I'm from the Philippines. Manga here is roughly the same price as a paperback novel, although we do have a bookstore chain that has ridiculously high prices. There is also a chain that sells older manga for very cheap but you really have to hunt for the titles you want.

I haven't tried shipping raw tankobons from Japan yet (I plan to), but from what I've seen the prices in Amazon Japan are *less than* half the prices we have here. That doesn't include shipping, though.

It's about average, IMO, compared to the other type of books like novel, for instance. Here in Indonesia, translated manga are printed in paperback. They cost about Rp15,000-Rp30,000 (I think it's around USD2-USD3?). Usually the bunko version is Rp30,000. But there are some titles that cost higher, like Tezuka Osamu's titles (like Buddha and Adolf). They're around Rp40,000. While larger than average manga, the paper is so-so ... maybe Tezuka's name that makes the publisher sold them in higher price
but I bought them anyway...

I guess I'm lucky since I can buy most manga that I want, but maybe for some people the price is still too expensive.

I live in Japan. If I go to the recycle shops I can get like-new manga for about 100 yen, I've gotten some that is a little worn, but perfectly readable, for as cheap as 10 yen. New manga is about 500 yen.

Back home new manga would be £7 (about 1000 yen).

I am from Norway. The prices vary a bit, but I think one manga cost around 17USD. There are very few shops that sell manga where I live. I only know of one.

I've never seen a manga book in my country.

Yeah it's pretty expensive.
Viz are probably the cheapest, and that's around £7. Any other licensed manga is around £8 - £15. It adds up pretty fast.
Forbidden Planet do a lot of 3 for 2 on the manga that Viz license, so that helps a little.
But overall, I think it's expensive, and prices are only going to rise.

Manga here is around 15-20 USD... Australia is where highway robbery is the most rampant. And people wonder why the main bookselling chain went bankrupt

About 6€ for fully translated tank. (=7.8USD, ~640 Yen)

The paper quality usually sucks a lot, though.

non-mainstreamseries can be a lot more expensive.

Not super expensive but also far from cheap.

For comparison, novels usually go for about 8-12€, hardcover novels for 14-22€.

I live in Israel and it's quit expensive here. About 50ILS (=13.50$) for a regular volume which cost 9.99$ like One Piece, Nauto etc... Seinen mang a like Gantz or 20th Century boys which cost 12.99$ cost here about 65-70ILS (=17-18.50$) Big volumes like Vizbig cost here 90ILS (=24$) It's pretty annoying but we have to deal with it since we only have about 4 stores in the whole country which selling manga.

To be honest, the last time I bought a series from an actual comic/book store was about 2 years ago. And I spent about 39-50 dollars buying from them (because I tend to buy them in bulk).

Barnes & Noble is the last store I went to buy manga, and they ridiculously suck when it comes to pricing manga. A Yaoi (Gay-Homo) series for $0.99, but a regular shoujo & shounen series gets escalated to $7-$12. To me, the money is not a problem (I probably could buy the whole store if I wanted) it's just that they'll lose allot of teen buyers that way.

These days, I prefer buying series online. Not because it is cheaper, but because of larger variety. Bookstores these days are limited to what is popular which limits the buyer's reach on what they actually want.

Well i think they are about average... And quite expensive as well, they are cheaper than regular books(most of the time, 10-20US$) but the problem is the amount of volumenes and the fact that you read a manga faster than just a regular book... So it becomes expensive.

Only a few mainstream titles are translated in Greek language and they cost about 10 euros (13USD). The paper quality is pretty good though, better than Viz's at least. English translated manga cost 10-16 euros and non-mainstream manga rarely hit the shelves.

Hmmm The poll says quite expensive. I guess that's to be expected. I live in Thailand and manga here cost about 40-60 baht a volume. That's about a little over 1 USD. For me, it's pretty cheap comfort to fine. However, there are still many who view manga as excessive spending and say that it's too costly (while saying iPhone is affordable. what the hell?). Well, can't do anything about that. I'm just glad that here in Thailand, quality aside, we have considerably wide ranges of manga translated. Banzai.

I live in a non-English speaking country. (Thailand, like Sudsong, but I don't read thai) What of it is here, is not in English, so even if it were 50 cents, I wouldn't buy any.

