I recently agreed to participate in a photo blog series about people’s manga shelves over at Manga Bookshelf. This opportunity to show off has given me a little pause as I prepare and photograph my collection. Is my collection interesting or is it a little one-sided? Are my shelves too messy because I share them with a few of my work materials, DVDs and tchotchkes? And, most importantly, how much manga do I actually have?!
As I explained last week, in a discussion about moving with your manga collection, my collection is technically split between my mom’s house (all high school and college purchases) and my current apartment.
Someday, the two collections will be reunited when I can have my dream home office. The walls will be painted a calming color reminiscent of green tea. I will have a spacious desk looking out onto a beautiful garden, instead of a kitchen table looking out onto some palm trees that need trimming. There will be many short bookcases lining the perimeter, so nothing falls on me during an earthquake. And, if I get my way, there will be a cute corgi or corgi-mix (rescued, of course) lying at my feet as I work! But until I get a large-enough home office, I won’t know exactly how much manga I own.
Right now, I know I have 1,080 volumes of manga, manhwa and OEL titles, including series that are split between my apartment and my mom’s place. At my best guess, that probably accounts for about one half to two-thirds of my entire collection, leaving the rest uncounted at my mom’s. (Update: After visiting my mother over the long weekend, I’ve determined that I have 1414 volumes of manga in total.) That’s with 2-in-1 and 3-in-1 omnibi counted as one volume and not including anything I classified as non-manga comics or my boyfriend’s much smaller collection of manga and comics. Yeah.
So, how many manga do you own? Do you catalog what manga you own? If so, how do you do it? If not, why haven’t you bothered taking stock of your collection?
This was my first time trying to catalog my collection, so I’m afraid it was a lot of me hunching over the bookshelves in my apartment and scribbling in a notebook.
Based on what I have listed in the database, I’m about half your collection size — 550+ volumes of manga. I’ve been ruthless about paring out things I don’t expect to read again, though, because I just don’t have the shelf space. (Sometimes to my regret.)
Your dream office sounds lovely; I hope you get it some day!
I’ve been a lot of less eager to paring out things I don’t expect to re-read, mostly because a lot of my manga have some sentimental or “historical” value to me. Quite a number of them are OOP and most of my recent purchases are OOP as well. I’ve actually been very, very bad about keeping up with my currently running series because of this. I’m sorry, 20th Century Boys!
I’m glad everyone likes my vision for a dream office. 🙂 I’m sure it’ll happen someday.
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I log all of my books into LibraryThing, which makes answering questions like these much easier. 🙂
Manga in English: 2732
Manga in French: 73
Manga in German: 13
Manga in Japanese: 112
Bilingual Manga: 8
TOTAL Manga: 2938
Manhwa in English: 203
Manhwa in German: 6
TOTAL Manhwa: 209
Woah. o_o You win! You’ve got more manhwa and manga than anyone else who’s commented so far!
Out of curiosity, what titles do you have bilingual editions for?
Four for Peach Girl, three for Princess Knight, and one for Division Chief Kosaku Shima. 🙂
And woot, win! I’ve been reading manga for ten years now, so this is the result. 🙂
I’ve been reading manga for 11 years now! But then again, most of that was when I had little income to spend & a number of manga volumes have been purged in years past.
I have the first two volumes of the Princess Knight bilingual manga. It’s interesting how they did it!
Oh man, you win!! I have 970 volumes of manga/manhwa/oel in English (counting omnibuses as 1) and 79 volumes in Japanese, for a total of… 1,049. So close to your total, but if you have another 300-500+ uncounted, I see I have a way to go yet 😀
I think I catalogued my early-college collection in a college-ruled notebook… but it got messy fast, when I added new volumes or new series. Now I am more hi-tech, and have a lovely spreadsheet using Google Docs. I like that it’s accessible to me online, so that I can check it if I’m away from home and need to make sure I don’t buy a duplicate.
