Places to Purchase Manga


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Botan06

-san
Kouhai
Alrite well, usually I go to the Barnes and Nobles near my house to purchase my manga but they don't carry the manga I want to read now, however they do allow me to order it and ship it to my house but for volumes of 1 & 2 of Suzuka it was around $34..Usually I can purchase other volumes for $9-12 each. So I was wondering if any of you guys know a good manga site where I can purchase manga for a good price!


If this in the wrong place, feel free to move it.
 
Well just checking normal places you can do Amazon. Just to use Suzuka as an example again they have the Suzuka volumes for $11.16 each. Not sure of sites that cater specifically to selling manga/anime though cause I don't shop online much at all.
 
I use to order a lot of my manga through Chapters (the main Canadian bookstore). If the problem is paying for shipping, you should check for free shipping options. I know I once had manga sent into the store for pick up, and other times, I would order enough to qualify for the "free shipping over $40" deal.

It seems weird that they would charge you more to order it. I've found that with Chapters, a lot of the manga comes at discounted prices if you order online.

You can always try the stores that specialize in anime/manga goods, like animenation and rightstuf. Though you will have to pay for some shipping. Actually, looking now, animenation is selling volume 1 for $9.16. I don't know what their shipping rates would be though.
 
I've found that www.bookcloseouts.com has some manga available, particularly tokyopop titles. Not the best selection, but at ~3.99 a pop, it's not too shabby.
 
QUOTE (Botan06 @ Jan 09 2008, 08:20 PM) Alrite well, usually I go to the Barnes and Nobles near my house to purchase my manga but they don't carry the manga I want to read now, however they do allow me to order it and ship it to my house but for volumes of 1 & 2 of Suzuka it was around $34..Usually I can purchase other volumes for $9-12 each.
Are you sure you talked to someone who knew what they were talking about? Because I used to work for B&N and shipping is free for orders $25 and up. Maybe the employee didn't know that... (unless the policy has changed within the past 1.5 years, but they did that to complete with the free-shipping-over-$25 that Amazon does).

Speaking of Amazon.com, I get almost all my manga from them, but that's because it's almost always yaoi, and B&N just doesn't stock it.

(Not to mention, it's sooo much easier to just click around a website than go up to someone who may or may not know me personally and explain to them why I want a manga titled I'll Be Your Slave *laughs*)
 
Basically we all know you can access pretty well anything online, but what i want to do is instead of constant loading of pages and whatnot, I want to build up a manga collection in my bookshelf. So to put it simple, the point of the thread is for your recommendations on the cheapest places to buy manga wether it be online or shops.

People have been saying that books can vary from around $5 to $20, i currently don't have any money but I'm looking to save up and purchase a couple of series to start getting into.

Any help would be wonderful, i live in Melbourne so manga stores in Canada and Europe might be a little difficult to reach? lol

Thanks


chiisai's note: I just realized we had a previous thread about buying manga, so I've merged them to keep the discussion in one thread.
 
The cheapest place is probably your local chain bookstore. I know in Canada, Chapters gives you free shipping within the country for orders of $40 or more so I wait until I have a large enough order ready. They also have the majority of the books on sale if you order through the website (anywhere from 5-35% off store prices on most titles I've looked at).

One of the priciest things I find about buying online is the US dollar exchange rate and shipping, so avoiding those is probably your best option. Manga is pretty heavy, so shipping could add up. I recently got a 200 page book shipped from the US to Canada and it cost $5US just for one softcover, regular-sized book. And it just came through the mail: if you're looking at any type of express post or insurance the costs can quickly double or triple.

But the cheapest I've ever seen manga go for is private sales on livejournal. People who have to purge their collections usually know they can only get anywhere from $1-5US for a volume, and will sell them really cheap because they need to get rid of the books for personal reasons (moving, saving money, etc)
 
What really sucks about buying manga in the US is that it's so expensive. The manga you buy at the store is 3, 4, or maybe 5 dollars more than that in Japan. The price of ARIA series in Japan: 552 yen/5.72 U.S. dollars. Price of Tokyopop ARIA series in the US: 9.99. If you can, you can get the mangas in a japanese store like Mitsuwa. However, if you can't read japanese, you're stuck with Tokyopop. Try requesting from your local library to get them (my library does) and if not...online.
 
I don't know which shops are near you (collective you) but if there is a Borders, sign up for their Rewards program. They send weekly emails with coupons that can knock at least four dollars off the price of a manga and make it cheaper than Amazon. Not all the coupons are that good, but I wait for the big ones.

Another option is to buy used from the 'other sellers' on the Amazon site. Check out their feedback and make sure they seem reliable. Sometimes the prices are a fraction of a new book.

While it's not in my area, there's a bookstore called "Half Price Books" that is recently starting to stock a lot of manga...other used bookstores probably do too. It's getting a lot more mainstream these days!

Anyway...good luck. I think we're all in the 'low funds' boat so I can sympathize. I like buying manga a lot because I love the book in my hands...kind of old fashioned that way.
 
In Northern Ireland I think there might only be two places to buy manga in the entire country a Waterstones and a Forbidden Planet, from what I saw in London the Waterstones in Belfast has a decent number of manga (in London it was one not very tall row, here it's two not very tall rows). The Forbidden Planet is much better it has 5 or 6 full sized rows full of manga. Speaking of prices, they're about the same mostly £5.99 ($9.97) but for the Negima series it's £6.99 ($11.64) in FP and £7.99 ($13.30) in Waterstones. Online, I've only ever bought Haruhi manga off Play.com which I think is UK only and it works out quite cheap with free delivery.
 
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