At its peak one manga magazine sold 6.53 million copies a week
Weekly Shōnen Jump began in 1968 as a fortnightly latecomer chasing two established rivals. By the 1995 New Year issue it was printing 6.53 million copies, reaching an estimated 18 million readers in Japan, and over its life it has sold more than 7.5 billion copies, more than any other comic magazine.
Shueisha launched the anthology on 11 July 1968 to take on Weekly Shōnen Magazine and Weekly Shōnen Sunday, which were already doing well. For its first nineteen issues it was simply Shōnen Jump and came out every two weeks. When its sister title Shōnen Book folded in 1969, Jump went weekly and a monthly spin-off took Book's place, a line that eventually became Jump SQ. The house formula mixes plenty of action with a good dose of comedy, and chapters are gathered into paperback volumes every two or three months.
The golden stretch ran from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s. Hiroki Goto, chief editor from 1986 to 1993, said there were no fixed rules beyond making comics anyone could enjoy, and that with idol and gossip magazines crowding the market, manga was the only weapon they needed. The magazine gave the world long-running hits such as Dragon Ball and One Piece, both among the best-selling manga ever. A 1988 Famicom game gathering its characters marked the twentieth anniversary.
Then came the slide. Circulation had fallen to 4.15 million by 1998, partly because Dragon Ball and Slam Dunk had ended, and it kept dropping until it settled around 2005, far below the peak. When the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami held up deliveries of one issue, Shueisha posted its contents free online for about five weeks. In 2013 a Jump-themed indoor amusement park, J-World Tokyo, opened in Ikebukuro, and a 45th-anniversary contest invited submissions in Japanese, English and Chinese.
The future looks digital. A companion app launched in August 2013, and the free Shōnen Jump+ service arrived on 22 September 2014, selling each issue on the same day as print and running exclusive series, some aimed at adults. It had around 2.4 million active users in 2019 and more than 13 million downloads by January 2020. The print edition still averaged over 1.3 million copies a week in 2021.
Source: Weekly Shōnen Jump