And because I like to be able to sort things many different ways, I have a bunch of categories beyond title/volume number. It goes… series title/artist/author (in case different)/publisher/japanese publisher/which volumes I own (ex: 1-5)/which I need/total # I own (this so I can click the heading of that column and get a total # of all volumes I own)/status (publishing, dropped, completed. this one’s depressing recently). I also recently added a column for whether I was lending a title out.
I love the description of your dream home office! I hope it comes true for you!!
I don’t know! I think Michelle’s collection totally whoops my collection’s ass, numbers-wise.
I use Google Docs to manage the next volumes I need to buy and it’s pretty good. I can access it quickly on my smartphone, which is the best part. My list isn’t quite as organized as yours though!
One day, that dream office WILL come true. It’s only a matter of time and money. And the right paint color. *_*
I suspect there exist those who could best me. Like, maybe Sean Gaffney. 🙂
Jason Thompson could probably put us all to shame. ^_^;;
Another friend of mine bought a house in large part so she’d have somewhere to store her manga (and other books). I don’t know her totals, but in my head she trumps everybody. [/useless anecdotal info]
Yeah, her collection probably beats us all! 😀
Goodreads claims I own 883 volumes of manga. I haven’t collected anything in omnibus so far, really, other than things like the final volume of Mushishi (actually, that’s the only one that comes to mind), so that’s not a factor.
Then the numbers start taking a bit more ballpark work. Over 100 of those volumes have technically been culled, but I haven’t taken them off my “owned” list because they’re still in the house.
My to-read manga isn’t included because I don’t add them to my list until I read them. I think at last count that adds 40+ to my total. And most of my Japanese manga isn’t included, and off the top of my head I think I have…about 100 Japanese volumes. Some of that is material from work, but I also have things like a complete set of everything Takaya-sensei’s done (except for her new series, which may not even be compiled into a first volume yet).
So…I guess between the additions and subtractions, the Goodreads total is actually probably accurate to within 50 books.
Do adaptors (or editors, Daniella?) get to keep the Japanese volumes they work from? Or do you buy your own copies of the materials? I send everything back to the publisher once I finish a lettering project, so I’m curious!
(Takaya-sensei’s new series hasn’t been collected yet… it looks like it has enough pages for a volume though. I’ll make a note of it on LJ when Hakusensha lists it on their calendar :D)
It depends. At Tokyopop, I borrowed and returned books from their library and I’m pretty sure the translators and adapters did the same. (Although I could just pop into their offices, whereas Ysabet would receive and return books by mail.) I wound up getting stuck with a small cache of Japanese volumes when Tokyopop died because my managing editor did not want them back. They actually wound up selling one of their libraries (it was a potential licenses library) for $50 because trying to sell the stuff at BookOff wound up being pointless. (It cost them more money to drive there what they got for the books.)
I’ve had other clients let me keep the books and tell me that I can keep them unless they specifically ask me to return them.
It depends for me too. Tokyopop sent me copies of everything I worked on (except in the odd case where I already had my own copies, which I think only happened with Phantom Dream. When I did the Fruits Basket fanbooks I got the managing editor to send copies anyway because I was afraid of destroying them in the process–fanbooks are brutal!–and still wanted my own copies). Whether I sent them back depended on whether they actually needed them for some reason, like if there were notes from the translator or something; since I’m in Canada, I think it was more expensive for them to reimburse me for shipping than it was for them to just buy another copy.
Otherwise, I generally hang onto the Japanese editions. Despite not actually being able to read the Japanese, I can muddle through kana and whatnot well enough that I still finding having previous volumes on hand very useful (so I can ID/verify flashbacks and stuff, mainly. Most translators are good about that, but not all, and of course sometimes they no longer have Japanese editions to check against).
I quite like what I’ve seen so far of the new Takaya series. I’m looking forward to buying it.
