Amentar
Discussions about real things inevitably involve argumentation when people disagree. Simple fact of life.
...And if you find it rude to be called out for making stuff up, then either don't do that or defend your position better.
Disagreeing doesn't inevitably involve argument. Agreeing to disagree when things start to head in that negative direction is much more civil.
Being called out "I feel that you're either making this up or are severely misinformed, as this evidence contradicts your point" is a million miles apart from "you're basically making s**t up", which, aside from being very rude, was a flawed accusation in the first place.
To be honest, I thought you may well have been making your points baselessly also, as I know I'm not lying, and as you put it "we can't both be right". I'm not about to decide and accuse you of lying though, I might try to prove you wrong with facts, but to accuse you of lying would just be nasty and rude. I thought about it, and it hence occurred to me that we are simply speaking from different backgrounds. Yet more of a case that arguing is pointless.
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...you need to find a better explanation for the distribution methods, the paper quality choices, the way magazines are targeted at narrow demographics that people grow out of in a few years, the production volume, etc.
...And I'm a little baffled by how you could insist that crap doesn't make it to collected volumes.
I did say the paper quality choice is for cheapness.
In the case of the magazines, yes they're disposable, because they are in no way portable. They're huge, so you want to get rid of them easily.
But in the case of the volumes, I'd say they're not purposed for immediate disposability. People may do it, but that's not their purpose as such. They're for people already fans of the series to buy (re-read value), they cost more for the consumer to buy than the magazine for content, you'd have to wait until the chapters had aired in the magazine to buy them, the only people who'll buy them for a train journey are those who decided they don't want to continue reading that magazine, but do want to continue reading that series (such as the generation of adults who grew up reading One Piece, they likely don't want to sit there with a copy of Jump but may be continuing to read the series, in which case the individual volume will suffice).
The magazines targeted at narrow demographics tend to feature the series that don't go on for over 20 volumes, the majority of series don't go anywhere near that length, so someone can enter that target demographic and start a new series from chapter one, and leave it at the end of the final chapter, or long after it.
I never said that s**t doesn't get made into collected volumes, you even quoted me and managed to misread it.
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..but s**t doesn't last long enough
for the volumes ...
to be successful, or does if said s**t happens to hit a very good niche.
Now I've never read it, I weight a lot on the art work, so I wouldn't go for it in the first place, but clearly it's successful, so I would say the plot is either very good, or a very good example of a standard shoujo plot such that it appears to young teenage girls who in some years time will look back and wonder why they read it. I'd say it's hit a good niche with that market, as with 'Cheese!'.
I should also point out that the art quality is still miles better than most of the OEL manga I've ever seen, so it's not utter crap.
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You don't get to pretend that those buying merchandise are necessarily collectors and you don't get to exclude merchandising aimed at children. That's where most of the effort goes because it brings a decent return. Catering to otaku? Not so much. There is money to be made from otaku, yes, but their existence is a minor influence at best on the hows and whys of manga publishing.
You do like to tell me what I "don't get" to do, don't you? I do get to exclude children because we aren't talking about children, we're talking about adults, aren't we? I still mentioned them there anyway, the collectors are the Otaku and the Children, very very few other people would buy merchandise relating to a manga.
Let's look at the facts here: A lot of significant manga creators started making doujinshi, their market being otaku, and for themselves to lovingly create fan works, they also were otaku. Those creators did not all then go on to create works for otaku.
According to a survey of over 10,000 people 25% would be considered "otaku", this is seen as the development of "light otaku", people whose interests in it are not 'hardcore'.
The otaku market value is around 187 billion yen (this number is from 2007, I did have a more recent value but I can't find it right now).
It's the otaku market that the majority of non-child targeted anime publishers target, leading to profits, more merchandise, and yet more profits.
It's influence is certainly not minor.
Here's some more facts for you:
Even when you take the most popular manga magazine, Shounen Jump, it's issues actually sell at a loss. They want people to buy the individual volumes, for the anime to be made, and for the merchandise to be bought, and the best part? They're successful with their target demographic, young people, and also with otaku. They have both the markets likeliest to buy the merchandise.
Individual volumes generate profit in the first instance because they take minimal effort to produce (all the editing is done already), and they cost as much as a volume of the magazine.
The percentage of adults who read manga magazines is high (around 45%), but the percentage who read individual volumes regularly (those making profit for the publishers, and more likely to buy merchandise) drops to 35%, and if you take out "25% are otaku" then that leaves 10% of adults.
That suggests that only 10% of adults regularly read and support the manga industry.
This is of course assuming that all otaku read manga, which is not true, but it's not a huge amount that wouldn't at all. Certainly most would read a volume in a month.
Another interesting point is that in the case of children's manga specifically, though evidently in other age areas also, number of new people getting into a series in the first place is going down, because reportedly the stories are getting too complicated to simply pick up and read not from the start without getting confused and likely dropping the series very soon after. This is a point against people picking them up for a while and dropping them again at will 'like soap opera' as a standard, because more and more manga just aren't like that.
I'll agree there are magazines specifically for that, though.
Here are my references:
http://www.geocities.jp/laugh_man_is/tokubetu5.htm
http://matt-thorn.com/wordpress/?p=261
http://www.yanoresearch.com/press/pdf/863.pdf
http://www.inside-games.jp/article/2007/12/18/25855.html
http://www.cyzo.com/2007/09/post_40.html
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...it's important to remember that, for the most part,
those readers aren't Western otaku.
Yeah, I strongly agree with this, unfortunately I dropped the term 'western otaku' down to what the majority of western manga fans unfortunately believe is the case. True 'western otaku' are harder to come by.
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I dunno how things are in the UK, but the mainstream American comics are like a ******** metastatic cancer bent on eating your paycheck.
I think you're probably right. I'm not sure there's any easy way to get a regular issue of an American comic, or even a manga volume, but at least you can easily by the entire series of one in a book store, the same can't be said for the huge number of issues in American comics.
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...
Everyone shields their interests from the eyes of society; to do otherwise would be an imposition. (Ever bought a book in Japan? Chances are the cashier tried to give you a cover for it.)
...Otaku are otaku mainly because they fail at maintaining connections
beyond the smaller groups that share their interests. They're scorned for causing a breakdown in the social structure around them.
Yeah I know everyone hides their interests, and I have been given plenty of book covers, but I also know that otaku in particular have a bad label for, as you say, the breakdown in social structure they cause, so I know 'normal Japanese society' would rather not be even thought of as such, I was suggesting that one would rather someone see text in their hands if they happened to look, than panels.
This theory is baseless though, I've only my own observation and what I've been told to go by, no hard facts, so I won't push this further.
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I had a friend for a while who adored and collected Chibi Maruko-chan, but whose real passion was Japanese literature. She was in no way out of the ordinary.
She certainly isn't, but she only owns that items from that one series, so she's only given profit to that one series, which is more what I expect than her to be continually buying volumes and merchandise from multiple series, unless she was a child or teen.
