ICv2, a prominent US pop culture business media outlet, has reported a 7% decline in the North American comics market for 2023, with total sales reaching $1.87 billion (approximately 290 billion yen). The survey covered both the US and Canadian markets and included booklet-style comics and book-style graphic novels, featuring American comics (Ame-Comi) and translated Japanese manga.
Sales figures indicated $410 million (about 64 billion yen) for comics and roughly $1.46 billion (about 225 billion yen) for graphic novels. Notably, while Japanese works primarily appear as graphic novels, the specific share of translated Japanese manga within the overall market was not disclosed.
This downturn marks the first significant contraction in six years, following a steady growth trajectory from $925 million in 2017 to 2022. ICv2 attributes this decline to the waning of stay-at-home demand driven by the COVID-19 pandemic, which had previously spiked sales in 2021 and 2022. Despite the reduction, the 2023 market value remains about 70% higher than in 2019, suggesting that the pandemic-induced expansion has been largely retained.
The market analysis also underwent substantial changes, partly due to ICv2 now conducting the survey independently after their previous partner, Comichron, lost access to data from Diamond Comic Distributors. ICv2 has substituted this with estimates from ComicHub, a random survey of comic specialty stores, and Circana BookScan for bookstore distribution.
Moreover, digital publishing sales, which accounted for just under 10% of the total until 2022, have been excluded from the current survey. This exclusion is due to the challenges in accurately capturing digital subscription sales, despite the relatively small market for downloadable digital sales. Consequently, the $1.87 billion figure solely represents paper publishing.
In comparison, Japan’s market for manga books and magazines was 210.7 billion yen in 2023. This indicates that, when considering only paper publishing, the North American market surpasses Japan’s market for comics and manga.