[Ritual note for any industry folks who might pass through: if you pick up a Takaya Natsuki series, I beg you to let me adapt it. ^_^]
There were instances at Tokyopop where I could have held onto the volumes I took (and I would do so just for the sake of having it on hand for the next round of editing,) but I really wanted the space for my personal collection and stuff. Some of those manga weren’t manga that I was reading for fun & I’d only collect the English editions to have a copy of my credits.
Then again, I didn’t need to worry about not having a volume for flashbacks handy since I could be at their office in 15-20 minutes.
Geographic convenience FTW!
Oh, I totally just included every volume of manga that I owned in this house, including manga that I haven’t read yet or want to get rid of. (The former is a pretty large stack and the latter is very small.) I would have included Tamar’s manga, but he owns about 10 volumes of Blade of the Immortal and a few other volumes here and there.
I included my Japanese (and German) volumes just because they take up space and I have no plans to get rid of them. (How else am I going to read SkyBlue Shore vol. 4?)
I really can’t wait til I get to take stock of the stuff at my mom’s place now. 🙂
Ooh, is Skyblue Shore out in German?
I have no clue!
I have a exel spreadsheet to keep track of my manga, volumes I need to buy, by publishers then by authors. Right now, I have about 1752 vols of manga in English (omnibuses counted as 1), 144 in French, and 386 in Japanese. I haven’t been very ruthless about purging the volumes that I don’t plan to reread yet. I store them in magazine boxes since I don’t have shelves. I would like to have a dream office like yours or a movable shelving system 🙂 Don’t know when that will happen but one can dream, right?
That’s a lot of manga! And in different languages! I just included the foreign language volumes in my count because they take up space! (And also because I don’t really collect the Japanese volumes & any manga in other languages is usually bought as a novelty.) I must have about 40-50 Japanese volumes between my apartment and my mom’s place, 2 manga in German, about 6 in Chinese and a few in Spanish.
I don’t know when I’ll get my dream office either. It won’t be this move, that’s for sure. 😛
Got to collect the French, otherwise, I won’t know the end of “Venus In Love”, “Maid Sama”, “Bound Beauty”, or “Gakuen Alice” to name a few. As for Japanese, the beautiful “Swan” volumes are too nice not to get, etc …
Ahhh, that’s true. Can you read French very well? I’m afraid I can’t, although I might be able to piece together a sentence via similarities to Spanish.
I can read French enough to understand the story. There’s always a dictionary or google translate 😉 The challenge will be reading light novels since I just got the rest of Twelve Kingdoms in French! Wish me luck.
Good luck with that! 😀 I wish I could read French now…
Like several other commentators, I use Excel to track what I have; there’s 1045 books marked as “own” on the spreadsheet [*], but this doesn’t include a few series I completed before starting the list or my non-English manga, so the real total is closer to 1200-1300. I don’t keep track of manga I’ve read but don’t own, but that would be another 500 volumes or so (thanks, library!).
[*: The main function of the spreadsheet is to keep me from buying duplicates, and the secondary function is to remind me of what else I want to buy and when it is coming out, so I put announced/solicited/out-but-I-don’t-have-it-yet books on the list and mark them off as I buy them. ]
This list is for manga only, and I count physical volumes, so a 3-in-1 omnibus is one book (not that I have many of those). I also have a set of spreadsheets for the vintage magazines and sewing patterns I collect, but I only have 50-60 non-manga graphic novels so I don’t need a spreadsheet for them.
I have a GoogleDocs spreadsheet that lists what I need to buy for that reason! I still buy duplicates sometimes. T_T (There are currently 8 duplicates in my possession, so I included them in the final count.)
I’m not as good with keeping track of what I already own (considering this is my very first inventory!) and keeping track of future releases (I’m too lazy and I figure I have a good feel for what I want to pick up, manga-wise.)
Do you have a separate list for manhwa and/or OEL manga, then? Or do you count that as “manga” just because it’s easier to lump that stuff together shopping-wise? I’ve also been counting omnibi as one book.
“Do you have a separate list for manhwa and/or OEL manga, then?”
