Alas, another American manga publisher bites the dust.

CMX, which brought us the fabulous Emma by Kaoru Mori, will cease publishing new titles by July 1. However, CMX’s best-selling series Megatokyo series by award-winning creator Fred Gallagher will continue as a DC title. Those unfinished series’? Well, unfortunately, they most probably will not be continued.

CMX’s demise comes after a series of bad news for the American manga publishing industry. First, Viz Media cuts 40% of its staff, making folks nervous about its future. Then, Go!Comi, which publishes manga such as 07-Ghost, Cantarella and Her Majesty’s Dog, literally disappeared. It’s website and twitter account was gone without an explanation.

Perhaps this is due to the tough economic climate; people have no spare cash to buy manga.

According to ICV2.com, manga sales in the US and Canada “suffered through a second straight year of double digit declines in 2009 with sales falling 20% from an estimated $175 million in 2008 to $140 million in 2009.”

Sales was at their peak in 2007, but since then manga sales declined by a third from 2007 to 2009.

Worse, some people are losing interest in manga! According to the same article, manga lovers are growing up, and not many are returning to the genre:

The young teen shojo fans who fueled the manga boom in bookstores have aged and in spite of attempts to interest them in reading more “adult” josei manga, as they grow older these predominantly female readers appear to be abandoning manga for other things. Meanwhile, Twilight has absorbed much of the attention of the teen audience that was buying shojo.

Is this a big sign that anime and manga are no longer hot in the West?

President of Bang Zoom! Entertainment, Eric P. Sherman claims in a blog post that fans subbing and downloading anime illegally are to blame, but scanlations and the downloading of fan-made subtitled anime was still around during the peak years of otakudom in the West.

But perhaps interest is not really on the wane. It’s just that the producing, marketing and distribution of anime and manga is not good enough to satisfy ardent fans who turn elsewhere. Just read this fan gripe about dubbed anime DVDs.

Roland Kelts certainly thinks so – he believes that Japan is just not doing enough to keep its international customers happy. Heck, it can even be accused of ignoring them.  This can’t go on, but it may be too late, he said.

I believe that here in Asia interest in anime and manga remain strong. We’ve loved anime and manga before it became a buzzword in America, and we’ll still love it – as long as Japan keeps producing good stuff.

(Though, granted, Malaysia doesn’t have a manga/anime industry to speak of (and what little there is sells not exactly legit stuff) so we don’t have a basis for comparison.)

Still, if the American manga publishing industry goes the way of the dodo, I would indeed miss them terribly. I’m getting used to my rows of Kekkaishi, Inubaka and Claymore. What can I do without the beautifully bound (and extremely expensive) volumes?

What do you think, guys? Is the otaku industry dying out in the US?

Elizabeth Tai is really glad that Emma managed to wrap up before CMX was axed.