Shonen Jump Announces Massive Publishing Change

Today will be a milestone day – and not just because of the fact that the Avengers: Endgame has just dropped! On the anime/manga side of the entertainment industry there was a major announcement: Shonen Jump Weekly is about to change everything we know about its publishing practices!

Here’s the official announcement from Hisashi Sasaki himself!

The long-short of what the video announces is that Shonen Jump will now be attempting to remain competitive in the market, and fight scan piracy, by doing the following:

1. Shonenjump.com or the Shonen Jump app will be offering simultaneous releases of both Japanese and English translation manga chapters.
2. The service will offer subscribers unlimited reading for just $1.99 a month.
3. In addition to new chapters, the entire backlog of Shonen Jump will also be available to fans.

That’s a massive change from the current model, which is released monthly as a multi-chapter digital magazine, with a higher average subscription cost. The biggest change will be the approach to the back catalogue: instead of having to wait for series to be collected into volumes, and then buy those volumes, fans will now be able to catch up on popular series like Dragon Ball Super, My Hero Academia, Boruto, One-Punch Man or Tokyo Ghoul at rapid pace, and low cost.

As Sasaki states, this new strategy was born of the observation over the last year or so that giving away free digital chapters of popular series actually increased manga readership. Already this sounds like a progressive step forward, as the manga and anime genres continue to go through a massive evolution, to better fit this new reality of global mainstream interest.

Here’s the full statement on the changes that are coming, from the official Shonen Jump website:

• Coming December 17, 2018!
  FREE chapters of One Piece, My Hero Academia, Boruto, Dragon Ball Super and many more!
• Official and same day as Japan!
• New chapters weekly!
• With new series coming!
• Unlock the Shonen Jump digital vault of 10,000+ chapters
• Catch up on current hits from any point, revisit old favorites and discover new series for ONLY
• $1.99 a month!
• Start your 7-day free trial beginning December 17, 2018!
• Are you a current paid member? Go here to learn how this change will affect your membership!

As stated, the new Shonen Jump service goes into effect on December 17, 2018.