Rocket Bomber - publishing

I’m using my manga charts to look at the output of select publishers —

covered previously:
Aurora Publishing, ADV Manga, CMX, Dark Horse, Del Rey.

Tonight the Spotlight is on

DMP

Oofah. DMP is a bit of a cipher, a tough nut.

Most companies fall over themselves talking about company-history-this and corporate-objectives-that, like the tipsy blond fresh off a breakup at the Dean’s wine social; I mean, it’s not like she’s trying to pick you up or anything but she’ll yak your ear off for hours about Steve from accounting and Bob from IT and Nigel in the English dept. and all you really want to do is get her off your arm since it’s obvious she’s just looking for a little support (literal support, she’s had too many) and happy to talk and talk and talk and there’s this redhead — she must be a new hire, haven’t seen her before — looking lonely and vulnerable and sighing over in the opposite corner and oh shit it looks like Bob from IT has spotted her too and…

damn.

Well. Maybe next semester.

Anyway…

To belabour the analogy: most corporate websites are like the aforementioned bubbly blonde (or Nigel, except he does it with an English Accent): “Oh! [*giggle*] This is who we are, and what we do, and how long we’ve been in town, and our last sexual business partner was great but a little selfish in bed reluctant to share profits, so we’ve moved on to an open relationship with the entire cheerleading squad, male and female all of the leading companies in our industry.”

(but I’d say Nigel has a dry chuckle rather than a giggle)
(and I’ve forced this analogy to the breaking point)

There is what-I-might-characterise-as-the-Tokyopop-model of flash and style and “We’re here, we’re Manga, and we’ve been doing it for years!” that is common to many web sites. It’s great in a PR-sense, but the rest of the content suffers from the inexhaustible boosterism.

DMP has instead taken an opposite tack: a very utilitarian site with the titles, the release dates, and bugger all for other corporate information. This is, in fact, exactly what I want from a Manga Publisher’s site. Just the books, ma’am.

…until I have to write a column on it, obviously.

My point, hidden behind not one but two fictional digressions, is that I can’t fall back on my usual lazy-blogger-shortcut of just linking to the target website; now we have to dig.

##

It all starts with Digital Manga, Inc., and apparently a retailer by the name of OmochaBox. The story may go as far back as 1996 (if copyright claims are to be believed) but the Wayback Machine at Archive.org can only give me confirmation back to 2001.

[yeah yeah, I know, not everything is on the internet. but the internet is the only resource I’ve ready access to]

It seems that in 2002, the retail and publishing arms were split, but then the Digital Manga faction quickly moved to repurpose it’s Akadot brand, a news site of some sort (at least at the time) to also serve as an online retailer. (A move so successful, in fact, that I can currently find the retail site but other than it’s reported existence as a news site, have absolutely no idea what Akadot was about.

What-was-OmochaBox (or at least its domain name) is now doing business as dotAnime

While we’re back in 2001, there’s this tasty bit of ephemeria

Publishing:
In collaboration with renowned indy comics publisher Dark Horse Comics, DMI is launching its publishing division, which will produce and distribute the English translations of the most cutting edge manga titles currently in Japan. DMI has also announced – at AnimeExpo 2001 – the English language license to publish the most popular anime magazine in Japan, Newtype.

Which we know didn’t happen, as Newtype has come-and-gone [resquiat en pace] as an ADV license.

The cooperative agreement between DMP and Dark Horse (that is to say: Berserk, Hellsing, The Ring, Trigun, Vampire Hunter D) also dates back to 2001. I recently gave DH the nod on these as they are the publisher of record, but DMP deserves a chunk of the credit.

The other thing I take from this spin with the Wayback Machine is that DMP’s parent corp. really hasn’t bothered to update jack online since 2002. Same plan, same ownership, same cut-and-paste descriptions, same boring boring website.

##

It heats up a bit 4 years later.

From 2006, with the launch of the Juné imprint (note the diacritic, and the proper pronunciation: per wikipedia “The imprint was named after Jean Genet, particularly the Japanese pronunciation of “Genet” as “Jooneh”. Genet was known for his post WWII stories featuring subtle homo erotic relationships.”) (but the é is a pain in the ass: I print “June” and often say “June” but to be correct, Juné is a two-syllable name — just so you know) and the parallel-but-separate launch of sister imprint 801 (both owned by Digital Manga, Inc. — but 801 is not a division of DMP) the fortunes of both DMP and parent company Digital Manga are firmly yoked to what-seemed-to-be the unquenchable demand of the yaoista fan base.

While other BL/Yaoi pubs have fallen by the wayside in recent months, DMP June and 801 seem to be chugging along just fine.

Links:
Digital Manga, current
Digital Manga, 2002
Digital Manga, 2001
archived web site snapshots found with Archive.org’s WayBack Machine

DMP at ANN
DMP at Wikipedia

##

And so: numbers!
(we all like the numbers)

As of 3 August, I’ve 44 titles from DMP, 113 titles from DMP June, and 22 from 801 Media. If we can be excused for ignoring the corporate kerfluffle and consider these to all be the output of a single publisher, that’s 179 of 3367 total titles (or 5.3%) and 92 of 1693 ranked titles (5.4%) — which puts it a skosh behind Dark Horse, solidly in 5th place for the number of titles brought to market.

Joo-neh obviously leads her sisters, by a factor of 3- or 5-to-1. Further analysis on that, I leave to the internets.

