Before I answer this, I´m gonna clarify some points:
1.-Before I respond, I should say that I didn´t ever bring up One Piece into this argument lol.. So idk why some users have brought it up, but I never did, I still think KnY is over hyped lol..
2.- So.. Maybe I guess I shouldn´t use the word
cannibalizing because it sounds like it takes 50% off the sales of manga lol. But cannibalizing sales
does happen.
Why do you think movie studios or game studios don´t release movies/games the same week blockbusters like Marvel movies or AAA games get released?
Unless you are a very niche film or game whose audience is still gonna watch your movie you avoid the week like the plague.
Even Marvel spaces their own releases, they try to put their movies at least 4 months apart of each other, maybe to avoid viewers fatigue..
Here´s the definition of Market Cannibalization:
Market Cannibalization happens when the introduction of a new product causes a decrease in the sales of another product within the same company.
Instead of applying this to only Shueisha I´m gonna talk about the entire manga industry.
Anyway, with this in mind it´s just obvious that market cannibalization is a reality of not just the manga industry but every industry.
As I said there's a reason every movie studio spaces their releases and so do video game studios.
3.- Now let´s talk about the concept of
Zero sum game which is very important to understand market cannibalization:
In a nutshell zero sum game means that "whenever someone wins something someone losses", it's true for a lot of games.
An example I can make to make this WSJ related is the TOC since it is a pretty clear zero sum game
.
Each week the series in WSJ "Fight" for readers' votes, there is a finite number of readers' votes, and they can only vote for their top 3 favorite series (Or to be more precise that chapter week) so in this case 3 series get a vote, the other 15 or so series in the magazine don't. Pretty easy concept to understand. 3 series "win" 15 "lose".
Some economic experts debate that economics isn´t a zero sum game, some say it is..
In my opinion (and a lot of experienced economists) it is, and if it is then any market can be considered a zero sum game.
You can check a reddit thread I read a long time ago regarding this to make your own conclusions.
4.- Sorry
@Buranchi , I know this is off-topic, I will try not to bring up this "Cannibalizing sales again".
All that being said, I'm gonna start replying.
First, as I said, I didn´t even bring up One Piece into this, if this was hinted towards me lol.
Second... That statement wouldn´t make sense, so no, I wouldn´t say that.
I wouldn´t say KnY is unworthy of beating One Piece if it was indeed cannibalizing sales, One Piece in its time cannibalized sales too (And still does to a lot of series).
I truly don´t care about the series I was taking about, I was just pointing out the obvious
The one series I care for which you mention is One Piece and I never said anything about OP sales being cannibalized by KnY, in fact I think One Piece has already a super established fanbase, so KnY has very, very, very low chances of cannibalizing its sales, but I simply don´t think that's true for other younger series, lots of people just jump shark to the next popular thing, e.g. let´s suppose they were following MHA, then KnY got popular and now they are reading that, in the other hand OP as I said already has an established ¨peak¨ and sure its sales are still dwindling but I would not say it´s because of KnY mostly because probably people got bored along the way maybe.
If you had concrete data from those exact numbers we could talk about it.. But I don´t think we do.
Still, even if we did, certainly Death Note took sales away from those series, it´s just math.. I´m not saying it was a HUGE cannibalization, but that´s how it goes.
I'm gonna simplify this:
Imagine that back when Death Note (Along with all the other titles you mentioned) was being published there was 80 people in Japan, each with only 400 Yen to spend.. (Which is roughly enough for 1 volumes at the time).
You provided 8 examples of successful titles of the time,
OP, HxH, Prince of Tennis, Eyeshield 21, Naruto, Bleach, Gintama, Reborn, in this hypothetical example every title is selling 10 volumes (So 10 citizens of Japan buy each title).
But then Death Note starts getting serialized! And some people love it and want to buy its first volume... But they only have 400 Yen, so what happens? They will no longer be able to buy the other manga, so let´s say 1 reader of each manga decides to buy Death Note now, every manga has only 9 volumes sold and DN has 8 sales.
I know it sounds ridiculous, but this is how economy works, in a grand scale, obviously there is not 80 people in Japan, and obviously their income is not 400 Yen, but you get the point.
The point being is that whenever there's a finite resource (Be it money or time) and a consumer has to decide on how to spend it the product that is bought "gains" a sale and the product that doesn't get bought "lost" a sale.
