The Angoulême International Comics Festival opens on Thursday March 17 in an exceptional context. Driven by the explosion of manga, the market has never been so flourishing. According to the latest GfK Market Intelligence survey, the sector’s 2021 turnover is close to 890 million euros, up 50% compared to 2020 and the number of copies sold has also exploded to 85.1 million. securities sold (+60%). In other words, comics, with 24% of the publishing market by volume – twice as much as in 2012 – have become the second most purchased type of work, just after works of general literature (25%).
This amazing health comes mainly from “the extraordinary dynamics of manga”, says the study. Indeed, their sales have doubled compared to 2020 (+107% in volume), but all the graphic universes show very strong growth: 34% for Youth comics, 20% for genre comics and 18% for comics . Only erotic comics are in decline.
The effect of the generalization of the Culture Pass, in May 2021, to all French regions has strongly boosted manga purchases
Camille Oriot, book consultant at GfK, notes “a phenomenon of self-feeding” : the proliferation of manga series and cartoons broadcast on television or on video streaming platforms or films, which are increasingly expected in theaters, are helping to retain new readers.
Editors’ delight
According to this expert, the effect of the generalization of the Culture Pass, in May 2021, to all French regions also strongly boosted manga purchases. The tropism for this genre – which sells 900,000 copies per week – is such that it has even erased the “Asterix effect”. Until 2019, each release orchestrated every two years of the adventures of the little Gaul metronomically inflated sales in the sector to the point where observers spoke of a year “with” or “without”. There if Asterix and the Griffin sold more than 1.5 million copies last year, the market remains up 49%, even if we exclude this album signed by Jean-Yves Ferri and drawn by Didier Conrad.
The last precise assessment dates from the Estates General of Comics in 2016 and reported 36% of authors living below the poverty line and 53% earning less than the minimum wage.
Because it is growing much more strongly than the publishing sector (itself having reached a historic growth rate of 20% in 2021), comics are a delight for publishers. Many are launching, diversifying or strengthening themselves in this sector, such as Editis for example.
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