Manhwa is included in the “manga” list but there’s only about 40 of them. So far I haven’t bothered to track OEL / Original-European manga, because I have only a dozen or so of them and I’m not currently following any series. I do have separate lists for “BL” and “Not BL”, mainly because I keep the former list comprehensive (with everything that’s been published / announced) whether I want the books or not, but the later only covers series I’m buying or planning to buy.
Cool, it sounds like you’re very, very organized. You even keep on top of BL releases! (I fail to do that. I wish I was more in touch with the BL world so I knew about stuff I’d want to buy.)
Actually, I am very, very disorganized 😀 One of the reasons I need a spreadsheet is because all my manga is in piles on the floor, so when the thought crosses my mind “did I buy [volume X] yet?” it’s much faster to look it up on the computer than try to sort through the piles!
Ah, OK. So you’re somewhat organized. Can you not have bookshelves or are they already full?
I have manga in piles on my floor, but those piles are my to-read pile, my I-can-read-this-until-I-get-the-preceding-volume(s) pile and my duplicates pile that needs to be sold off. (And I just posted a new blog post trying to do just that.) So they’re fairly well organized piles of manga on the floor? 😀
I’m out of bookshelf space, and also out of places to put more bookshelves. I’m trying to persuade my landlady to take back her couch (which came with the apartment), so I can put bookshelves freestanding in the middle of the living room…
Good luck with that!
So I came in here thinking “I have a lot of manga,” but after reading the post and everyone’s comments, um, I no longer think that I have a lot of manga. XD
Ehhhh, I have somewhere over 400 volumes. I used to have more, but I have culled it over the years due to moving and my partner saying “Okay, sell some of that before you buy any more.” And then sometimes I look at titles and wonder why I ever bought them in the first place, or realize that I am never going to finish the series because I am not as into it as I thought I was.
Also, ooooh green tea office. My office is an ugly eggshell color, with brown trim; green tea would look so good with brown trim, you make me want to paint it XD
I’ve actually gotten to a point where most of the series I collect are very interesting to me, it not story-wise then because they hold some “historical value” to me. I guess my bar for entry is pretty low though, I only have a few series that I am totally uninterested in continuing. The rest I’ve just been slow about because of my epic quest for oop manga.
Thankfully, my boyfriend has been just fine with all my manga collecting. When I bring more home, the only protest he makes is, “where are you going to put all this?”
Our apartment is all white. I imagine we’ll be living in a lot of all-white places until we can afford to buy a place of our own, so I’ve spent a few idle moments thinking up my ideal work space. Hope you get to paint your office a nice color soon!
373 titles, 2248 volumes. Some of those are OEL and a handful are manwa, but the rest are manga in original Japanese or the English translated version. And this is after I pulled a good 80+ books due to culling the collection in preparation for moving.
Wow! What a collection. ^_^ You’re second only to Michelle!
I’ve been collecting regularly since 1995. Things add up after that many years.
Definitely! 🙂
According to librarything I have 1,300 manga. I have two shelves just dedicated to OEL manga and one for light novels. I also have all of Touch, Patlabor, Ni-Ji Iro Togarashi, and Ayatsuri Sakon in Japanese, as well as 8 volumes of Lum Urusei Yatsura. The pride of my collection is Flame of Recca. Although I have a lot of rare and out of print books, for some reason seeing all of FoR on my shelf makes me happy. I love to collect animal-themed manga, and the rest is mostly Shonen Sunday and Shonen Jump, although I am starting to embrace shojo lately.
for me, I love the thrill of the hunt. I’ve found both four Shojo stories and the Welcome to the NHK novels for less than a dollar each. My tip is: if you see a volume in a series you are collecting that is unusually cheap, but you haven’t gotten that far yet, go ahead and buy it. It’s okay to get things out of order. Anyways, sorry for the long ramble, I jsut love manga so much haha (just got back from borders reading a pile of cross game)
I approve of your OOP manga shopping methods! I use the same tactics myself. >:3 Also, Ayatsuri Sakon is so good! I watched the anime once, I wish I could read the manga legally. (My anime club in college made their own fansub for the anime & it was only shown in our club.)
