AltJapan: Manga Artist Salaries

May 31, 2011

Manga Artist Salaries

Top 100 Manga Artists Make Average of 70 Million Yen, Rest Make Average of 2.8 Million Yen (Yucasee Media)

Thinking of becoming a rich and famous manga artist? These stats might give you pause.

In 2009, some 5300 tankobon (volumes of a manga series) were published in Japan. The top 100 averaged a whopping 70,000,000 yen in royalties for their artists -- that's about $900,000 a volume annually for the top performers. Not bad! Sounds like a pretty good living.

But what about the remaining 5,200 artists out there? Their average annual royalty income was just 2.8 million yen -- about USD $35,000. For a year of work. Not counting expenses, of which a manga-ka has many. Not exactly conducive to a rockin' lifestyle, especially if you're living in one of the world's most expensive cities. And remember, that's the AVERAGE. Which means a significant amount are making significantly less than that.

The bottom line? It's extraordinarily difficult to earn a "middle class" standard of living as a manga artist. (Added 6/1: As mentioned in the comments, it's estimated one has to sell 120,000 copies of their works to even match the average salaryman's annual income.)

14 Comments

A man is not a thousand :eng101:

Posted by: Avery | May 31, 2011 at 12:30 PM

Er...no, you mixed 万 and 千. Their average royalty payments were 280万, or 2,800,000 -- about USD $35,000.

Posted by: randomcommenter | May 31, 2011 at 01:02 PM

Thanks for the catch! 猿も木から落ちる、as they say: "even monkeys fall from trees." And I am nothing if not a monkey.

Posted by: MattAlt | May 31, 2011 at 01:30 PM

Not a very good summary of the original Japanese. First, it does not say "$900,000 a volume", but rather per person. Second, it no where says the lower rung got "$35,000" per volume. Again, it is per person. It only says that artists must publish more than one volume a year and sell more than 120,000 copies of all their volumes a year to make a good living.

But there is a lot missing in the original article as well. First, this is "inzei" or royalities, not "genkoryo," which is what artists get for first publishing their work in magazines. Second, it does not mention all the other income if you happen to get a bit of merchandizing or secondary use deals. Third, it does not mention that most artists producing serialized work (especially once a week) have to hire and pay for assistants--which comes out of their fees. I should stress that it is the assistants that often get the lowest salaries (and thus many artists do both: work as assistants for others while also doing their own work).

Posted by: Aaron Gerow | May 31, 2011 at 08:53 PM

Well, I read that even payments that artist get from magazines has not increased since the late 1980's

http://2chan.us/wordpress/2011/04/21/discussion-translation-kentaro-takekuma-x-ken-akamatsu-part-5/

^
Its a massive interview but extremely informative.

Everybody has been sounding the drums that Manga is declining with no end in sight and the article Matt posted is reinforcing it.

Posted by: Dave | June 01, 2011 at 12:05 AM

"Not a very good summary of the original Japanese. "

Why thank you, Aaron!

Actually, you're right and you're wrong. It was probably bad to say "per volume," as that assumes each author has but a single volume out (which some do) and this is more about what they earn in royalties altogether. I fixed that and thank you for pointing it out. But the genkoryo (per-page rate) doesn't really figure into this because, as discussed in the other articles linked above, it isn't really possible to make a living off of genkoryo for most artists. It's low to start with and as you say, the most popular (=busy) artists need to hire assistants, which eats it up even further. Tankobon royalties are how manga artists really make their money.

Selling 120,000 volumes of anything is a tremendous achievement. If that's what it takes to make the average salaryman's salary (which is what the Sato Shuho, the manga-ka being quoted, is saying), it's yet another example of just how difficult it is to make a solid living in the industry.

The original Japanese article actually does discuss merchandising, albeit obliquely. It states that the author of One Piece made 1.3 billion yen (!) in royalties out of a total yearly income of 3.1 billion yen (!!), the other part not clarified but undoubtedly consisting of licensing/merchandise deals. But this isn't really a realistic portrait of what the average manga-ka is making. There are a huge number (perhaps the majority) of manga that don't have any sort of merchandise deal.

Posted by: MattAlt | June 01, 2011 at 08:30 AM

I'd assume its mostly about volume and less about the price of your works. Yes the top artist get high price points, but for the average artists, price points are pretty even. You have to have lots of transactions.

Posted by: draw people - ashley | June 11, 2011 at 03:46 AM

Actually, I hear it's not quite as expensive to live in Tokyo if you eat like the natives (which I assume these mangaka do) because the cost of living was calculated using how much it cost to have an American-style steak dinner every night (obviously more expensive in Japan). But I heard it at an anime convention panel about living in Tokyo.

Posted by: Quibble | June 18, 2011 at 09:25 AM

I'd take anything you hear about Tokyo at an anime convention with a grain of salt. (Perhaps whoever was speaking confused steaks with the "Big Mac index" that the Economist uses to explain the relative power of currencies.) We're talking about annual salaries, not a cost of living index. That's a whole different ballgame.

Posted by: MattAlt | June 19, 2011 at 07:20 AM