How hard/easy is it for you to obtain manga without the use of internet? Or is your only option buying from Amazon or importing?...

Question: Do you believe that accessing manga without the use of internet in your country or region is hard or impossible?
Choices:
Yes - votes: 7286 (43.5%)
It would take more money than I can afford - votes: 7411 (44.2%)
No - votes: 2058 (12.3%)
There were 16755 total votes.
The poll ended: July 31st 2010

A just ruler amongst tyrants

Haha, stop joking - I can get some of my manga in shops, but not in my city - I've got to drive to some bigger ones where I can get them and honestly - you can get a lot more in English....
You just have to use Tokyopop or amazon, but then again, there aren't that many mangas licensed. Without Mangaupdates & online manga I'd probably cry

It's not impossible for me, but it does become harder without internet. I order most online because it's way cheaper than in stores here, nor are the manga stores anywhere close to me.

But it won't stop me from buying, that's for sure~

I have no problem in France, there is many manga licenced here (around 20~30 mangas out each week). Sure, it's far from what you can find on internet but it's not bad 😛

The main problem, for me, is that lately they have started to release yaoï/shonen aï mangas...
I m not against but it's almost half of the weekly mangas now...

Unfortunately, there are very few manga titles available in my language. And getting all the manga I'm interested in from abroad (in English editions) would definitely be too expensive. To be honest, I hate reading from the computer screen - that's why, although it's no problem for me to get e-book versions of books I'm interested in, I buy them printed on paper. With manga it's impossible - without scanlations I would have to give up manga completely (which, I hope, won't happen).

I can buy a volume of manga with less than one dollar. But the translation is stiffed, the paper is not good, and there are only shoujo and adventure shounen. Most of the licensed series are manhwa.

its cold down here fam ~

You are in a good position... Do you know how many mangas are licensed in Hungary? About 4 or 5... I can't even order english ones through the net. If all the scanlation sites were to disappear, I couldn't get any manga.
Just so you know the situation here, Naruto is licensed in Hungary... You can buy the first 5 volumes... Thats plenty, right?

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It's not impossible for me, but it does become harder without internet. I order most online because it's way cheaper than in stores here, nor are the manga stores anywhere close to me.

But it won't stop me from buying, that's for sure~

Same here, online ordering is more or less the only method I use to buy manga simply because it's cheaper and more complete in terms of selection (the stores usually only carry the newest volumes of the most popular series and nothing else...).
I do buy them from stores from time to time but they have a very limited selection of what I want to read.

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Quote from Draconic

You are in a good position... Do you know how many mangas are licensed in Hungary? About 4 or 5... I can't even order english ones through the net. If all the scanlation sites were to disappear, I couldn't get any manga.
Just so you know the situation here, Naruto is licensed in Hungary... You can buy the first 5 volumes... Thats plenty, right?

We don't have have any Shueisha titles here(only some from shogakukan, like doraemon, detective conan, yaiba,inuyasha). There are series like Naruto, Bleach, but they are all published unlicensed 🤣

its cold down here fam ~

I am from a country where they don't sell manga, people usually have no idea what manga is or that those few "weird cartoons" u can find in tv are called anime... and personally i love the question:"manga? do u mean mango? wth? how can u read fruit? are u making fun of me?" and when i explain:"so... u are reading... comics... ?" (usually when u say comics in my country = comics for children >_>)

so for me the only way would be to purchase them from some english/french speaking(only foreign languages i know) countries and that means... definitely expensive... so i would be able to read what? one volume monthly maybe? cries

and i know how impatient i am, waiting for one chapter, so i cannot imagine waiting for whole volumes till they get licensed... ugh...

So if we are talking like totally without internet, that means i wouldn't be able even to purchase some through internet... than i would have no ide that manga exists most probably lol...

Good question. As for me it's totally impossible without the internet. All the manga I've bought was through YesAsia or other sites such as Amazon or eBay. Like dreamer00013 said, I would be totally lost without MU and online reading sites. There ain't that much of a licensed manga out there and when I want to buy a 1 volume manga, it's accessibility is hopeless and practically impossible to find (to buy). But guess what? I am almost always able to find it on an online reading site. As for the future? I don't think there will be any manga coming soon to my country. Yeah maybe Naruto or Bleach but that's about it... which is crappy.

As far as I'm aware, there's basically no manga in Israel other than the ultra popular titles.
And for those, I only know one place to get them.

I don't read the popular ones (most of them being shounen like Naruto & Bleach),
and I don't know Japanese.
If scanlations were to disappear, I would stop reading manga.
Simple as that.

I guess I could try ordering from Amazon, but it's very expensive and the quality doesn't seem to be worth it.
Not like there's such a big variety of licensed titles, either.

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If I had a fantasy self, it'd be a tentacle monster.

Impossible for me. Manga is not available at all where I live, neither in my mother-tongue nor in any other language. I visited the best bookstore in my country recently and was laughed at when I asked them if they have manga for sale. They didn't even know what it was, and were like "Is it something sold at a bookstore? Are you sure?"

So, if I wanted the English editions; I have to order from Amazon. It takes a month to ship if I choose the low-cost option. And the likelihood of the package getting lost is over 60%. I took out 3 orders from Amazon last year, but I only got one. The other was lost, so I was refunded. The third (and most expensive) never reached me, but Amazon refused to refund because there was no proof I hadn't received it (I don't blame them, though).
If I choose the high-priced, safe and efficient option, it costs $110 to buy 5 manga volumes at $9.99 each. $110 is equal to Rs. 11 500 (in my country's currency), according to the current exchange rate. That's almost a third of my father's monthly salary 😲

Under those circumstances, I can only afford to buy the manga that I really love. (And yes, I have bought about 30 volumes, despite all the trial and error.) If I don't have MangaUpdates as a data source, and online readers to help me check out the first few volumes to verify the story's worth, I will have no choice but to stop reading manga altogether 😢

It's not impossible for me when it comes to accessing manga (unless they aren't license).

Probably one of the few times I will purchase a manga (or two) is if the title is recently license or if the volumes are ahead of the scanlations.

Well, that's pretty much it.

See ya!

I think the most lucky country are certainly asian (Japan, Korea, Taiwan, China, Thailand). After that you find the country with many manga's publisher like Germany, Spain, Italy, US and France. And then the other with only one or two publisher (but mainly book, not especially mangas), and in the end those country where you can only buy from other country.

I think there could be a poll about the quality of the book too.
I mean some manga have a poor translation/paper quality, depend of the publisher.