Did you include your light novel collection in your final count? I don’t know how many you have in your collection, but I didn’t include it in my final tally. I do like the light novels I read, but they’re not really manga/manhwa or even comics at all. (They’re just mostly published by manga publishers…)
Anyway, thanks for sharing! 🙂
Roughly, 920… according to the list I keep over at My Anime List. That’s the best number I have, but it’s not accurate. I gave some volumes away and have some doubles because I own a few series in Japanese as well, from back in the day. If I was to count my actual volumes I would go mad.
As for storage, the majority are in boxes. At this point, any series which isn’t still running is in a box. I just don’t have enough shelf space or places to put shelves. I’m reaching critical mass. =(
Sorry to hear you’re reaching critical mass! It sucks to feel like you’re running out of room for something you love. :<
I have at least 126 titles my goal is to crack 200+
But how many VOLUMES do you have? 😀
I have 1,896 manga in English, 17 in Japanese, 5 in Chinese, and 1 each in Spanish, German, and French! I think I have around 389 series. I’ve been collecting for… seven and a half years? Since the spring of my freshman year of high school, basically, and I’m a senior in college now. xD And my best friend thought I would grow out of it~
Cataloging is a must. I often buy whatever’s cheapest at the time, so I tend to end up with lots of gaps in my collection. If I didn’t have my list, I would buy duplicates much more often. >_< But I'm a bit old-school when it comes to cataloging: I still use Word. Excel or Access would probably work better, but eh… feels too much like BCIS class. xD Oh, and I suppose I use my guild on GaiaOnline as a sort of "what/when/where" journal of my ordering habits. That's actually very handy when I realize I'm missing a random volume and need to track down who was supposed to be sending it to me.
Cataloging is a bit difficult, but it's very much worth the effort! Once you count them up the first time, it simply becomes a matter of updating whenever you buy/sell something. It's essential for me when shopping or when a friend asks, "So what series do you have?" I'm sorry— I'm good, but not THAT good. I don't know everything that I have off the top of my head!
I don't bother separating the "have-reads" and the "have-nots". I haven't read everything I owned since a few years ago when I picked up the last half of x/1999. That apparently started a trend of "Oh, I'll read it later", and by this point I'm pretty sure I haven't read around half of my collection… ^_^; I'll get better about that, though! Like, I'm finally reading Love*Com! It just took me over a year after completing the series to read further than volume 3! xD Yes, I am the kind of person who invests in a 15+ series because I liked volume #1…
And also, about the "omnibuses count as 1 volume thing"— don't worry about it. From what I've seen, most people with larger collections just count them as 1. We're past the stage where every "volume" counts. ^_^; Although for the life of me, I'll probably never remember that The Wallflower has that random omnibus 22/23/24, so I'll probably end up counting that as 3 volumes by sheer laziness. xD But other stuff like my Dramacon Ultimate Edition or the new Tenjo Tenge books are 1 volume each. :3
…and I just want to say, it is really freakin' *refreshing* to see people with larger collections than mine! I must just be a big fish in a small pond, but I'm used to having the most manga wherever I go. It kind of sucks, and is a bit of a conversation killer sometimes. ;_;
Haha, don’t worry! I’m the same among my friends! I can ramble on endlessly about manga and they are all like “whuuuuuuttttt??” Although a number of them make a point to buy the series I work on and one of them uses my blabbering as suggestions as to what he should read. 🙂
Besides, it’s hard being a dedicated collector in this economy & there are so many people who don’t even care about buying manga. Once, one of my cousins told me exactly how many series she had read on OneManga. I nearly died from the shock. Imagine if she had bought all those series, or at least the ones that were available in English. But she was also 14 years old, so it’s not like she had the income to do so.
