manga is, probably most people have read it in their lifetime or still do, it's a form of entertainment consumed by all ages. Manga in the US/Canada (and probably pretty much everywhere outside of Asia) is much more niche, so even though the overall population may be huge, the actual number of readers is much smaller. For printing purposes, a smaller print run ends up costing more per-book than the huge print run Japanese manga can get (I don't know how many sales an average title gets in the States, but I imagine it's nowhere near the 100,000+ a top-selling series can get in its first week in Japan (that's actually a really slow week. Other weeks' top sellers are 2-400,000+; when One Piece 58 hit Japanese bookstores in late May, it sold over 1.5 million copies in its first week!)

Post #395261
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Mome Basher
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1:34 pm, Jul 28 2010
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This may be off topic, but shouldn't this question be asked in the random questions thread >_>

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