801 Media, ranking titles:

125. ↑4 (129) : A Foreign Love Affair – 801 Media, Mar 2008 [247.7] ::
698. ↑new (last ranked 27 Jul 08) : King of Debt – 801 Media, Jan 2008 [17.3] ::
137. ↑8 (145) : Love Is Like a Hurricane 5 – 801 Media, Jun 2008 [231.7] ::
410. ↓-24 (386) : Love Is Like a Hurricane 4 – 801 Media, Mar 2008 [64.9] ::
516. ↑44 (560) : Love Is Like a Hurricane 1 – 801 Media, Jun 2007 [38.5] ::
1161. ↓-42 (1119) : Love Is Like a Hurricane 3 – 801 Media, Dec 2007 [1] ::
1269. ↑60 (1329) : Love Is Like a Hurricane 2 – 801 Media, Sep 2007 [0.3] ::
1625. ↑new (last ranked 13 Jul 08) : Maybe I’m Your Steppin’ Stone – 801 Media, Feb 2008 [0.1] ::
399. ↑55 (454) : My Paranoid Next Door Neighbor – 801 Media, Aug 2007 [67.4] ::
733. ↓-237 (496) : Sensitive Pornograph – 801 Media, Oct 2007 [14.6] ::
122. ↓-17 (105) : The Devil’s Secret – 801 Media, Jun 2008 [250.7] ::
214. ↓-24 (190) : The President’s Time – 801 Media, May 2008 [152.4] ::
347. ↑64 (411) : The Prime Minister’s Secret Diplomacy – 801 Media, Jan 2008 [84.5] ::
1633. ↑new (last ranked 13 Jul 08) : The Sky over My Spectacles – 801 Media, Mar 2007 [0.1] ::
278. ↓-54 (224) : Weekend Lovers – 801 Media, Apr 2008 [106.8] ::

also appearing:

. (last ranked 13 Jul 08) : Bond(z) – 801 Media, Apr 2007 [0] ::
. (last ranked 6 Jul 08) : I’m Not Your Steppin’ Stone – 801 Media, Nov 2007 [0] ::
. (last ranked 18 May 08) : Ichigenme: The First Class Is Civil Law 1 – 801 Media, Feb 2007 [0] ::
. (last ranked 18 May 08) : Love+Alpha – 801 Media, Jul 2008 [0] ::
. (last ranked 13 Jul 08) : Love Circumstances – 801 Media, Mar 2008 [0] ::
::

[Edit 9:30pm 8/8: I really hate it when typos manage to sneak into my rankings, even more so when they acquire scores and ranks. A variant spelling of ‘The Sky Over My Spectacles’ was, up until a minute ago, cited as appearing on my manga chart — though last ranked back in May, so it’s an old mistake. The correct version is still listed above. —I removed the dupe and now every last number in this write-up is off by one. No, I’m not going to fix that.]

A quick, sloppy survey points to these 16 series being more than 2/3 of the total output to date. Love is Like a Hurricane is obviously the breakout title, with all 5 volumes ranking, but quite a few one-shots also make the chart.

DMP main imprint, by series:

781. ↓-227 (554) : Speed Racer Mach GoGoGo box set – DMP Platinum, Apr 2008 [10.4] ::

998. ↓-55 (943) : Antique Bakery 4 – DMP, Jul 2006 [4.5] ::
1449. ↑new (0) : Antique Bakery 1 – DMP, Aug 2005 [0.1] ::
1450. ↑new (0) : Antique Bakery 3 – DMP, Oct 2005 [0.1] ::

292. ↑28 (320) : Body Language (novel) – DMP, Jan 2008 [101.4] ::

1527. ↓-171 (1356) : Cafe Kichijouji 3 – DMP, Jun 2006 [0.1] ::

1384. ↓-26 (1358) : Day of Revolution 2 – DMP, Dec 2006 [0.2] ::

1191. ↓-299 (892) : Don’t Blame Me 2 – DMP, Jun 2008 [0.5] ::

1425. ↑167 (1592) : Duetto – DMP, Dec 2007 [0.2] ::

823. ↓-40 (783) : Enchanter 9 – DMP, Aug 2008 [8.7] ::
1035. ↓-378 (657) : Enchanter 8 – DMP, May 2008 [3.5] ::

1423. ↑161 (1584) : Fafner: Dead Aggressor (novel) – DMP, Jul 2008 [0.2] ::

808. ↓-35 (773) : Let’s Draw Manga All About Fighting – DMP, Sep 2004 [9.1] ::
1250. ↓-70 (1180) : Let’s Draw Manga Yaoi – DMP, Jun 2007 [0.3] ::
1300. ↓-287 (1013) : Let’s Draw Manga Bodies & Emotions – DMP, Sep 2005 [0.2] ::
1567. ↓-107 (1460) : Let’s Draw Manga Tokyo Urban Hip Hop Culture – DMP, Jan 2005 [0.1] ::

1610. ↓-14 (1596) : Megami Deluxe 2 – DMP, Jul 2008 [0.1] ::

797. ↓-90 (707) : Princess Princess 2 – DMP, Feb 2007 [9.6] ::
836. ↓-188 (648) : Princess Princess 5 – DMP, Nov 2007 [8.4] ::
1291. ↓-558 (733) : Princess Princess 1 – DMP, Nov 2006 [0.2] ::

708. ↓-150 (558) : Red Angel 1 – DMP, Jun 2008 [16.4] ::

443. ↑85 (528) : Robot 1 – DMP, Aug 2005 [55.9] ::
636. ↑569 (1205) : Robot 2 – DMP, Mar 2006 [23.1] ::
1082. ↓-54 (1028) : Robot 3 – DMP, Jun 2006 [2.7] ::

32. ↓-4 (28) : Vampire Hunter D (manga) 2 – DMP, Jun 2008 [450.7] ::
240. ↓-2 (238) : Vampire Hunter D (manga) 1 – DMP, Nov 2007 [134.3] ::

also appearing:

. (last ranked 27 Jul 08) : 9th Sleep – DMP, Dec 2007 [0] ::
. (last ranked 13 Apr 08) : Bambi and Her Pink Gun 1 – DMP, Aug 2005 [0] ::
. (last ranked 27 Apr 08) : Bambi and Her Pink Gun 2 – DMP, Nov 2005 [0] ::
. (last ranked 23 Mar 08) : Dash! – DMP, Nov 2007 [0] ::
. (last ranked 15 Jun 08) : Don’t Blame Me 1 – DMP, Mar 2008 [0] ::
. (last ranked 6 Jul 08) : Enchanter 6 – DMP, Nov 2007 [0] ::
. (last ranked 15 Jun 08) : Enchanter 7 – DMP, Feb 2008 [0] ::
. (last ranked 13 Jul 08) : Family Complex – DMP, Jan 2008 [0] ::
. (last ranked 18 May 08) : Flamboyant – DMP, Apr 2008 [0] ::
. (last ranked 25 May 08) : Flower of Life 1 – DMP, Jan 2007 [0] ::
. (last ranked 4 May 08) : Flower of Life 3 – DMP, Jul 2007 [0] ::
. (last ranked 6 Apr 08) : Heroes Are Extinct 2 – DMP, Oct 2007 [0] ::
. (last ranked 6 Apr 08) : Heroes Are Extinct 3 – DMP, Jan 2008 [0] ::
. (last ranked 29 Jun 08) : Megami Deluxe 3 – DMP, Sep 2008 [0] ::
. (last ranked 27 Jul 08) : Princess Princess 3 – DMP, May 2007 [0] ::
. (last ranked 27 Jul 08) : Princess Princess 4 – DMP, Aug 2007 [0] ::
. (last ranked 20 Jul 08) : Project X Nissin Cup Noodle – DMP, Jul 2006 [0] ::
. (last ranked 27 Jul 08) : Shoujo Manga Techniques Drawing Basics – DMP, Apr 2005 [0] ::

Nissin Cup Noodle is a blast, if you haven’t already picked it up. Ramen Manga. Dude.

DMP June, by rank:

81. ↓-10 (71) : Hero Heel 2 – DMP June, Jun 2008 [309.4] ::
97. ↓-24 (73) : Love Recipe 2 – DMP June, Jun 2008 [281.2] ::
180. ↓-20 (160) : Caged Slave (novel) – DMP June, May 2008 [185.4] ::
221. ↓-33 (188) : Necratoholic – DMP June, Apr 2008 [146.5] ::
223. ↑194 (417) : Ai no Kusabi (novel) 3 – DMP June, Jul 2008 [143.7] ::
275. ↓-28 (247) : Eternal Love (novel) – DMP June, Jun 2008 [107.1] ::
307. ↑94 (401) : Gentle Cage (novel) – DMP June, Jul 2008 [96.9] ::
327. ↑132 (459) : Blue Sky – DMP June, Jul 2008 [89.4] ::
409. ↑17 (426) : Golden Prince and Argent King – DMP June, Jun 2008 [65] ::
426. ↓-143 (283) : A Promise of Romance (novel) – DMP June, May 2008 [60.3] ::
438. ↓-89 (349) : Sweet Admiration (novel) – DMP June, Mar 2008 [56.8] ::
460. ↑new (last ranked 27 Jul 08) : Better Than a Dream (novel) – DMP June, May 2008 [50.1] ::
475. ↓-93 (382) : Endless Rain – DMP June, May 2008 [47.7] ::
490. ↓-94 (396) : S (novel) 1 – DMP June, May 2008 [44.7] ::
566. ↓-210 (356) : Restart – DMP June, Jun 2008 [31] ::
587. ↑135 (722) : Only the Ring Finger Knows (novel) 1 – DMP June, Mar 2006 [28.8] ::
598. ↓-238 (360) : Like a Love Comedy (novel) – DMP June, Jul 2008 [27.8] ::
600. ↓-312 (288) : Sleeping with Money (novel) – DMP June, Jun 2008 [27.5] ::
607. ↑142 (749) : Selfish Mr. Mermaid – DMP June, Apr 2008 [27] ::
630. ↑31 (661) : Only the Ring Finger Knows (novel) 2 – DMP June, Jul 2006 [24.6] ::
683. ↑36 (719) : Ai no Kusabi (novel) 1 – DMP June, Nov 2007 [18.1] ::
751. ↓-38 (713) : Only the Ring Finger Knows (novel) 3 – DMP June, Oct 2006 [13.2] ::
878. ↑104 (982) : From Up Above – DMP June, Nov 2007 [7.4] ::
902. ↑new (last ranked 22 June 08) : Immoral Darkness (novel) – DMP June, Jul 2008 [6.8] ::
909. ↑new (last ranked 8 Jun 08) : Ordinary Crush 1 – DMP June, Aug 2007 [6.6] ::
1001. ↑new (last ranked 18 May 08) : Kiss Blue – DMP June, Jul 2008 [4.5] ::
1012. ↑new (last ranked 18 May 08) : Feverish – DMP June, Jul 2008 [4.3] ::
1034. ↑new (last ranked 18 May 08) : Pathos 1 – DMP June, Jul 2008 [3.6] ::
1062. ↓-422 (640) : A Strange and Mystifying Story – DMP June, May 2008 [3.1] ::
1101. ↑57 (1158) : Hard Rock – DMP June, Jun 2008 [2.3] ::
1183. ↓-58 (1125) : Love Control – DMP June, May 2008 [0.6] ::
1209. ↓-114 (1095) : A Love Song for the Miserable – DMP June, May 2008 [0.4] ::
1257. ↓-54 (1203) : Ai no Kusabi (novel) 2 – DMP June, Mar 2008 [0.3] ::
1292. ↓-527 (765) : Sunflower 1 – DMP June, Sep 2007 [0.2] ::
1296. ↓-422 (874) : Loving Gaze – DMP June, Jun 2008 [0.2] ::
1381. ↓-36 (1345) : Spell – DMP June, Sep 2007 [0.2] ::
1385. ↓-26 (1359) : Dear Myself – DMP June, Aug 2006 [0.2] ::
1388. ↓-12 (1376) : Stolen Heart – DMP June, Sep 2007 [0.2] ::
1395. ↑6 (1401) : Constellations in My Palm – DMP June, Oct 2007 [0.2] ::
1401. ↑22 (1423) : Yellow 1 – DMP June, Jul 2005 [0.2] ::
1431. ↑172 (1603) : Ka Shin Fu – DMP June, Oct 2007 [0.2] ::
1502. ↓-272 (1230) : Red – DMP June, May 2008 [0.1] ::
1530. ↓-169 (1361) : Don’t Say Anymore Darling – DMP June, Jul 2007 [0.1] ::
1537. ↓-163 (1374) : S (novel) 3 – DMP June, Dec 2008 [0.1] ::
1578. ↓-79 (1499) : The Art of Loving – DMP June, Apr 2006 [0.1] ::
1590. ↓-55 (1535) : Lost Boys – DMP June, Jun 2006 [0.1] ::
1599. ↓-30 (1569) : Fake Fur – DMP June, Apr 2007 [0.1] ::
1634. ↑new (last ranked 13 Jul 08) : Yellow 2 – DMP June, Oct 2005 [0.1] ::
1641. ↑new (last ranked 18 May 08) : Steal Moon 1 – DMP June, Jul 2008 [0.1] ::
1679. ↑new (last ranked 29 Jun 08) : Yellow 4 – DMP June, Jul 2006 [0.1] ::
1687. ↑new (last ranked 6 Jul 08) : Only the Ring Finger Knows (manga) – DMP June, Aug 2004 [0.1] ::