Also, as I said, it's not like KnY is totally taking away all the sales from other titles, other factors (covid19, readers getting bored, readers dying... too many factors to count) are also contributing to it obviously.
I understand your arguments too guys, you are probably thinking that instead of people just giving up on a series they spend an extra 440 Yen to buy the new volume of Kimetsu, and that's certainly possible,
in fact in a lot of cases that happens.. But I'm positive that there's also some people that has stopped to buy a series to continue buying other series (In this case KnY).
There's also the other argument that people that bought KnY wouldn't have bought other mangas, sure that could be the case too. Maybe new readers got into it, who knows, but that doesn't mean KnY took some sales out of other titles.
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To finalize my argument I'm gonna provide some actual numbers collected by the Japan Book Publisher Association itself, you can check this link here:
You can go to chapter 4 and check the date for yourselves, or here is a tl,Dr: Across all age groups surveyed (Out of 2,459 people surveyed)
An average of 49% read one book or more (so 51% in average don't), that's not really a super important statistic, we all knew there is a finite number to the population of Japan anyways, which is the majority of where manga readers come from, obviously.
More interesting is the next statistic provided, which is the amount of money they spend in books per month:
15% average across all ages don't buy any books,
an astonishing 37% of surveyed people spend less than 1,000 yen per month in books! (BTW that's roughly enough for 2 JUMP volumes, so gee.. If an average reader was buying say One Piece and Detective Conan and is now interested in buying the KnY, he/she has to either spend an extra 300 Yen per month OR stop reading OP or DC)...
An average of 27% of readers spend 1,000-2,000 yen per month on books (That would be 4 JUMP manga volumes per month btw).
So yeah, my "cannibalizing" sales argument looks like it very, very likely is true, considering that 15% of Japanese readers don't buy any books (I assume they ask their friends for their volumes..) and 37% only buy 2 volumes per month.
To be honest I had no idea of these numbers before doing this research, but it didn't matter if the average Japanese spent 1,000 Yen per month or 5,000 yen per month, my point would have still stood anyway, since money is a finite resource there was bound to be a part of Japanese readers that stopped buying certain series to buy others (e.g. Kimetsu).
Also please.. Don't give the "that's a very low surveying sample" argument.. Sure.. it could be considered low, go ask the entire population of Japan if you'd like I doubt is gonna change percentages considerably.
Also if you are wondering, yeah the JBPA takes "manga" into consideration in its statistics. I wasn't completely sure about this since they don't really mention the word "manga" or "comic" much in their data, but I compared total book sales between these 2 sources:
The AJPEA said that "Estimated sales value of paper publications (total of books and magazines in which AJPEA explicitly confirms it took manga sales into account) in 2019 was 1,236 billion yen" and the JBPA states that in 2015 total book and magazine sales was 1,522 billion yen. So that comparison proves the first source, JBPA is also taking "manga sales" as "book sales".
So, to summarize all this super long post:
I just provided concise information that a huge % of readers in Japan spend less than 1,000 yen per month in books, for a lack of a better term I'm just gonna call this 37% "normies", they buy less than 2 manga volumes per month.. So do you guys still think Kimetsu No Yaiba didn't cannibalize sales from other volumes? Specifically from this group of readers, I can only assume that yes, Kimetsu took some sales from them.
Also, again answering 101nemesis question once more, "
So does the cannibalizing effect only happen for a select few series whose decline needs a more convenient reason?"
Previously I said that it doesn't but now I'm gonna answer this question with a new perspective, which I think is quite valid too.
Kimetsu no Yaiba is an action manga shonen, it's waaaaaaaay more likely to take aways sales from other shonen action manga than say a super niche title or maybe a more artsy manga like a Inio Asano manga.
So in a way, yes I also think that Kimetsu most likely would be taking aways sales from shonen action manga, I'm not saying the other series aren't popular and thriving in their own ways, but yeah.. Kimetsu is surely taking sales from them.
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Also I'm not gonna continue this argument, as it is almost completely off-topic, I already provided all the points I wanted to convey. If unlike me, you think the economy is a non-zero sum game (Which is that new stuff doesn't take sales from other stuff) then I won't be able to convince you anyway.[/
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