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Big hit of comic book thanks to TV series popularity and new book price system

Big hit of comic book thanks to TV series popularity and new book price system

Posted November. 17, 2014 07:56,   

한국어

Comic book "Misaeng," published by Wisdom House, is showing rapid increase in sales. The comic book is a published version of the same title webtoon by cartoonist Yoon Tae-ho. Since the publication of nine volumes in October 2013, the cartoon book has been sold around 900,000 copies. As a TV series of the same title started airing on Oct. 17, more than 100,000 copies have sold within one week. Within two weeks afterwards, additional 500,000 copies have been sold. As of Sunday, the total sales volume has surpassed 1.7 million copies.

In general, major readers of a comic book are teenagers and in their 20s. However, people in 30s and 40s are major readers of the comic book. According to Internet bookstore Yes24’s analysis on the age of readers of Misaeng, the majority of readers was male in 30s (23.6 percent), followed by female in 30s (21.6 percent), female in 40s (15.0 percent), male in 40s (14.5 percent), female in 20s (9.2 percent) and male in 20s (8.6 percent).

Publishers analyze that outstanding sales of the comic book can be attributed to the popularity of TV series, webtoon charging policy of Internet portal site Daum, and the fixed book price system that will take effect on this coming Friday. Daum charges viewers of a webtoon of which serial publishing is ended. Currently, viewing webtoon Misaeng on the web costs 1,000 won per 10 episodes, which costs 14,000 won for 145 episodes in total.

On the contrary, the comic book Misaeng set (1-9 volumes), which can be owned in hard copies are sold almost half-off by big book stores, ahead of the enforcement of fixed book price system. The nine volumes of Misaeng are sold at 59,000 won, 40 percent off the original price of 99,000 won. Insiders of the book publishing industry view that hiking sales of the comic book will go slow when the discount rate is reduced due to the fixed book price system.