also appearing:

. (last ranked 6 Jul 08) : After I Win – DMP June, Dec 2007 [0] ::
. (last ranked 22 June 08) : Ai no Kusabi (novel) 4 – DMP June, Nov 2008 [0] ::
. (last ranked 25 May 08) : Alcohol, Shirt, and Kiss – DMP June, Mar 2007 [0] ::
. (last ranked 4 May 08) : All Nippon Airline – DMP June, Feb 2008 [0] ::
. (last ranked 13 Apr 08) : Camera Camera Camera 1 – DMP June, Nov 2007 [0] ::
. (last ranked 4 May 08) : Camera Camera Camera 2 – DMP June, Feb 2008 [0] ::
. (last ranked 23 Mar 08) : Can’t Win with You 2 – DMP June, Nov 2007 [0] ::
. (last ranked 22 June 08) : Can’t Win with You 3 – DMP June, Apr 2008 [0] ::
. (last ranked 27 Jul 08) : Close the Last Door – DMP June, Sep 2006 [0] ::
. (last ranked 13 Jul 08) : Color of Love – DMP June, Apr 2008 [0] ::
. (last ranked 22 June 08) : Crushing Love – DMP June, Dec 2007 [0] ::
. (last ranked 27 Jul 08) : Dark Walker (novel) – DMP June, Dec 2008 [0] ::
. (last ranked 27 Jul 08) : Dost Thou Know? – DMP June, Nov 2005 [0] ::
. (last ranked 20 Jul 08) : Dry Heat – DMP June, Nov 2008 [0] ::
. (last ranked 18 May 08) : Everlasting Love – DMP June, Jan 2008 [0] ::
. (last ranked 20 Jul 08) : First Stage of Love – DMP June, Apr 2008 [0] ::
. (last ranked 1 Jun 08) : Freefall Romance – DMP June, Sep 2007 [0] ::
. (last ranked 22 June 08) : Glass Sky – DMP June, Dec 2007 [0] ::
. (last ranked 25 May 08) : Gorgeous Carat Galaxy – DMP June, Jul 2006 [0] ::
. (last ranked 20 Jul 08) : Great Place High School – DMP June, Apr 2008 [0] ::
. (last ranked 20 Jul 08) : Happiness Recommended – DMP June, May 2008 [0] ::
. (last ranked 18 May 08) : Hero Heel 1 – DMP June, Nov 2006 [0] ::
. (last ranked 27 Jul 08) : Hero Heel 3 – DMP June, Dec 2008 [0] ::
. (last ranked 22 June 08) : Hot Steamy Glasses – DMP June, Apr 2008 [0] ::
. (last ranked 27 Jul 08) : I’ll Be Your Slave – DMP June, Jan 2008 [0] ::
. (last ranked 29 Jun 08) : In the Walnut – DMP June, Dec 2007 [0] ::
. (last ranked 27 Jul 08) : Invisible Boy 1 – DMP June, Sep 2007 [0] ::
. (last ranked 8 Jun 08) : Invisible Boy 2 – DMP June, Dec 2007 [0] ::
. (last ranked 27 Jul 08) : J-Boy by Biblos – DMP June, Nov 2006 [0] ::
. (last ranked 1 Jun 08) : Kurashina Sensei’s Passion 1 – DMP June, Sep 2007 [0] ::
. (last ranked 27 Jul 08) : L’Etoile Solitaire – DMP June, Oct 2007 [0] ::
. (last ranked 13 Apr 08) : La Esperanca 7 – DMP June, Jun 2007 [0] ::
. (last ranked 27 Jul 08) : Little Butterfly 2 – DMP June, Sep 2006 [0] ::
. (last ranked 13 Jul 08) : Little Butterfly 3 – DMP June, Dec 2006 [0] ::
. (last ranked 29 Jun 08) : Little Darling (novel) – DMP June, Nov 2007 [0] ::
. (last ranked 1 Jun 08) : Love Lesson – DMP June, Apr 2008 [0] ::
. (last ranked 13 Jul 08) : Love Recipe 1 – DMP June, Jun 2007 [0] ::
. (last ranked 25 May 08) : Love Share – DMP June, Jan 2008 [0] ::
. (last ranked 22 June 08) : Love Training – DMP June, Feb 2008 [0] ::
. (last ranked 15 Jun 08) : Lover’s Flat – DMP June, Aug 2007 [0] ::
. (last ranked 15 Jun 08) : Melted Love – DMP June, Sep 2007 [0] ::
. (last ranked 6 Jul 08) : New Beginnings – DMP June, Jun 2008 [0] ::
. (last ranked 22 June 08) : Ordinary Crush 2 – DMP June, Dec 2007 [0] ::
. (last ranked 27 Jul 08) : Our Kingdom 1 – DMP June, Nov 2005 [0] ::
. (last ranked 22 June 08) : Picnic – DMP June, Jun 2007 [0] ::
. (last ranked 18 May 08) : Prince Charming 1 – DMP June, Oct 2007 [0] ::
. (last ranked 4 May 08) : Prince Charming 2 – DMP June, Jan 2008 [0] ::
. (last ranked 29 Jun 08) : Prince Charming 3 – DMP June, Apr 2008 [0] ::
. (last ranked 13 Jul 08) : Rin! 1 – DMP June, Oct 2006 [0] ::
. (last ranked 13 Jul 08) : Rin! 2 – DMP June, Jan 2007 [0] ::
. (last ranked 27 Jul 08) : Rin! 3 – DMP June, Apr 2007 [0] ::
. (last ranked 22 June 08) : S (novel) 2 – DMP June, Aug 2008 [0] ::
. (last ranked 18 May 08) : Seven – DMP June, Jan 2007 [0] ::
. (last ranked 22 June 08) : Sugar Milk – DMP June, Apr 2008 [0] ::
. (last ranked 29 Jun 08) : Sweet Whisper – DMP June, Jul 2007 [0] ::
. (last ranked 23 Mar 08) : The Day I Became a Butterfly – DMP June, Mar 2007 [0] ::
. (last ranked 27 Jul 08) : Thirsty for Love – DMP June, Apr 2008 [0] ::
. (last ranked 18 May 08) : Time Lag – DMP June, Jul 2006 [0] ::
. (last ranked 18 May 08) : Today’s Ulterior Motives – DMP June, Jul 2008 [0] ::
. (last ranked 18 May 08) : Vanilla 2 – DMP June, Feb 2008 [0] ::
. (last ranked 15 Jun 08) : World’s End – DMP June, Oct 2007 [0] ::
. (last ranked 15 Jun 08) : Yellow 3 – DMP June, Mar 2006 [0] ::

