Short survey/poll: Do you buy manga?

[kn1000a]

[NOTE: If you have already answered this poll, feel free to ignore this post ]

This survey was posted on Reddit yesterday and I am posting it here as well for the readers who don't use/frequent Reddit.

TLDR: I am doing a personal analysis on the topic of manga vs. piracy. Here is a short poll to complete, it's quick and anonymous so it won't take much time. I'm simply collecting as much data as I can.

While this won't be very different in term of demographics from r/manga, since the MD website operates on fan scanlations and free-to-read methodology, it is still worthwhile to explore why readers are interested in sites like this.

You can also read the Reddit post for more information. If you have any questions feel free to contact me here or on Twitter @kn1000a.

(Also do let me know if there are more neutral-bias manga discussion sites - meaning they only discuss the manga rather than where to read them. I am planning to post this to MAL as well which in theory should be a neutral place since they don't promote a reader site, but I'm surprised that it's actually kinda niche compared to the hundreds of aggregator sites out there.)

Thank you for considering.

EDIT: some minor grammar mistakes.

 

[Drifter]

Complete the poll but still wanted to post here.

Aside from being free, MangaDex has a better selection of manga, better reader, better favorites system and better community features than any paid site I know of.

My ideal paid site would be MangaDex with a coin based system like Lezhin and pricing that lets me read most of what I follow now. Whoever runs Lezhin doesn't understand that most of their comics just aren't worth what they charge.

I buy my favorites there and through sites like comixology but I couldn't afford nearly as much as I read.

 

[kn1000a]

Yes, completely agree especially the coin system. I visited their website and honestly the idea was great: purchase coins and then be able to spend the coins on manga you like. However their selection is very tightly knitted (it's mostly BL from what I saw), so they are obviously not focusing on diversity. Unfortunately I do not have factual data on how many people are into what genres, which make the argument that "their selection caters only to a small portion of the readers" a lot harder to claim. It will be something I'll discuss in the analysis.

Thank you for participating!

 

[totallynotmike]

Personally i buy physical copies almost exclusively. It's kinda puzzling why you didn't put any emphasis on difference between digital and analog media purchase in that "survey". I don't have any hard data on this, but extrapolating from personal experience and hunch feelz, it looks like there's statistically not-insignificant number of people to whom that difference might matter. And you seem to be interested in online / stream reading mostly.

(unless i've missed something in the survey or here, in which case, apologies)

 

[zetsubouzanto]

I read , it's my hobby , if i can't read it free then i will buy the necessary copy to fuel my sickness physical or digital .

Recently my reading sickness have grown to binge-reading . Man with all psychopathic criminals out there i still have enough free time to read , and enough pocket money to buy read-material .

In case of manga there are some exception , like berserk , doraemon , i have all released physical copies , jap / eng / ina version included .

 

[seekermoc]

I think there's a big problem with paid digital manga right now, where no subscription service offers any reasonable selection. I can get ~90% of the manga I'm interested in just from this site. With current commercial sites, each one has maybe 5%, and adding up all available commercial sources would still only account for <20% of the series I read. Pay-per-chapter is a no-go, as given the quantity of manga many of us read, even $1/chapter would get really expensive really quick, and still wouldn't fix the commercial availability issue. I'd gladly sign up with somebody for $20/month who can do for manga what iTunes did for music or CR did for anime (except perhaps with CR themselves, their manga service is pure garbage).

Physical manga is absurdly expensive and would fill up rooms of bookshelves real quick, so while I will occasionally buy a copy to support the authors of my favorite series, that's not a complete solution.

Edit: For example, there are currently 25 official English volumes of Attack on Titan, costing ~$10 each, so $250 for a series you could binge over a weekend, making it objectively much more expensive than pretty much any other form of media.

