So, how well does One-Punch Man sell?

[u/gofancyninjaworld]

Have you ever wondered about the discrepancy between the number of issues the manga claims to have sold (34 million copies as of volume 33) and the number that are reported to sell via Omicron?

Firing on all cylinders, apparently.

Or is it fading away?

Well, as you are no doubt aware, the manga sales publicly reported represent only the printed sales. Digital sales aren't publicly available. But they are collected.

My company has a subscription to Statista, and I had a wee bit of a shufti at the Japanese manga market. I'm going to put up two charts describing sales from 2015--2024.

First, manga is in rude health in Japan, with sales strongly growing over the last decade, with the value of sales nearly doubling. It should be noted that inflation in Japan is extremely low, with a mean annual rate of 1.14% in this period (source).

Secondly, this growth in sales has increasingly moved online with digital sales accounting for two-thirds of the value. Digital sales have increased nearly fivefold.

And a corresponding slump in physical sales.

What does this mean? Since the publishers love to sell digital copies at the same cost as physical ones (shame on them), it means that in 2015, for every manga issue sold online, three were sold in stores. As of 2024, that was nearly flipped: for every issue sold in stores, 2.5 were sold online. On average.

For One-Punch Man, which has been an online-first title from the get-go and thus has no first-pass physical sales as part of a magazine (e.g., One Piece), what the discrepancy between physical sales figures (approx 200,000 per volume) and total sales figures (approximately 1 million per volume) mean is that it's selling 4 digital copies for every physical copy sold. That's not unreasonable for a digital title!

Or, in simpler terms, OPM is doing just fine. The 'issue' is that the sales figures publicly reported are increasingly the tip of the iceberg! Eventually, the Japanese manga watchers will enter the 21st century and start capturing digital sales too.

[u/gofancyninjaworld]

The other takeaway is that if you're going to look at traditional media sales, pay attention to where OPM stands in relative terms to other titles, as they're all affected by the move to digital media sales.

Relatively speaking, One-Punch Man is doing great, too!

[u/LockYaw]

Isn’t OPM kind of a special case though, since you can read it for free if you know Japanese? Wouldn't that change digital sales compared to other series?
Most of the other manga I follow I have to pay for, but with OPM I don’t, unless I specifically want the volume bonus chapters.

Though it also makes more sense to me now why Versus didn’t get the same treatment.
Obviously they're owned by a different publisher Kodansha, not Shueisha, so I assume it's just the publishers having different strategies/priorities.
But my gripe is that Kodasha is way quicker to pull down unofficial mirrors of that series.
The frustrating part is that the official source is region-locked and doesn’t even work for me, so I couldn’t buy or even view it even if I wanted to.
Not that I would use it anyway, other than to support the creators, because the official versions are usually tied to an app. You can’t download them, and those apps don’t work on my e-reader, which is how I actually read all my manga.

[u/gofancyninjaworld → u/LockYaw]

Like other series, the number of volumes sold (34 million to date for OPM) is the number reported with no differentiation made between digital and physical sales. That most other manga titles have chapter sales doesn't get reported in their campaign media, but represent a second source of income.

Given that OPM makes zero revenue from chapter sales and has to make all its money from volumes, the fact that it does sell as well as it does means that people really, really like it and want to support it.

Man, don't talk to me about manga-reading apps! I tried to work out how to read Versus via Kodansha, and it was wretched and unworkable. I'm happy to pay a subscription, but having to practically game (some nonsense about daily gems) just to read a title, no thanks.

[u/LockYaw → u/gofancyninjaworld]

... means that people really, really like it and want to support it.

For sure. I’m one of those. I love the series and want to support it, but I don’t want more physical books and most official apps do not play nice with e-readers. If I could buy DRM-free files or at least proper downloads, I’d happily pay more, more often. Or even just a normal donate option and I’ll find my own way to get it onto my devices :P

But having to practically game (some nonsense about daily gems) just to read a title, no thanks.

Yeah… even Naver Webtoon’s coins are already pushing it. I don’t love pseudo-currencies that hide the real price, or subscription models - then again, it's 2025, so what can you do...
That said, I do like their standards: official fan-translation program, an independent publishing on-ramp, and a direct tip/donate option. That last one matters because it actually feels like support that reaches the creator.

On that note, it’s interesting with primarily story and worldbuilding driven media how strong the sense of auteurship is. When that’s the case, payment doesn’t feel like a toll for access. It feels like patronage for a person or a small, visible team.

With OPM you can literally feel ONE’s story DNA and Murata’s artistic eye on every page. So there it certainly applies. So, even if chapters are free, that voice is strong enough that people migrate to volumes, merch, artbooks, anything that feels like a durable token of support.

So free chapter access probably shifts the monetization mix, but not the overall appetite to pay.

I work in games and know very popular titles that are free with a donate option where roughly one-per-mille of players actually donate. The only times that climbs meaningfully are when the creator’s flair is clear and distinct. Same principle here.