Shonen Jump Editor-in-Chief: Shrinking Print Runs Made Up by Rising Digital Demand

Hiroyuki Nakano, the new editor-in-chief of Shueisha's Weekly Shonen Jump magazine, revealed through a livestream on July 31 that while sales of the print versions of the magazine are decreasing, sales of the magazine's digital version are increasing by just as much. He noted that the total sales of the magazine including both print and digital are only increasing. Nakano admitted that he is from the "paper generation," and still wants to increase the magazine's print sales. (39:28 in the video below.)



The Japanese Magazine Publishers Association (JMPA) reported in May that Weekly Shonen Jump had dipped in circulation to below two million. The verified average circulation number for the January-March 2017 period was 1,915,000. The manga magazine's circulation fell by about 91,000 from the October-December 2016 period when it was 2,005,833. The average circulation number for the July-September 2016 period was less than one third of the magazine's record circulation of 6.53 million in 1994.

The All Japan Magazine and Book Publisher's and Editor's Association report for the 2016 manga market also showed a 12.9% decrease in sales of manga magazines from 2015. 2016 was the 15th year in a row to mark a decline in sales for manga's print market. The print-only market is now about half of what it was in the mid-1990s. However, sales of digital manga magazines saw a 55% increase from 2015, and the digital manga market overall (including digital manga volumes) saw a 27.5% increase from 2015.