Weekly Shounen Jump, the number one best-selling manga magazine in Japan, has fallen below 2 million copies in circulation for the first time in 40 years.
Quarterly data from the Japan Magazine Publishers Association (JMPA), published earlier this month, shows that the magazine's verified average circulation was 1,915,000 copies for the first three months of 2017. The latest circulation number represents a 4.5-percent drop over the previous quarter and is less than one-third of the magazine's peak circulation number in 1995.
The latest decline in circulation is a continuing trend which began in 2014 for the magazine. Prior to that year, Weekly Shounen Jump's average circulation numbers had stabilized at just under 3 million copies for nearly a decade. This recent decline does not necessarily indicate that the magazine is in financial trouble.
In July 2013, Shueisha published its first digital issue of Weekly Shounen Jump to commemorate the magazine's 45th anniversary. The next year, the publisher launched the Shounen Jump+ application, allowing readers to purchase digital copies of the magazine on their smartphones. According to Shueisha, the application has been downloaded more than 6.5 million times as of March 2017.
An industry survey published by the All Japan Magazine and Book Publisher's and Editor's Association (AJPEA) in February reports that combined physical and digital manga sales have been relatively unchanged between 2014 and 2016. While the overall manga market has been flat, there has been a growing shift from physical to digital publishing.
The AJPEA data shows that total physical manga magazine sales in 2016 fell 13 percent year-over-year to 101.6 billion yen, while digital manga magazine sales rose 55 percent year-over-year to 3.1 billion yen.
Weekly Shounen Jump will mark 50 years of publication in July 2018.
Weekly Shounen Jump Average Circulation (1977–2016)
Source: Japan Magazine Publishers Association
News submitted by D4XT3R
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