I ask you, why are you acting like HQ has "declined", when any sales drop is due to digital and, despite having no anime for a few years now, it's still been neck to neck with MHA for the most popular modern title? (OP is discounted for obvious reasons)
Also, profitability is a major motivator for canceling series, not raw sales. Toriko was a series Shueisha tried to basically bury after the anime/movie/other stuff all bombed. It being rushed is systemic of its inability to maintain a merit to Jump's business as an IP, plain and simple. Black Clover meanwhile has an anime which continues to do decently well, a decent amount of merch and is treated as something of a "No 2" to MHA in Jump's roster. There is no reason currently to cancel it.
Talking about digital sales is like beating a dead horse at this point (poor horse). We have no data to prove WSJ series are posting good number digitally. HQ suffered declines in sales similar to what Toriko/Bleach did. Its a pattern and patterns don't lie.
Why we can't talk about digital sales? Because it's unreliable. The overall digital sales in the industry is more than 50%. That is the industry average meaning digital has overtaken print. But Shueisha chief has stated twice, in two separate years, that 30% Shueisha manga that are sold are digital. That's below the market average. WSJ alone can be well below that number.
Also, people who've been buying physical volumes of HQ or an older series won't just stop and go digital.
Someone brought up the music industry being digitalized as a reference. Do you know how long it took for that transition to happen? Digital forms of music started in mid 00s. It only just got traction in the last 5 years with YouTube and Spotify being added into the picture. But even in the music industry, older artists typically sell more physical copies of their music than digital. If you wanna track sales every week for music (for US), go to "hits daily double". Keep an eye on the physical and digital sales of an artists from the older generations when they release a new album (take metal, rock artists, if you want a genre), you'll almost see physical vastly outsell digital.
Manga industry is not even close to being digitalized fully yet. Manga plus is a great start but there's so much more to do before you can compare digitalisation of these industries.
If profitability is a major factor, then Toriko should have stayed. It sold a butt load of merchandise. It was marketed as the third biggest series with OP and Naruto. Bleach was pushed 4th despite having a vastly superior media franchise. But at the sign of weakening, WSJ had no issues with rushing it to end. It's what they do especially when the Anime had ended.
Why are people acting as tho BC is in a safe bubble with its average sales? Series with far higher sales have been rushed to end. WSJ have Jujutsu, Chainsaw Man and maybe S8 to lean back on. Jujutsu already seems to be a bigger success than BC pre-anime.
Its a VERY competitive time in WSJ. Toriko was canned at a time which was far less competitive.