##

June also has quite a few novels; not surprising, given the proclivities of the fan base, but maybe it didn’t occur to you.

I’ve a whole wall of novels in my store that seem to indicate that even without pictures, a well-told tale of love will appeal — and Harlequin as a company and many individual imprints of other publishers exist on romance novels alone. The written word is powerful, it can conjure up scenes and put characters into easily imagined situations. (And only rarely is it censored, because the neanderthals have to be able to read before they object to the content) …so, long live yaoi novels, and their yuri counterparts. (though it seems only Seven Seas is attempting the Yuri, to date. A shame, that…)

Editorial Note: I was in the middle of writing my commentary on this week’s manga charts when I was sidetracked by a pack of rogue neurons who got together and downloaded this diatribe right into the middle of my train-of-thought on manga marketing. As has happened in the past, one of my good rants is often better than the article that prompts it, so even though I’m still working on the ur-commentary I’ll pull this chunk out of context and post it first. And while this is largely aimed at Tokyopop, I think there might be some splash damage for other comics publishers who are trying to push themselves as New Media Companies.

We now join our rant, already in progress…

##

—I need to interrupt that thought: there is no replacement for the right person who possesses the right expertise working in an appropriate position. Your first, best, second best, and in the end the only asset that positively impacts your bottom line, are your employees.

Say you own a diamond mine: you likely think that your greatest asset is the mine.

Sure it is.

…Have fun digging.

It’s cheaper to keep ‘em on the payroll. You want to pay consultant rates for stuff an expert just knows? Some of these folks genuinely love their work; heck, they’ve either been doing it for years or spend 40 hours a week outside of the job reading comics and reading about comics (or both) and likely have the equivalent of a clippings file (or a batch of web bookmarks) that enables them to answer your stupid questions in scant minutes when they don’t know something off the top of their head.

People charge money for this kind of thing; I know because I want that information, too, and no one is willing to part with it for less than 2 bills. It’s as true for publishing (or ‘media’) as for any business: It’s far easier and more cost-effective to keep expertise in house no matter what you’re doing. The ‘savings’ accrued from using freelancers instead of salaried staff is an illusionary dollar, in my opinion. You want people working for you and with you, not just working.

When you start laying off employees… Well, there is this biology term that I’ve misappropriated and tend overuse in this application: autolysis. Death of the organism from the inside out.

And I’ve ranted about this before but I’ll dig this horse up and beat it again.

Say you want to transition from comics to ‘media’ (whatever that is) just because Marvel got lucky with a couple of their lottery tickets and suddenly you’re thinking, “oh, that’s where the money is”. I don’t know if you were paying attention but Marvel made arrangements to borrow up to half a billion dollars to cover that bet, and if fickle movie audiences or egoist directors or the all-important casting director or mercurial actors had made any of a hundred different decisions badly (or at least, not in the way that they did) then we’d be blogging about which creditors now own which parts of the Marvel catalog, who’s interested in buying and at what discount.

(Oh, and Iron Man? That’s a win. But the second Hulk I can only give half credit for. Marvel got Robert Downey Jr. and got lucky, and that’s the story that leads but the jury is decidedly still out on whether the Marvel Movie Gamble ends up being hailed as a genius business decision or, like Spider-man on TV, just another blip in the long Marvel history.)