A lot of my relatives, my mom especially, thought I would grow out of this. I still think she expects me too, especially because being a freelance manga editor isn’t the best of livings right now. But no, it’s not leaving my life any time soon, even if I do lose my clients.
Also, there are quite a number of unread manga on my shelves, but they generally are manga I’ve technically read in the past through work or through other means. (ie-random volumes in Japanese or scanlations way back when.) But those are mostly complete series. My I-can’t-read-this-yet pile is mostly manga that I haven’t read any of the first volumes, etc. Or series that I have major gaps in like Eagle and Nodame Cantabile. Simply put, I don’t want to put vol. 16 up on my shelves yet, because I haven’t read past vol. 5!
Yeah, I think most of my friends are at the point where they just let me ramble on about series they never plan to read. xD Which is a shame, because I KNOW them, and I have lots of series that I know they’d like— they just don’t care/don’t have the time. 🙁 Although I *have* managed to get my roommate to start reading all of CLAMP, which is cool. Now if only I can force Genkaku Picasso on more unsuspecting housemates…
I always get a little disheartened when I’m talking manga with someone and there’s this point where it’s clear they’re scanlation-only. -_- I’ve actually had people try to argue with me that scanlations are perfectly legal. I know collecting manga is hard work, but isn’t it worth it for a series you enjoy? :/ The mentality of “I’m a fan, but I’m never giving the creator a dime” is so foreign to me, I can’t wrap my mind around it.
Dude, at 15 I was working concessions stands and using every bit of that money to buy manga. xD My family’s upper-middle class, though, so I was very fortunate to never need my paycheck for anything else. That said, there’s no way I ever bought anything full price! It’s all about getting the most out of what you have to work with. u_u One of my housemates buys things full price and it just kills me. She has less than half of the amount of manga that I have, but she probably spent close to 3/4 of what I did to get there…
I thought about being a manga editor for a little bit, but then I realized that all of the publishing houses are either in Cali or NY, and I live in Texas (20 minutes from Funimation, actually. Why didn’t I choose anime over manga?!). And then Tokyopop shut down, so there went the only intern program I could find…
Do you ever let them borrow books? Most of my friends and I now live pretty far apart because we’ve all graduated, but I would let friends borrow books they wanted to read & were unsure about buying. Even if they don’t buy the books themselves, it’s a very legal way to get them reading.
I just don’t think my cousin knew any better, but I could only squeak out that what she was doing was hurting my job. Her family is upper class so I don’t think she ever really needs to get a job in high school, or college for that matter. She’s a little spoiled… But then again, we aren’t terribly close so maybe she has a job now and I just don’t know about it. I was working as a teen too, which is how I got my manga money. It wasn’t until I had a minimum wage job that I really got to buy a lot on my own though. The jobs I had at 15 or so were really just summer jobs.
I tend to buy full price only to support bookstores, but I do love getting OOP manga for $5 or so. 🙂 For me, it really isn’t about the price though. If I have to buy less manga overall, fine, but I’ll get the ones I really want at any price. (Within reason!) Once I paid $60 for a used library version of Basara vol. 19. It was the last volume of Basara that I needed and I really love that series, so I felt very justified. I’ve also payed $50 for two volumes of the bilingual edition of Princess Knight (before it was licensed by Vertical.) But trust me, most of the time, the cheaper the better!
You could still do an internship with Viz up in San Francisco, if you’re willing. I believe their programs are once or twice a year. You should still look into Funimation though. You might not be able to do the same kind of editorial work, but I bet you could find something similar to do!
I have a few friends where I’ve said “No, don’t use the internet! At least borrow books from me!” Don’t think that’s translated very much into them buying the books themselves, though. ^_^; My anime club just started a manga sub-club though, so maybe I can have another go at trying to convince people to support the industry.
It’s just, people have this disconnect. I say “You should buy the books to support the manga-ka.” and they fire right back “Well, most of that money goes to the American companies anyway!” As if the localizers are stealing from the manga-ka or something. -_- (Conversely, “Importing is too expensive!” is what I normally hear next.) I’m lucky if I can get people to read from my library instead of from sites like OM.
