Author Says Yuri DOESN’T SELL Well Overseas
Today we’re going to talk about how, apparently, Yuri doesn’t sell well overseas. The information comes from Nazuna Miki, a light novel author known as the “fastest author.” I made a post about him back in 2022 because, in 2021, he simply released 30 light novel volumes!
Nazuna Miki is an author from Taiwan who went on to write several light novels and manga in Japan. Just to give you an idea, he has already written at least 40 SERIES! Out of those 40, 5 have already become ANIME! One of Miki’s anime will premiere in October, while another has already been announced for 2027.
Author Says Yuri DOESN’T SELL Well Overseas
So, Nazuna Miki was on Twitter talking about the anime industry, discussing sales data and explaining to his fans what he has seen in the numbers coming from overseas. Miki said:
“Slice-of-life works really don’t sell overseas. They say it’s because things like school stories and extracurricular club activities don’t create even the slightest sense of identification for audiences there, since they’re not familiar with them.”
Here’s an interesting detail: according to him, Slice-of-Life anime don’t generate much sales overseas. But you know what else doesn’t sell? Yuri.
Miki said:
“Maybe I’ll get criticized for saying this, but Yuri works don’t sell either…
No, their reputation overseas is good. High-quality Yuri is well received internationally.
But the numbers… that’s a different story.
In recent years, for example, there was a certain Yuri anime whose original work sold at a level that was among the highest in the publisher’s history, but apparently the anime’s numbers were practically ‘without any impact’…”
Some people became curious about which Yuri anime Miki was talking about, but this is something I already knew: Yuri doesn’t sell well in the West.
In 2024, Frog-kun, a woman who worked (or still works, I don’t know) translating manga and novels for the U.S., made a tweet specifically talking about how Yuri manga don’t sell well.
She said:
And she even talks about a huge contradiction: if Yuri sells poorly, why are there so many people online talking about Yuri?
Frog said: “Despite Yuri fans being quite vocal online and Yuri ships being a huge part of the fandom, it’s difficult to explain this.”
She said this in 2024. Keep in mind that this probably hasn’t changed much in two years, and with Miki saying that Yuri works don’t generate good numbers overseas, apparently this indicates that Yuri fans are a much smaller minority than we thought.