Common misconceptions regarding Comic Market
Japanese blog Fanta-G had a pretty good post about the common misconceptions about Comic Market so I stole it!
1. Doujin is mostly about porn
Only 30% of the circles or so in Comiket deal in adult material
2. Doujin circles sell low quality books and make a huge profit
It varies depending on when you’re printing and the number of pages, but it costs 40,000 yen to 50,000 yen (US$400 to US$500) to print 100 copies of a 32 page book with a full colour cover. And since each book is usually sold for 500 yen or thereabouts, there isn’t much profits to be made. And after you deduct the cost of participating in the event and the transportation costs, you’re looking at a huge loss of money instead. Mainly only a handful of the more popular circles + a few others can actually turn a profit.
3. Copy books are made in small quantities to drive the price up
Copy books mainly have to be photocopied, folded and binded by hand. And there aren’t any discounts when trying to photocopy large amounts unlike offset books. It takes a lot of work to make them and they don’t have much in profits. Copy books are usually last minute stuff made after the printers’ deadlines so there isn’t much time to make them either, which is why there are so little of them.
4. Popular circles get special treatment being put on the wall sides
It’s not exactly special treatment but rather special measures in order to keep the inside hall from getting overcrowded and blocking the flow of the crowd. If a popular circle is placed in the islands the queues will completely block the pathways and become a huge mess. Also, if the circle on the wall doesn’t actually have much of a queue, they get moved back into the islands in the next comiket.
5. Popular circles sell tens of thousands of books every comiket
The event lasts for 6 hours, and if one person sells 1 book every 30 seconds and 3 people go at the same pace without stopping, the limit is still approximately 3000 books. There is also a limit to the amount of books that a circle can bring into their space.
6. These big circles seem to be handling wads of cash though?
They’re mostly 1000 yen (US$10) notes and small coins, best to look at them as one tenth of the amount that you see.
7. These books sell as long as they’re doing popular genres
When doing popular genres, it also means that a lot of talented people will be doing the same genre so if the book isn’t really eye catching it gets overlooked by people most of the time. On the other hand there are cases where doing those minor genres that are popular within certain groups of people can get a number of loyal fans and actually sell better than others.
8. The comiket administration allows overnight queuing
Overnight queuing is not allowed. People shouldn’t do it. The overnight guys managing the overnight queuing guys have nothing to do with the comiket administration. There have actually been concerns that if these guys get out of hand, comiket itself might no longer be able to be held at Ariake.
9. Can I go to the event in costume?
You’re not allowed to go to the event in costume, you have to register to be able to cosplay, and you’re only allowed to change in the changing room. There are a bunch of rules regarding cosplay in the catalogue.
10. Whatever, it’s still about making money right?
If it’s just about the money there won’t be 30,000 circles squeezing into that place to make money in such an inefficient way!
Via: Fanta-G
June 1st, 2008 at 11:56 am
Interesting. It’s at least cleared up a number of things - profits and booth placement in particular.
June 1st, 2008 at 4:26 pm
30%? Pfffffffffffffffft
June 1st, 2008 at 4:43 pm
I still find it baffling that so many people seriously believe that doujin circles actually make lots of profit. I suppose it’s because second-hand sellers build whole businesses on doujinshi (never mind that most doujinshika explicitly ask people not to resell their works), but still, just look at the damn book, think about how much money it must’ve took to create it, from ink and pens to printing, and then look at the price tag.
In any case, thanks for writing this up, next time I see misinformed people I’ll refer them to this post. It’s not easy to find such information in English.
June 1st, 2008 at 6:48 pm
So adult anime doujinshi only consist of 30% or so. And then those who go to Comic Market had gone through hell just to get there, buy stuff, and get out. IN SIX HOURS.
News about Japan centered around anime seems to get depressing everyday.
June 1st, 2008 at 7:39 pm
You should also mention the prices, and the fact that it’s pretty remote. If any of you go this summer, I hope to see you there.
June 1st, 2008 at 11:10 pm
From the perspective of someone who has sold as a circle at Comiket I can corroborate most of these points.
(3) Regarding copy books is especially ridiculous; people don’t make them to sell money, they’re produced either when you don’t have time to finish an offset or as a special extra for fans who take the trouble to come to the event in person instead of buying afterward via a specialty shop like Toranoana.
