Question: why do you guys think Jump is struggling with having successful first volumes? This year in particular, the only newbie from a non-veteran that sold over 10k for its first volume is Mashle while Undead, Magu-chan, Roboco sold under 10k for its first week and it looks like it'll be the same for Phantom Seer. Those 3 got reprints and Undead is obviously successful now but I wonder why it's been hard for first volumes for new mangakas to get over 10k? Are the new stories just unappealing to audiences? I get Jump axes most stories they debut in the magazine but I'm just focusing on the sales since 10k for a first volume is seen as a success now
Audience and passiveness.
Jump's circulation keeps decreasing by every quarter, which means less and less people read the magazine now, which is obviously logical to happen given the amount of juggernauts the magazine doesn't have anymore. The issue with this is that, what you'd find logical to do in this situation is to release new and appealing stuff that can take over the place of those already finished series. But instead, and for some reason, we have kept getting serializations that keep dragging on without any sings of improvement be it on popularity or sales. And yeah, I'm referring here to the U19 meme and how keeping that quick and aggresive system could be actually better for a magazine that needs attractive series that reanimate its current state. The fact that as of now we have series that are going for 4, 5 or 6 volumes showing no actual sign of catching wider audiences just means there will be less new serializations that could try to recover that audience. That is, the longer you keep a series/product already known by your audience, the quicker the interest of the magazine will be lost. You can't just force your audience to read something for 40 chapters until it finally ends. The audience will reduce their interest to just a few series that they may be able to skim without even buying the magazine, and call it a day.
Is letting series stay for a good while to see if they improve something that could actually work? Yeah, but I don't think it has been working at all, and results and numbers are clear proof of it. I think it's completely plausible to be more aggresive, to cancel stuff that doesn't show any signs of improvement by its second volume. No need to go all tryhard and have everything U19'd, but just keep stuff that actually gathers interest.
The best example you can put here is Jump+, a platform that has both hits and flops, since Kaijuu and SPYxFAMILY are not the only series on the platform, and there's quite a lot of content that's appalling. But the difference relies in that there's a frequency of new serializations, and that is new series every single month. The audience in the platform knows that, even if 4 out of the 5 series from X month are bad, Y month will bring 3 new series which may have something they may enjoy, and hence the platform maintains a value the magazine doesn't by overextending series. People may not remember, but J+ has a lot of its juggernauts also ending soon (Jigokuraku, Abyss Rage, Boukyaku Battery, Akuma no Memumemu-chan...), but given the platform keeps releasing new and constant content, I think the transition will be way easier.
Of course the argument of
they can't be picky because they're losing big series exists, but I just think that's more of a reason to keep trying new stuff. And honestly, we have examples already of series that are successfully landing to discard the idea of needing God knows how many volumes until the series show results or end.
I think the idea of "waiting" is something that could work in a few cases, but still it won't make up for how the magazine currently is, which is just losing more veteran series and losing an audience that may not stay with the current content it offers. And saying
just serialize actual good stuff is an easy and stupid answer to the problem. Bring new content, and try new stuff. Even if you end up becoming some kind of revolving door, it's just what I think the magazine needs until it finds stability.
