Welcome to December! Our poll for this week comes from the mind of our member lalalarry. Now the "relative" part of this poll means you judge for yourself how and against what you're comparing the price to. And this is about the average case.

You can submit poll ideas here (and try to keep them manga/anime-related). We also welcome holiday-related poll ideas!
http://www.mangaupdates.com/showtopic.php?tid=3903

Previous Poll Results:
Question: Do you get angry when people criticize or make fun of a series that you love?
Choices:
Yes! I tell them off! - votes: 1140 (9.1%)
I get angry but don't react - votes: 2119 (16.9%)
I get mad and leave - votes: 224 (1.8%)
I reason with them and explain why I love it - votes: 3508 (28%)
I don't care what other people say - votes: 5551 (44.3%)
There were 12542 total votes.
The poll ended: December 1st 2012

(Excluding the people who don't care)
I actually expected more people to not react at all. Passivity and all that... But at least many people are reasonable!

A just ruler amongst tyrants

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).

The pen is mightier than the sword...and considerably easier to write with.

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€.

Quote from p3pelepe

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, ...

Omg, that's cheap it's around $11-$15 for me, so it's over a Rp1,000,000 (I could be wrong with conversion, but that is cheap).
Also, their are a lot of manga that cost even more, the large ones are easily over $30 😢

Their is an exception, and that is second chose, they are around the $2.5.
But strangely enough, second hand gets prices up to $100, other people would have heard of it. "Look this is out of print, so it just costs around $795... >:-( (yeah, it's the highest price I've ever seen for one manga volume).

Even after dead, we raise from the ashes for the sake of manga.

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.

Your drill is the drill that will pierce the Heavens!

I guess the price of manga in Indonesia is really cheap when you compare it to other countries but for me, it's expensive. It's more than what I have to pay for the price of food for a day. I used to be able to buy lots of manga on a whim, just to try out one shots or new titles but now I rarely buy any new titles, can't afford them. 🙁

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.

** "It's so warm that, Before the snow has a chance to stick, He melts it for me." **

The print quality sucks though. I still had some of the Indonesian translated(official, not fan-translated) Chobits. I tell you, the quality have been degraded over time. Back then the print design of the manga are similiar to the Japanese printed manga(whole double cover). I guess since Indonesia are a developed country. The publisher try to make manga more affordable by using cheap paper and ink