The publication of manga chapters in magazines that are released on a weekly, biweekly or monthly basis is a fascinating aspect of the manga industry and something that I think manga fans need to be aware of. I’ve spoken before about manga magazines but there were several aspects that I deliberately left out due to a combination of a lack of information as well as the fact that I believed that they deserved an article of their own. Having gained a little more confidence on the subject matter since then, I thought it would be interesting to take a look at manga magazine reader surveys and why you should know about them.
Let’s start with the easiest question that one can ask about the topic “What is a manga magazine reader survey?”. Simply put, it’s a survey that is included in a magazine to determine the popularity of series. Readers are expected to fill out the survey and send it to the publisher after they’ve filled out the information. While the use of these surveys are commonplace in the manga industry, the example I’ll be looking at predominantly is the survey from Weekly Shonen Jump since it’s the example that I have and the one I could get the most information about.
As you can see from the image above, the survey lists the series that are currently running in the magazine, in this specific example there are 26 series to pick from, and the reader is asked to list their top three chapters from this issue. Following that, the survey is sent to the publisher, in this case Shueisha, where the editors do a count from a random sample of 1000 surveys to determine a ranking of all of the series from most popular to least popular.
Understandably, appearing consistently low in the rankings dramatically increases the risk of your series getting cancelled, particularly new series. According to Bakuman, a manga about a mangaka and a gensakusha working on series in Weekly Shonen Jump, the threshold for a manga to be considered popular is 20%. However, he goes on to point out that Akamaru Jump, a seasonal spin-off that contains one-shots from predominantly newcomers and is now known as Jump Giga, contains less series which means they’d need more than 20% to be considered popular.
Another interesting component to this survey is that it appears you can win prizes. On the page to the right of the survey, which you can see a little of in the two pictures above, is a list of items which also seem to have a number that people can win beside them. Using my limited skill in Japanese, I was able to translate 希望の賞品, as seen in the first picture, as being the desired prize. I presume you fill in the number of the prize you’d like to win while also circling one of the two Shonen Jump associated prizes. Whether filling out the survey is sufficient for entering the draw is something that I haven’t figured out yet, particularly since there seem to be further questions on the reverse side of the survey. If anyone manages to successfully translate this survey, I’d very much appreciate leaving a comment explaining more about the survey.
Reader surveys are very important when it comes to the manga industry and whether series continue or not. Therefore, I think it’s important that manga fans are aware of this. Let me know your thoughts on manga magazine reader surveys, whether you were aware of them before, what else you know about these surveys and any additional information you might have on the topic.
Hopefully you have found this article interesting and informative and, if you wish to seek any of the works I mentioned, don’t hesitate to use amazon.co.uk and amazon.com for all of your needs!