I think prices are pretty cheap where I live. They may not be as cheap as Japan, but you have to consider the cost of license fees and translation. I live in Wisconsin (US), most manga is $9-$10, some of them are $12. I have a Barnes & Noble membership so I get 10% off all manga (and free 3-day shipping!), so I usually only spend $8-$9 per volume. I used to spend around $1,500 a year in manga, my buying has gone down lately so I only spend about half that now.

It's quite expensive in Portugal. It can get up to 10€ (13 dollars) each volume (and the bookstores only sell the mainstream series). We can order other series, but it costs way more. I've seen them asking 16€ (about 21 dollars) for each volume of a non mainstream series. The anime stores sell manga about the same price, even though they have some non mainstream. The mainstream series can get cheaper with them (6€, which is about 7,8 dollars and it's still expensive for any mid/low class family in this country), but it's usually around 8€ (10,6 dollars) to 10€. Since it's so expensive (I could buy manga if it was about 4€ or 5 dollars each volume), some anime stores even gave up selling it. So yeah... If we want manga here, we have to order it from Amazon or Ebay (and usually just the used volumes, since the new volumes together with the shipping fees for each volume is way too much. They should allow many volumes in the same package to lower the shipping fees...). I don't know any online stores that sell manga and can send it to my country.
Also, we don't have any manga publishers here, so even the bookstores have to order it from another countries. I've seen french, spanish and english editions here, even though the french and the english ones are in a much larger scale. The only series that is being translated to portuguese is Dragon Ball xD (and it's sooooooooo slow)

Cheap, I'd say. $3~4 average, and only 6 NT (~20 cents) to rent. BTW, shipping free when you buy enough <3. Used to be cheaper, but no complaints, other than the fact that I don't usually live here... And that I'm banned from renting manga (loophole is my bro can XD)...

Well, it's even cheaper for second hand manga especially in bulk, but since the payment and shipping methods all varies, too troublesome so I never bought any. Besides, they usually come from rental stores stapled and stamped.

Still, I'm lucky to born speaking Chinese. From the bottom of my heart I pity those who have to pay $10 for a small selection... by that I mean, my friends (and the past me).

Here in Germany one volume costs between 6 and 7 € average (although they are getting more expensive due to higher production costs). I think that's an okay price. English and Japanese manga are more expensive, in the case of Japanese manga due to shipping costs, but that's okay. Although my resolution for next year is to by less (physical) manga - I love physical books, but I have to expand my bookshelves on a regular basis and that's just a pain.

Where I live the cheapest manga I have ever seen must have been around 12 USD. But that was an exception -the usual price is around 18-20 USD. Expensive, right? That's why I seldom buy any manga.

I said average but to be honest, I'm not sure. I mean, what am I supposed to compare it to? What is the standard, reference price?

I'd say bordering average to expensive at about 10-12 CAD a book. A book that takes less than an hour to read and is mostly pictures (albeit fricking awesome pictures) should never cost as much as a paperback novel that can be twice as a long in page count and take several to many combined hours to read. In that sense it is expensive and why I when I have to pick between buying a cool manga or a even a decent fantasy novel, I always take the novel, it's just more entertainment for the buck.

None of those(Comics of any kind) sell where I live, If I were order my guess is, it be very expensive.

For me, "expensive" is relative to whatever income I'm pulling in at the time.

That said, I live in the U.S and manga prices can vary between $7~16 USD (not counting collections/omnibus/multipacks/etc) and thats not TOO expensive. Kinda.

The REAL problem is that some series drag on for sooooooooooooooo long that I flat-out refuse to buy/collect them (theres no way in hell I'm buying 50+ volumes of Bleach at $~10 USD each) or (in rare cases) they're simply dropped mid-series (the seven volumes of Keroro Gunsou I already bought got donated to the library; cause, guess what? I don't know Japanese and therefore can't finish reading the series! ).

Price? It really depends on the language. For some reason Taiwanese-printed chinese manga costs around SG$7 (about US$5.50). Locally printed chinese manga costs around SG$5 (US$4~) , but it uses recycled paper and has really poor bindings that tend to fall apart after a couple of years.

English translated mangas are the ones that typically costs a bomb to buy, it's around SG$11 (US$9~), give or take couple of dollars depending on the publisher. So I would usually stay away from those, despite the fact that I'm more comfortable reading manga in english :/

I've always bought chinese- translated manga to save my wallet... And I'll probably stick with that. Unless the eng-trans manga's price drops to a more reasonable level.

