Publishers must now navigate a landscape where volume expansion no longer guarantees revenue growth.

The end of an eight-year growth streak: Japan’s domestic manga market has shrunk for the first time since 2017, falling 1.7% to ¥693 billion ($4.45 billion) in 2025 according to the Research Institute for Publications.

This marks a significant reversal for an industry that had demonstrated remarkable resilience, achieving seven consecutive years of growth and surpassing ¥700 billion for the first time in 2024.

Print In Freefall

The contraction is driven primarily by a catastrophic decline in print sales. Physical manga volumes plummeted 14.4% year-on-year, while manga magazines fell 12.7%. This collapse reflects broader trends across Japanese publishing: physical book and magazine sales dipped below ¥1 trillion for the first time in 50 years in 2025, representing less than 40% of the 1996 peak. Convenience stores continue reducing shelf space for periodicals, accelerating the magazine sector’s decline.

Digital Growth Decelerates

While digital manga technically grew 2.9% – reaching 76.1% market share for the first time – this expansion proved insufficient to offset print losses.

Crucially, digital growth slowed dramatically through 2025: from 4.6% in the first half to merely 1.5% in the second half. This deceleration follows three consecutive years of single-digit digital growth, suggesting the channel is approaching saturation in the mature Japanese market.

The Productivity Paradox

Despite shrinking revenues, publishers increased output significantly. New manga volume releases jumped 6.5% to over 16,000 titles – the largest annual increase since 2008.

Kadokawa exemplifies this trend: new releases rose 13% whilst total sales fell 10%. As the publisher noted, “the scale of sales per title has shrunk”. This oversupply dynamic, combined with rising production costs, is squeezing profit margins and forcing publishers toward IP diversification through anime adaptations and international expansion.

The View From The Beach

For publishing professionals, Japan’s experience offers a sobering case study. The manga market’s 44.8% share of total publishing sales remains substantial, yet the model of digital growth compensating for print decline may have reached its limits.

Publishers must now navigate a landscape where volume expansion no longer guarantees revenue growth, and where the absence of blockbuster titles – following the conclusion of My Hero Academia, Jujutsu Kaisen, and Oshi no Ko in 2024 – exposes the fragility of market dependence on individual hits.

This post first appeared in the TNPS LinkedIn newsletter.