(4) It is exactly special treatment that places large circles against the outer wall, but as the post says, the treatment is warranted due to traffic flow issues. It would be hell to have a major circle anywhere other than at the perimeter of the hall.
(5) The math there is incorrect; major circles can and do sell upwards of 10,000 copies of their books on a single day at Comiket (people buy multiple copies of a book at a time, or single copies of multiple books, etc).
(7) Requires a bit more complex analysis than is given. It’s very hard to sell original work at the volume of parody, for starters, and the general consensus among artists is that following the popular trends of the season is where the money is at if you’re looking to maximize profit.
(10) It’s about making money for some circles (though not for the vast majority). Even for the “pro” circles Comiket is only part of a larger business strategy that consists of several other events each year and consignment sales at specialty shops, possible online digital sales, and other professional work (not doujin-related).
June 2nd, 2008 at 12:25 am
>Shingo
>(5)
Yeah the math isn’t really right and I didn’t add anything from the original post. I’m pretty sure I remember the limits imposed on the amount of goods you can move into the space doesn’t actually allow enough to hit 10,000 though. I think it was Yoshitoshi Abe who said that ~6,000 books was the limit for him as a corner wall circle.
Though I have no idea if the shutter circles are actually allowed to go much higher. But most of the biggest shutter circles seem to sell out after 3-4 hours even with limit of 2 per person or 1 per person.
>(10)
Yeah! Those big money guys that do doujin for a living. Man some of them actually sell upwards of 100,000 copies through the doujin stores.
く・・・悔しい・・・ﾋﾞｸﾋﾞｸｯ
June 2nd, 2008 at 2:01 am
Excellent article (as usual)!
>(3) Copyshi and their pricing
Furthermore I’d say if publishing Copyshi or better said the prices attached to these would really just be as high as they usually are due to Circles aiming to make high profits, then it would be completely illogical that most Circle that release those laterwards re-publish/re-collect them in Doujinshi format (i.e. TINKLE who’ve appologized on their Official site’s BBS for the limited availability of their SunCre39 Copyshi and at the same time assured their who’ve not been able to get ahold of it by then, that this release would be collected within their upcoming ComiComi12 publication)
June 2nd, 2008 at 10:13 pm
I got a question:
How is the Doujin Soft genre doing in the Comiket? is a very small percentage of the event or is very big? because to be honest the only thing that got me interested in go to the Comiket is for the latest Doujin games, the scene is every year more bigger (at least since 2000/2002, with EFZ/Tsukihime/Melty Blood/Embodiment of Scarlet Devil and others)
June 3rd, 2008 at 4:03 am
The number of circles registered as having doujin soft as their genre in the last Comiket was approximately 15%. But that genre includes all circles that are doing touhou doujinshi or doujinshi based on doujin games, and the genre also includes doujin music.
So… based on personal experience walking around in comiket all these years, I wouldn’t be surprised if only 1% or 2% of circles actually did doujin soft. It’s not a very popular genre because of the amount of time and work and the number of talented people required to make a game.
June 4th, 2008 at 9:36 am
re: (1)
I always did wonder just how much of the doujin material was porn. 30% is still a lot, but it does answer my question that it isn’t the majority. Do you know if this is higher or lower than say five years ago?
June 4th, 2008 at 12:08 pm
I can’t say for sure if it was the same five years ago, but I haven’t actually seen any big changes in comiket over the past five years that would have caused a big shift in that number.
While most of the doujinshi that you see in stores are adult material because they sell better, the reality is that comic market contains a huge mash of different stuff of just about anything, such as political critiques, books of reviews, accounts of personal travels, history books, research books, game strategy guides, pet books, concert reports, parody goods, music CDs, photography CDs, fashion and accessories, TRPG books, plush dolls, wrestling commentary, Mixed martial arts books, and a whole lot more stuff that will probably go on for pages if I had to list them all.
So… what I was trying to say was that there’s way too much stuff happening in Comic Market for porn to be a majority. But a lot of the ones that sell are porn related.
June 8th, 2008 at 5:16 am
About point number 5, I think there are also people who buy multiple copies of the same book. The logical amount would probably be 3 pieces: one for actual reading, one personal mint copy, and another mint copy to go to Yahoo! Auctions.