The publishing industry in Japan is seeing its first overall decrease in sales in the past four years. According to a recent report, 2022 has not been a very good year for the sales of print media which adversely affected the market.
On Wednesday, the All Japan Magazine and Book Publisher’s and Editor’s Association (AJPEA) revealed its report on the publishing industry in 2022. The report showed a decrease in the publishing market by 2.6% in 2022, bringing it to a value of 1.63 trillion yen ($12.59 billion).
Compared to 2019, the market has shown an increase in 2022 by 5.7%. The print market fell by 8.6%, but the digital market increased by 63.2%.
While the market continued to rise every year after 2019, the decrease in 2022 can be attributed to the print market, which decreased by 6.5% to a value of 1.12 trillion yen ($ 8.72 billion). The digital market continued to rise by 7.5% to 501.3 billion yen ($ 3.87 billion).
While digital media takes up about 30% of the publishing market, digital comics occupy 89.3% of the digital market. Compared to 2014, the sales of digital comics have increased by five times.
Splitting the print media, the sales of physical books were reduced by 4.5% and periodicals (magazine books and manga volumes) by 9.5%. Monthly periodicals decreased by 9.7%, and weekly periodicals decreased by 5.7%.
The report cites the decrease in sales of manga volumes as the main reason for the reduction in the sales of periodicals. AJPEA will release a detailed report on the manga industry on February 25.
Source: Hon.jp News Blog
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