 

[DjAlexDubCheck]

Short answer: Yes

 

[kronix]

I dont buy manga, I would LOVE to start a collection.. however, I would only do this when japan steps the fuck up and releases new works already translated from the get go. I wish they hired their own professional translators and did multiple language releases without a middle-man or middle-publisher doing the work... it takes too much time from when the original was released

 

[DarkDjango]

I buy most of the series I read online, especially the smaller series. I keep double posting when I hit submit I don't know why?

 

[DarkDjango]

I buy most of the series I read online, especially the smaller series.

 

[ethers]

i'd like to see the result of this survey. the choice is a bit hard for me. i buy things to support the creator only if i think it is worth (good, expensive is ok).

 

[moniker]

I only do if I think its worth it to have it physically and if I really want to support the mangaka. But Im too broke for it even if I wanted to badly. Theres too much merch to want from anime/manga alone that I just give up entirely owning something. I can only drop earned money on games. Maybe someday when I have enough cash to spend

 

[Searia]

I read a lot of manga online, ridiculous amounts.
I buy manga when I see series that I want to support, I don't have enough money to purchase the hundreds of manga I would.
When I badly want one or want to support the mangaka, I go into bookstores to find the series and purchase it.
(Otoyomegatari, I'm slowly buying all of them.)

 

[qwuzzy]

I'll only buy if I have the money to do so and I want to add it to a physical collection.

 

[goronyanpai]

Buying is a form of support, and it must be done. Especially this field is not broadly hit like novel literacy.
I know it feels sick to spend money, especially if there are many other needs. I love reading so I definitely buy it.

 

[readmanga]

I semi-regularly buy digital manga from Renta and Sublime - prices are usually $7-9
I buy it because it hasn't been scanlated elsewhere

I bought used copies of What Did You Eat Yesterday? as well, for similar prices
Admittedly my purchases were spurred by not being able to find the series online
But I'd buy more used manga if it was cheaper and easier to find!

I plan on buying more used physical books in the future - I would love to own physical copies of Hakumei to Mikochi, Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service, Mushishi, FMA
My reasons are wanting to read the story, wanting to have high quality copies to reread, and wanting to supporting the author

But if a series never gets cheap enough, I'll never own it
One 10 vol manga series = $90
Three different fiction/fantasy trilogies = $90
^ There are other books I need to buy

 

[goronyanpai]

@readmanga
I feel you.
The price is getting higher each time, it has not been calculated from the currency conversion between each country. It's sickening me.

But it said that the tax will be raised in Japan next year, if I think about it..it's includes comic production, right? so if it's raised, prices will go crazy.

 

[Alsimec]

I'm ashamed to say the only time I've bought manga was when I'd just binged Maoyuu Maou Yuusha and saw that I could only read the rest by buying the digital manga. The shipping cost for physical manga is preposterous where I live, and honestly fan scanlations just makes it so damn easy to not think about the fact that there's an author who needs to pay the bills too. Then again, the vast majority of scanlated manga would never get an offical translation anyways, which is a shame seeing as the existence and popularity of sites like MangaDex means that there are MANY people outside japan who would be interested in buying translated manga. It feels like they have almost no sense for marketing outside japan... or maybe I should just be amazed at the fact that a single country can pump out such a huge number of titles at all.

 

[DominoSubmarine]

I buy digital manga when I can; Comixology has a decent selection. I can't afford much so I have to wait for drops in price. I also pick up used physical copies cheap when I can. Sites like MangaDex are a great place for a) finding stuff that I would never have found otherwise and b) testing stories that I'm not sure I'll like enough to buy. If official translations are available, I prefer reading those to scanlations, obviously, but there are so many stories I've read that I never would have heard of otherwise.

 

[Ryukizoa]


I only bought manga that available on my country. I used to buy manga a lot on my junior & high school days. Nowadays I rarely do it cuz most of the time I'm flat broke, lol
The manga that I bought are mostly popular series, like Detective Conan, One Piece, Attack on Titan, Yu-Gi-Oh, Bleach, Pandora Hearts, and others. Most of them isn't complete cuz there's no reprint here, so the only way to complete them is to read online.