Full Answer
Manga
What Are the Most Popular Anime of All Time?
If you are looking for ease of returns or the most convenient site to buy manga from and the lowest prices on heavier items like manga box sets though, Amazon is the best choice. If you like to pick the quality of your manga and prefer shopping in store, Barnes and Noble and Books-A-Million are great choices.
Retail-wise, manga ranges from about $7.99 for a digital single volume all the way up to about $13.95. So let's take the average and say $11, which is in line with Kodansha Comics volumes and some Vertical, Inc. titles, more expensive than most Viz Media releases, and below Yen Press and other Vertical, Inc. titles.
At an average of $10 a volume, One Piece would cost $820 to read, and Fairy Tail $550. Prices will vary depeding on where you source the books from; they'll be more expensive at real-world stores ($11), and may be discounted on Amazon ($5 for more recent One Piece volumes), but they're roughly right.
Amazon and Rightstuf are both pretty good places to buy new manga from (Rightstuf often has sales from one publisher or another, so it's often worthwhile to wait till there's a sale going on). If you're OK with buying used, which is often cheaper, and the only way to get some out-of-print titles...
Of course if you buy manga in your own country, even in the original Japanese, it will usually be more expensive because of import costs. For example, in America, mangas cost you from 8 to 20 USD, sometimes more.
Why are most manga published in black and white and not color, like American comics? The simple answer is that it's simply cheaper, faster, and easier to publish comics in black and white than it is to print in color.
Manga is just not valuable. I'll say this though: it's certainly valuable to go buy a $3.99 comic book issue or so that's only 32 colored pages or a graphic novel that's around $15-20 dollars, but not really cool to pay $10-20 dollars of 200 or so pages for a manga volume.
Yes, manga boxes are a good option if you want to collect manga because they ensure that all consecutive volumes in one arc are complete. Usually, they are even cheaper than buying manga individually. Let's find out!
As of now, Demon Slayer is completed and you can easily read the final chapter online. The Demon Slayer Manga was completed last year and all the interested individuals can check it out. The journey of getting to the creators of all the demons and defeating him even with his humongous powers was quite incredible.
Online shopping: Online booksellers such as Amazon and Barnes & Noble also offer used manga at astonishingly low prices, but watch out for shipping costs. You can find a lot of used manga priced at one cent on Amazon, but keep in mind that shipping is $3.99, so you're actually paying four bucks out of pocket.
You can check your favorite retailers. Amazon and Barnes & Noble readily carry manga in both print and digital format, for example. More experienced manga readers might want to check out specialized retailers like Bookwalker for digital manga and RightStuf for print manga.
The 5 Best Legal Sites to Read Manga Online for FreeShonen Jump.ComicWalker.BookWalker.Crunchyroll.ComiXology.
We can’t talk about buying manga without addressing the elephant in the room: piracy and scanlations. Briefly, scanlations are fan translations of manga that are made available on the internet. The name itself is a portmanteau of scan + translation. Alas, it is a form of piracy. Scanlations don’t support the original creators or publishers.
Before you buy manga, there are a few things you need to figure out first. First, is the series licensed in English? If you’re not sure, a quick Google search will tell you the answer. This step is often overlooked but it’s important. Obviously, if a manga hasn’t been licensed yet, you’re not going to be able to buy it.
Here’s where it gets tricky. We need to define what “hard-to-find” means. Is the manga hard-to-find because reprints are coming slowly or is it out of print?
Yeah, Japanese manga has dust covers! They are also smaller and cheaper than English manga. Usually it only costs $7-$10 for a manga, whereas the English versions are usually $10-$15. Also, if you spend over $50 total you get free shipping. That’s what I always do.
But here’s the bad part about buying physical Japanese manga: it takes forever for them to arrive! Once you place your order, it will take anywhere from 6-8 weeks for it to arrive at your mailbox. That means you have to wait a long time, just thinking about all the cool manga you bought, but not be able to read them.
The Japanese have a lot of stringent laws regarding their digital property rights. This isn’t something that is just limited to manga, but also extends to music, movies, books, and a whole lot more. Basically speaking, if you live outside of Japan, you are not getting any! I’m crying on the inside….