Americans have the internet. There used to be a billion websites that all did the same job as books and magazines, some of which did a better job at it too.
Unfortunately, lowest common denominator and laziness killed most websites. So everything is now on youtube. This also makes searches for specific content impossible, so interviews, specific photos, etc need to be scrubbed through a video to retrieve them
You basically need a reference guide to even remember who said what and where in a video. I remember one of the most revealing takes about the retail market in an interview with Todd McFarlane. He said that his company needed to pay nearly 10 million dollars in penalty fees to retailers (like walmart) because the shipping crisis during COVID prevented his stock from getting to shelves on time. Yep, they needed to pay ~$10,000,000 because they did not have enough stock in stores.
I can no longer find that quote, because i'd need to manually watch 30 videos that are 1 hour each to find it. It's not something you can scrub a video through. Nevermind we also got info about why prices went up so fast. So we got a lot of info about the retail side of the toy industry, which is rarely ever talked about, because big businesses don't talk about it.
Anyway, another reason Japan still prints shit is due to costs. They live on a tiny island nation, so shipping costs nearly nothing compared to the US. They don't need a lot of distribution centers either, so that cuts down on costs too.
It's similar to Europe, where most gaming magazines from the 90s are still in business today.
In a country as big as America, it costs a lot of money to reach as many people, and there's a ton of competition in other mediums, so print is basically dead (still making more money than Europe, but to Americans that's death)