There are no guaranteed profits to be found here. Sure, roll the dice — If you have money to spare. Personally, I wouldn’t bet the farm on it.

The point? The money wasn’t made by the movie. No, wait, I’ll explain:

It was earned for the company by people, folks who like and respect the concept, the character, and the audience. They made a story that would sell. That story was wrapped up in a package that just happened to look like a movie. Don’t become so enamored of the packaging that you forget the product we all sell are Stories.

And stories-in-books are cheaper to produce.

Oh, I know,
“it’s so hard to make books… I want in on that easy Hollywood money.”
Newsflash: Hollywood is even harder and costs a lot more money. It’s just that you’re not doing the work.

What do you call a hundred-million-dollar enterprise that employs hundreds of people (thousands?) over the course of year or two, with the associated planning, logistics, accounting, insurance, marketing, and a finished product distributed world-wide to thousands of outlets?

That’s a company.

Each and every movie production is a self contained company that works to make a single product.

I can’t be 100% certain but I think most folks with a ‘new media’ press release already have a company, they’re just tired of working.

Go ahead, admit it: You want someone to hand you a check and maybe an Associate Producer credit and then you want to go to cocktail parties and say, oh, so-and-so is attached to direct and start referring to big name actors by the first names or initials and then you hang around like a frickin’ groupie on set, always in the way, even the gaffers are sick of working around you and then red carpet premiers in LA, New York, London, and Tokyo where no one will even know who you are but you get to wear a tux or a gown and get the limo and get to feel like a all-imporant movie exec when in actuality you’re nothing but a self-important ass.

And if it isn’t even your property to begin with, then to belabor my metaphor: not only are you looking for free money, you’re not even buying your own lottery tickets — you are instead ripping them from the hands of the deserving creators; you know, the fine people who actually work for a living. That’s even worse: You don’t want to work, you want a multi-million-dollar handout, and you’re willing to steal for it.

##

SO, my point: 10 things to think before starting your New Media Company

1. You sell stories. I love good stories; we all do. That’s why we give you money.

This is your business. Y’all should already know this but I’m prepared to have it engraved on an axe handle and beat you over the head with it until you remember.

2. Don’t lose sight of the story because of how it’s packaged: a movie is just another way to tell a story. Selling Books is a boring business but they are still the cheapest, most cost-effective way to get stories into the marketplace. (well… there is this internet thing but it is damnably hard to get people to pay for internet content)

3. You want to ‘get into movies’. Fine. Guess what: You’re not making the movie. Once you know the right people, the movie makes itself.

4. If you’re telling great stories, the right people come to you.

5. Do you really need to set up a whole new company to sell ideas? Concentrate on the ideas and then hire an agent. (op. cit. “there is no replacement for the right person who possesses the right expertise working in an appropriate position”)

6. No, really: WTF. The best press release would have been something like “MangaRevolution, the leader in repackaging Tokyo pop culture, has selected leading Hollywood agency DeMille-Bunuel-Lumiere-Lang to represent their properties to the major domestic and international studios”

The actual Tokyopop announcement was more like: “We’re thinking of planning to maybe look into this Hollywood thing. But it’s Manga, so it’s Cool“ (…that kind of thinking is so 2004. get with the new program )

If you want a movie, hire an agent. They’re the professionals, after all. Anything else is a half-assed amateur effort.

7. If you really want a movie, hell, get out there and raise $100M and hire the right talent and run a company that makes movies. (That’s the Marvel Model, actually. They discovered licensing doesn’t pay as well, so they cowboyed-up and put their ass on the line for the real deal.)

8. You notice how I said, “hire the right talent”? You don’t know how to make a movie, obviously, since you think the industry is just a ready source of free money.

9. Related, and for the nth time: Business is about money, sure, but it’s not the widgets or the movie or the comics that earn money for your company: It’s the people.

10. Respect people. Payroll is *not* an expense, it is an investment. In the end, employees are your only asset.

I’m using my charts (currently, numbers for the week ending 13 July) to look at the output of select publishers —

covered previously: Aurora Publishing, ADV Manga.

Today the spotlight is on

CMX

Time Warner is one of those big Conglom-O class companies that I, as a brave internet independent raised on telnet, usenet, & IRC (with graduate studies furnished by BoingBoing and the EFF) am supposed to hate unconditionally, without question. And yes, they most assuredly do suck — but then, so do most corporations as they tend to do stupid things just because 99% of the time they operate on autopilot and 10 year old information and there is no one in place to tell them not to.

CMX isn’t just a division of Time Warner, though: it’s a semantic part of an imprint of a division of a subsidiary of the mother corp.: I say ‘semantic’ because hell neither CMX nor Wildstorm, the purported publisher of record, appear at all in Time Warner’s Annual Report, and DC herself is hardly mentioned except as a source of IP owned by Time Warner, and occasionally used for bad, bad movie adaptations (the current film and maybe 17% of previous WB output excluded)

Anyway, CMX is such an outlier (the furthest colonial outpost, as it were) and runs so far beneath the corporate radar that they can actually release good stuff.

I know it’s hard to countenance, but yes: so long as one isn’t so successful as to merit unwanted attention from one’s corporate overlords, even in the Empire small acts of rebellion [that is to say: good comic books] are possible.

