Analysis · market structure
Who dominates manga publishing in France?
The manga shelf looks teeming: 342 publishers have released something there. But the abundance of imprints hides a rare concentration. Here is the anatomy of that dominance, measured on the real catalogue of releases.
We rank the 342 publishers from largest to smallest and stack their share of the catalogue. The faster the curve climbs, the more concentrated the market. Here it climbs very fast: a handful of players fill most of the shelf.
Imprint by imprint, no publisher exceeds 9.9%: the market looks balanced. But many of these imprints belong to the same houses. Recomposed by parent group, the ranking changes face — and the leader doubles in size.
By imprint
By parent group
Pika weighs 9.9% as an imprint; its group, Hachette Livre, weighs far more once all its imprints are combined.
The group ranking
Top 10 groups, and the rest of the market combined. Share of the cumulative catalogue of French-language releases.
The market rests on a very flattened pyramid: a handful of majors at the top, then a long tail of independents that, all together, weigh less than a single major.
The inversion is what strikes: the 288 independents make up 84.2% of publishers, but only 7.5% of releases. At the other end, 24 majors — 7.0% of the houses — hold 81.0%.
How this concentration is computed
- Gather releases by publisher
For each publisher, we count the number of releases listed in the dataset: this is the weight of its cumulative catalogue.
- Compute the shares
Each publisher's share is its number of releases divided by the market total (57,214 releases).
- Measure the concentration
We compute the concentration ratios CRn (cumulative share of the top n), the HHI index (sum of the squares of the shares) and the Gini coefficient (overall inequality).
- Consolidate by parent group
We attach each imprint to its parent house (Pika → Hachette, Delcourt and Kurokawa → Editis…), then recompute: the real concentration, hidden by the multiplicity of imprints, appears.
What this page measures — and what it does not
All shares are computed on the number of listed releases per publisher, in historical cumulative terms (the catalogue). It is a measure of the weight of supply, not of sales or revenue: a publisher can publish a lot and sell little, or the reverse. The dominance described here is that of the catalogue, not the till.
The mapping of imprints to their parent group (Pika → Hachette, Delcourt and Kurokawa → Editis, Kana → Média-Participations…) is a mapping curated by hand: 83.1% of releases are attached to a known group, the rest is counted as independent. A mis-attributed imprint would shift points from one group to another.
The indices are standard: CRn (cumulative share of the top n), HHI (sum of the squares of the shares, sensitive to large players), Gini (overall inequality). They describe a structure, not an intent. Everything is recomputed on every import from the open dataset (CC BY 4.0): the figures cannot quietly go stale.
Is the French manga publishing market concentrated?
Yes, heavily. Out of 342 publishers, 8 imprints hold 51.8% of the catalogue and 24 "majors" hold 81.0%. The Gini index reaches 0.89, the mark of extreme inequality between publishers.
Which manga publisher dominates the French market?
It depends on the scale. By imprint, Pika leads with 9.9%. But consolidated by parent group, Editis moves into first place with 18.9%, by bringing together several imprints.
Do these figures measure manga sales?
No. They measure the number of listed releases — the weight of the catalogue, the editorial supply — not sales or revenue. A publisher can publish a lot and sell little, or the reverse.
How many manga publishers are there in France?
342 publishers have at least one release listed in the dataset. But the 288 independents together account for only 7.5% of releases.
What do the HHI and Gini indices mean?
The HHI (Herfindahl-Hirschman) sums the squares of the market shares: it is sensitive to large players. The Gini measures overall inequality (0 = perfect equality, 1 = a single player). Here, the HHI is 445 by imprint and 809 by group, and the Gini 0.89.