That sad fact is that I was born in Oregon, USA, not Japan or South Korea. ;P I am a lowly factory worker, and waste all the money I should be saving for my retirement on manga, but used copies of some works can be gotten quite cheap on Amazon, for as much as a few dollars, plus 3.99 shipping. But the ones I really want usually aren't available. *breaks down and cries* (Publishers seem to have terrible taste and choose the worst books to print, but maybe that is what the public wants.) I am probably weird.

(Sometimes I am really excited to buy a manga I really want but it arrives and I discover it is printed in French or German. *blush* I need to read the descriptions more closely. Wish I was smart enough to learn a foreign language. I have a few original Japanese manga, but it's not very satisfying.)

I earn 11.45 an hour. Just for your info. A livable wage here, used with discretion and my work is often fun.

(Yay! Tin-tin!)

in US money a normal pocket book would be around 7-15 US depending on the company
translated manga to my language would be around 8-10 depending on comapny
us/british versions would be around 13-15

if you compare it to other western comics here like Spiderman,X-Men,Star Wars comics,constant reprints of tintin, its extreamly cheap [they cozt like 10usd for around 60 pages each month and the belgium-french stuff can cost up to 25 if its "highbrow" popular shit like tintin]

In Canada, it costs around $10-$15 at Chapters, and I've spent a lot of money buying from them until I discovered Kijiji (a site where people post ads and you can meet up with them to buy stuff). So now I buy my manga that way for about $2 to $5.

I was actually gonna buy Yotsuba&! until I found someone on there selling it for $1.75. Another ad was of a comic book store that closed and was selling new manga for $2 each (they were still in their protective wrapping, too ^^).

And of course, there's always the library, which sells good condition to falling apart mangas at $0.50, or does deals like 3/$1 or even 10/$1 !

So yeah, I'm pretty lucky these days when it comes to buying manga. I only wish I was as lucky as when it comes to buying anime DVDs T_T ($15- $25 for a movie! I'm a jobless highschool student dammit!)

I'm from the Netherlands and English manga go for between 10 - 15 euros here in bookshops. Some a bit higher than that, some a bit cheeper. Dutch manga are cheaper, but the release is slow.
We have some online sellers that sell cheaply though. Archonia, for example, charges about €7-8 for a volume of One Piece. Now, I don't think that's very expensive.

I live in Singapore. Hence, I buy mangas for like $8? Some cheaper, some more expensive... Usually around $8... Is it called cheap or expensive? But I am still able to buy... so in my opinion, it is the same as buying a storybook but I havent buy mangas from websites before. I wonder why I didnt think of it before. Maybe it is more expensive?

£7 from the regular Viz line - that's probably the minimum around here - which is roughly the same as a paperback. A bit overpriced I think, but at least you can get it online with discounts or during 3 for 2 offers. Omnibus editions are a good idea, but I seem to prefer chucking my money down the drain in favour of having matching spines on my bookshelf.

It costs like $10 average here in New York, maybe a bit more now. In South Korea however, it costs like ₩4200, which is more or less 4-5 USD. I usually buy my manga in Korea since it's a lot less expensive there.

So why not get it down to the essential point: What does "relatively" mean?

1.: What do I want, good translation quality (=even readable sentences may be something great depending on the publisher, right? ), good paper quality, good editing, redrawn sfx?
2.: How much is the average income in the given country? (and I'm not talking about students, but actual working people )
3.: How does it compare to usual books?
4.: How does it compare to other countries?
5.: Is the price reasonable with the given market for manga -> obviously japanese publishers can go with much cheaper prices per volume if they sell 5-50(?) times what U.S. publishers would sell.

In my personal case, I'm a sucker for quality, so I usually buy the U.S. version of a volume, even if it's availlable from a local publisher. Twice the price (12-15 € for a viz volume in contrast to 5-7 € per local volume) and yet I think it's totally reasonable. And much better at that, I've seen more than enough local volumes with totally obvious redraws and totally lousy texts -> 2-3 € would have been more than enough for that garbage.

I live in Bangkok Thailand. Minimum wages is 250-300 baht(Thai currency)(=10 US$)per day(8 hours worktime) very low isn't it? Yes we are third world country. Average licensed or pirated manga prices here is 45-60 baht(1.5-2 US$), printed in newsprint paper, acceptable binding.It use to be 10-15 baht for one copy 20 years ago but that is the time when every j manga was pirated print.