I think the legit-seeming look of most scanlation sites is to blame for a lot of the confusion. I mean, look at them: a lot of them look better than the publisher’s OWN websites! A bunch of the kids whining after OM shut down were honestly confused when I told them it was illegal in the first place…
For me, I have more of a problem when I buy used books. xD In most cases, I would rather support the publishers than the bookstores. I feel that if the bookstores are giving me a coupon to use, it’s because they want me to use it. Take Midtown Comics, for example. I wouldn’t have bought their manga at the price they had originally (15%), but when they gave out 40% I went and spent $300. xD That’s $300 they wouldn’t have gotten anyway, so I’m sure they were glad to take my money, even if their profit margin wasn’t as much as it would have been. And they were all new books, too, so I can feel like I’m more directly supporting the publishers. Everybody’s happy. 🙂
I’m not quite at that point yet, but I think once I’ve caught up with myself I’ll start eying those really expensive OOP books like Reborn! 12 and Pet Shop of Horrors 8. -_- Right now, though, my head says “You could get six books for the price of that ONE! Don’t do it!”
Thanks for the encouragement! ^_^
Even if they don’t buy the books, they’ve read the books through more legal means than scanlations. I hope your manga club works out. My anime club had a weekly meeting like that and it was the best. Even if people weren’t reading manga, we all hung out and became better friends with everyone there. 🙂
You should tell your friends that even if most of the money goes to the American companies, it goes to the cost of producing and printing the book in English. A huge part of the production costs are the license fees (and the legal costs) of getting the rights from the Japanese publishers and artists. You don’t just get rights for free! So basically, when you buy a manga, you’re helping the American company pay royalties to the Japanese companies/the creators. (Plus the costs of production.)
Anyway, I don’t know how publishers can stand to have their websites like they are, but I guess a lot of them just don’t have the budget or the inclination. Whereas, OM has committed site designers, it seems. For an old-fashioned media like books, a website can be secondary, but I don’t think that’s wise when the entire market is going digital.
Usually the bookstores I support, I’m buying it from them & they bought it from the publisher & it’s marked down. There aren’t a lot of used bookstores that have good manga selections, so I’m talking about direct market stores or chain bookstores here.
I’ve really only bought three volumes of expensive OOP manga, so it’s not a habit or anything. One of those volumes was to finish a series I had already purchased most of (except for that one volume) and enjoyed immensely. That was worth it if only because I love the series so much. The others were just because I wanted to read the series and since I didn’t know it was going to be licensed stateside at the time, it could be helped. ^_^;;
Oh, and sorry to double post, but I figured this was relevant to manga collectors?
Midtown Comics is this comics shop in NY. They’re running an online deal right now: 40% off all Manga until Sept. 6th! The codeword is YAGAMI. If you don’t live in NY, then there’s no tax~ Oh, and shipping is free when you reach $75.
Sorry to sound like an advertisement, I just really like that place. ^_^ Their customer service team is nice too— I ordered a book a day before the sale and they gave me the 40% off that one too, when I asked. I’ve actually found a few series that were out of print on Amazon still available from Midtown Comics (Palette Of 12 Secret Colors #6 for $4.75? YES PLEASE!). And 40% off with no tax is a hard deal to beat, for new manga! The sale + no tax saved me about $250.
I heard about that sale on Twitter… I wish I had and extra $75 to spend on manga now. o_o Thanks for sharing!
I have about 600 give or take. They’re mainly in English with a Spanish volume here and a French volume there. I catalogue mine both in a spreadsheet (google docs) and in justmanga. It’s convenient to have the list online so I can look it up anywhere. I’ve only been seriously collecting since March… the collection grew something from 50 to the current number >_< but I suspect it'll slow down now since I've gotten most of what I want.
And speaking of sales, the Borders closing deal has gotten me to buy a lot more than I intended to own. One Thousand and One Nights V. 10 for $1.20, why not?