And I do like what CMX is doing:
[as of 13 July, out of 1704 ranked titles]

. (last ranked 6 Apr 08) : Apothecarius Argentum 4 – CMX, Feb 2008 [0] ::
. (last ranked 8 June 08) : Apothecarius Argentum 6 – CMX, Aug 2008 [0] ::
. (last ranked 13 Apr 08) : Apothecarius Argentum 5 – CMX, Jun 2008 [0] ::

. (last ranked 22 June 08) : Canon 3 – CMX, Jul 2007 [0] ::
. (last ranked 22 June 08) : Canon 4 – CMX, Jan 2008 [0] ::
. (last ranked 22 June 08) : Canon 1 – CMX, Apr 2007 [0] ::

1062. ↓-41 (1021) : Chikyu Misaki 1 – CMX, Sep 2005 [3.5] ::
1069. ↓-36 (1033) : Chikyu Misaki 2 – CMX, Dec 2005 [3.4] ::
1077. ↓-43 (1034) : Chikyu Misaki 3 – CMX, Mar 2006 [3.3] ::

. (last ranked 30 Mar 08) : Cipher 11 – CMX, Apr 2008 [0] ::

1250. ↓-19 (1231) : Crayon Shinchan 1 – CMX, Feb 2008 [0.4] ::
. (last ranked 15 Jun 08) : Crayon Shinchan 2 – CMX, May 2008 [0] ::

787. ↑new (0) : Dokkoida?! 3 – CMX, Aug 2008 [9.3] ::

. (last ranked 1 Jun 08) : Dorothea 1 – CMX, Apr 2008 [0] ::

1154. ↓-24 (1130) : Emma 1 – CMX, Sep 2006 [1.7] ::
1159. ↓-17 (1142) : Emma 2 – CMX, Dec 2006 [1.6] ::
1549. ↓-155 (1394) : Emma 7 – CMX, Mar 2008 [0.1] ::
. (last ranked 15 Jun 08) : Emma 3 – CMX, Mar 2007 [0] ::
. (last ranked 22 June 08) : Emma 5 – CMX, Sep 2007 [0] ::
. (last ranked 22 June 08) : Emma 6 – CMX, Dec 2007 [0] ::
. (last ranked 4 May 08) : Emma 4 – CMX, Jun 2007 [0] ::

843. ↑new (last ranked 23 Mar 08) : Empty Empire 7 – CMX, Mar 2008 [7.8] ::
858. ↑new (0) : Empty Empire 6 – CMX, Dec 2007 [7.4] ::
. (last ranked 29 Jun 08) : Empty Empire 3 – CMX, Feb 2007 [0] ::
. (last ranked 29 Jun 08) : Empty Empire 4 – CMX, May 2007 [0] ::
. (last ranked 29 Jun 08) : Empty Empire 2 – CMX, Nov 2006 [0] ::
. (last ranked 29 Jun 08) : Empty Empire 5 – CMX, Aug 2007 [0] ::

857. ↑70 (927) : From Eroica with Love 3 – CMX, May 2005 [7.5] ::
867. ↑50 (917) : From Eroica with Love 1 – CMX, Nov 2004 [7.3] ::
868. ↑63 (931) : From Eroica with Love 5 – CMX, Nov 2005 [7.3] ::
882. ↑39 (921) : From Eroica with Love 2 – CMX, Feb 2005 [7.1] ::
883. ↑50 (933) : From Eroica with Love 4 – CMX, Aug 2005 [7.1] ::
1118. ↓-28 (1090) : From Eroica with Love 6 – CMX, Feb 2006 [2.4] ::
1126. ↓-25 (1101) : From Eroica with Love 7 – CMX, Sep 2006 [2.3] ::
. (last ranked 18 May 08) : From Eroica with Love 11 – CMX, Dec 2007 [0] ::
. (last ranked 18 May 08) : From Eroica with Love 12 – CMX, Mar 2008 [0] ::
. (last ranked 30 Mar 08) : From Eroica with Love 8 – CMX, Jan 2007 [0] ::
. (last ranked 30 Mar 08) : From Eroica with Love 9 – CMX, May 2007 [0] ::
. (last ranked 18 May 08) : From Eroica with Love 13 – CMX, Jul 2008 [0] ::

785. ↑new (0) : Gon 5 – CMX, Aug 2008 [9.4] ::
. (last ranked 29 Jun 08) : Gon 4 – CMX, Apr 2008 [0] ::

. (last ranked 1 Jun 08) : I Hate You More Than Anyone 4 – CMX, Apr 2008 [0] ::
. (last ranked 18 May 08) : I Hate You More Than Anyone 6 – CMX, Oct 2008 [0] ::
. (last ranked 6 Jul 08) : I Hate You More Than Anyone 5 – CMX, Jul 2008 [0] ::

533. ↑21 (554) : Kamikaze Kaito Jeanne 2 – CMX, Jan 2006 [33.6] ::
716. ↑702 (1418) : Kamikaze Kaito Jeanne 3 – CMX, Apr 2006 [12.7] ::
784. ↑877 (1661) : Kamikaze Kaito Jeanne 4 – CMX, Jul 2006 [9.5] ::
1410. ↑new (last ranked 15 Jun 08) : Kamikaze Kaito Jeanne 5 – CMX, Sep 2006 [0.2] ::
. (last ranked 13 Apr 08) : Kamikaze Kaito Jeanne 6 – CMX, Nov 2006 [0] ::
. (last ranked 4 May 08) : Kamikaze Kaito Jeanne 7 – CMX, Jan 2007 [0] ::
. (last ranked 22 June 08) : Kamikaze Kaito Jeanne 1 – CMX, Nov 2005 [0] ::

. (last ranked 13 Apr 08) : Kiichi and the Magic Books 1 – CMX, May 2005 [0] ::

940. ↑57 (997) : Kikaider Code 02 vol 2 – CMX, Jan 2006 [6.1] ::

. (last ranked 30 Mar 08) : Leader’s High 1 – CMX, Mar 2008 [0] ::
. (last ranked 13 Apr 08) : Madara 5 – CMX, Nov 2005 [0] ::
1150. ↓-19 (1131) : Megatokyo 4 – CMX, Jun 2006 [1.8] ::
1173. ↓-451 (722) : Megatokyo 5 – CMX, May 2007 [1.2] ::

