Japanese manga earns through two distinct revenue streams that operate on very different commercial dynamics: the weekly or monthly magazines in which most serials first appear, and the collected tankōbon volumes that follow. The two work together: the magazines lose money or operate at low margin, while the volumes — drawn from the same content — generate the majority of profit.
Magazines as loss leaders
Most manga magazines are sold at prices well below their production cost. Weekly Shōnen Jump retails at around ¥300 for a 450-page issue; the printing cost of a single issue at print runs of several million copies is itself substantial, before editorial, art, and royalty costs. The magazines exist principally to introduce new serials to readers and to allow the publisher to identify which serials will support tankōbon volume sales.
Tankōbon as the principal revenue source
Once a serial has accumulated enough chapters and demonstrated reader retention, its chapters are collected into volumes (tankōbon) and sold at much higher per-page margins. A successful serial generates the bulk of its lifetime revenue through volume sales, license sales to anime studios, and licensing to overseas publishers — not through the magazine. The largest-selling manga series — One Piece, Dragon Ball, Naruto, Detective Conan — have each sold more than 200 million volumes.
The decline of the magazines
Magazine circulation has been in long-term decline since the late 1990s. Weekly Shōnen Jump's peak circulation was 6.53 million issues per week in 1995; recent circulation runs around 1.5 million. The decline corresponds with the rise of digital reading — both legitimate (publishers' own apps such as Shōnen Jump+ and Manga Box) and unlicensed (scanlation sites). Most major publishers now operate both print and digital magazine equivalents, with the digital equivalents serving a different reader base.