So… your manga collecting is going to stop forever? Or do you still intend to buy new releases that interest you?
No, I said it would just slow down. As in, I won’t be catching up with older releases anymore, and all I have to worry about are the current ongoing ones. That would render a few volumes a month rather than a few series a month 😀
OK, so you just have a limited interest in previously published titles. 🙂 Just curious.
Most of my manga reading is books I own. After that, it’s books my friends loan me, and then random pages I’ve manga-hobo’ed in bookstores. I haven’t read many scanlations, so I think the number of books I have is an okay heuristic for interest in manga.
I just counted up all the manga of mine that I can find, and I totaled 126 books. That’s a bit under 12% of Daniella’s 1080-book collection – and that’s just the part she has a number for. That makes her, at present, about nine times the manga fan that I am. If we conservatively assume that her count represents a full two thirds of her full collection, that means she has somewhere in the neighborhood of 1630 books, which is almost 13 times what I’ve accrued.
This is why she writes the blog 🙂
Actually, the final total wound up being about 1414 books. If only because I was able to account for a large number of volumes at my mom’s house that are of series split between there and my apartment. If I wasn’t able to do that, then my initial count of 1080 volumes wouldn’t have been so high. 🙂
Anyway… There’s no shame in having a small collection (or an indecently large one) to me. We all collect at different paces according to our interests and knowledge. That makes me about 12.5% more interested in manga than you are, but you’re about 95% more interested in music than I am! So it’s really just a measure of people’s interests and how much they devote to a particular interest.
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As of today: 2040 volumes of manga, of which 33 are in French, 8 in German, and I’ve not tracked how many are in Japanese, but I’d guess about 1/4th or so. Maybe it’s down to 1/5th, I have done a lot of culling. Included in that number is 75 artbooks.
48 manhwa, and 5 manhua. And whatever the Twilight comic is classified as.
I have my dream office, but what was fine in 2004 is now terribly over capacity. I planned for only about 1400 or so, at the time, I owned under 500. I didn’t anticipate the boom booming so hard. 🙂 I’m having to be creative, and I’ve probably culled well over 1000 books through the years. Thank goodness I’m in the southeast, I would be in much more trouble if I could easily hop down to Book-Off.
But really, I consider having too many books to be a wonderful problem to have. 😀
That’s a lot of manga! And a terrific problem to have! Assuming you want kids here, but studies have shown that large numbers of books in a household makes for smarter, more literate children. So clearly, the more literate you are, the more you influence the next generation of readers. Pretty cool when you think about it. 🙂
That is great that you can actually count your manga collection. I kinda wish that I can..I can give a general idea of what type of books I have. My collection is split between two rooms, stacks, bags, boxes.. and intermixed with DVDs and other books. I am also not counting the need to wade through my mom’s books, and my sister’s books.
Well, I didn’t wade through my boyfriend’s books when I counted mine (he doesn’t have as many to begin with, but…
I just wound up taking the time to unpack my manga collection awhile back. I had a lot of boxes that were covering the floor of my bedroom at my mom’s and she was sick of them, so I had to clean them up. The easiest thing to do was to unpack and shelve the manga, then toss or donate the stuff I didn’t want to keep. 😛 It was kind of just by chance that I got to count it all in time.
I got the chance to see photos of your post on Manga Bookshelf.. ^_^ Lovely collection! I actually also do have a Library Thing account, but haven’t updated that in more than 6 months. >_<
Thank you! 😀
2500+ manga at the moment. I’m probably in the 2550-2650 range. I forget to update my list because I pre-order lots of volumes all at once on Amazon. And as they slowly arrive in ones and twos I don’t think to update my list and it becomes out of date. I have light novels, comics, and art books as well. If you wanna see pics pop by my blog under the Collection category. I’m scheduled to pop on Katherine Dacey’s blog this December too.
http://www.justmanga.com/vmb/13795
That’s quite a lot of manga! Bravo!