The Comics Journal has published an essay arguing that the rise of the IP economy is moving manga's economic value away from making something new and toward managing what has already been made.
The author starts from the language of the business.
According to the essay, IP is now an everyday word across the manga and anime industries. Publishers speak of creating, owning, cultivating, managing and expanding IP, and they refer to an "IP" where they once would have named a manga title.
That change in vocabulary is the essay's main evidence for a change in what the industry values. If the asset is the property rather than the individual work, the argument runs, the profitable activity is looking after that property, not producing a new story on the page.
The essay is careful on one point. It says the IP economy does not overturn the author's formal position, meaning the author keeps a place in the structure of the arrangement even as the economic weight around that place shifts.
The piece is opinion and analysis, not a news report. It offers an interpretation of how the industry talks about its products rather than new figures on publisher finances or contracts.
It also builds on an earlier essay by the same author. That piece looked at how the March 11, 2011 earthquake and tsunami pushed publishers toward digital distribution.
Read together, the two essays describe a sequence: a disaster-driven change in how manga was distributed, followed by a broader change in how publishers describe and value what they sell.
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