869. ↑108 (977) : Monster Collection 1 – CMX, Apr 2005 [7.3] ::
876. ↑106 (982) : Monster Collection 5 – CMX, Mar 2006 [7.2] ::
907. ↑89 (996) : Monster Collection 6 – CMX, Jun 2006 [6.7] ::
1033. ↓-55 (978) : Monster Collection 4 – CMX, Jan 2006 [4.3] ::
1089. ↑new (last ranked 8 June 08) : Monster Collection 2 – CMX, Aug 2005 [3.1] ::
. (last ranked 8 June 08) : Monster Collection 3 – CMX, Oct 2005 [0] ::

. (last ranked 23 Mar 08) : Moon Child 10 – CMX, Mar 2008 [0] ::

914. ↑23 (937) : Musashi #9 vol 2 – CMX, Mar 2005 [6.5] ::
926. ↑new (last ranked 15 Jun 08) : Musashi #9 vol 15 – CMX, Jul 2008 [6.3] ::
958. ↓-17 (941) : Musashi #9 vol 1 – CMX, Dec 2004 [5.8] ::
984. ↓-48 (936) : Musashi #9 vol 3 – CMX, Jun 2005 [5.2] ::
1063. ↑16 (1079) : Musashi #9 vol 6 – CMX, Feb 2006 [3.5] ::
1112. ↓-29 (1083) : Musashi #9 vol 7 – CMX, May 2006 [2.5] ::
1192. ↑new (last ranked 8 June 08) : Musashi #9 vol 5 – CMX, Nov 2005 [1] ::
. (last ranked 8 June 08) : Musashi #9 vol 4 – CMX, Sep 2005 [0] ::

. (last ranked 6 Apr 08) : Orfina 2 – CMX, Feb 2008 [0] ::

502. ↑8 (510) : Penguin Revolution 5 – CMX, Jan 2008 [41.4] ::

. (last ranked 30 Mar 08) : Presents 3 – CMX, Apr 2008 [0] ::
. (last ranked 29 Jun 08) : Presents 2 – CMX, Jan 2008 [0] ::
. (last ranked 29 Jun 08) : Presents 1 – CMX, Oct 2007 [0] ::

. (last ranked 1 Jun 08) : Swan 4 – CMX, Sep 2005 [0] ::
. (last ranked 1 Jun 08) : Swan 5 – CMX, Nov 2005 [0] ::
. (last ranked 1 Jun 08) : Swan 6 – CMX, Mar 2006 [0] ::

875. ↑97 (972) : Sword of the Dark Ones 2 – CMX, Jul 2005 [7.2] ::
1102. ↓-33 (1069) : Sword of the Dark Ones 1 – CMX, Apr 2005 [2.7] ::

. (last ranked 30 Mar 08) : Tears of a Lamb 2 – CMX, Apr 2008 [0] ::

862. ↑108 (970) : Tenjho Tenge 4 – CMX, Nov 2005 [7.4] ::
930. ↑21 (951) : Tenjho Tenge 1 – CMX, Mar 2005 [6.2] ::
948. ↑11 (959) : Tenjho Tenge 5 – CMX, Jan 2006 [6] ::
959. ↑6 (965) : Tenjho Tenge 3 – CMX, Sep 2005 [5.8] ::
1081. ↓-37 (1044) : Tenjho Tenge 6 – CMX, Feb 2006 [3.2] ::
1088. ↓-36 (1052) : Tenjho Tenge 7 – CMX, Apr 2006 [3.1] ::
1093. ↓-35 (1058) : Tenjho Tenge 8 – CMX, Jun 2006 [3] ::
1095. ↓-32 (1063) : Tenjho Tenge 9 – CMX, Aug 2006 [2.9] ::
1099. ↓-34 (1065) : Tenjho Tenge 10 – CMX, Oct 2006 [2.8] ::
1104. ↓-29 (1075) : Tenjho Tenge 11 – CMX, Dec 2006 [2.7] ::
. (last ranked 15 Jun 08) : Tenjho Tenge 16 – CMX, Nov 2007 [0] ::
. (last ranked 29 Jun 08) : Tenjho Tenge 12 – CMX, Feb 2007 [0] ::

924. ↑81 (1005) : Testarotho 2 – CMX, Nov 2005 [6.3] ::
941. ↑67 (1008) : Testarotho 3 – CMX, Feb 2006 [6.1] ::
960. ↑56 (1016) : Testarotho 4 – CMX, May 2006 [5.8] ::

1129. ↓-24 (1105) : The Devil Does Exist 7 – CMX, Aug 2006 [2.2] ::
1137. ↓-26 (1111) : The Devil Does Exist 8 – CMX, Nov 2006 [2.1] ::
. (last ranked 4 May 08) : The Devil Does Exist 2 – CMX, Jun 2005 [0] ::
. (last ranked 4 May 08) : The Devil Does Exist 1 – CMX, Apr 2005 [0] ::
. (last ranked 23 Mar 08) : The Devil Does Exist 3 – CMX, Oct 2005 [0] ::
. (last ranked 4 May 08) : The Devil Does Exist 4 – CMX, Jan 2006 [0] ::
. (last ranked 13 Apr 08) : The Devil Does Exist 6 – CMX, May 2006 [0] ::
. (last ranked 8 June 08) : The Devil Does Exist 11 – CMX, Aug 2007 [0] ::

. (last ranked 23 Mar 08) : Tower of the Future 10 – CMX, Mar 2008 [0] ::

. (last ranked 15 Jun 08) : Two Flowers for the Dragon 1 – CMX, Jun 2008 [0] ::

. (last ranked 25 May 08) : Variante 3 – CMX, Apr 2008 [0] ::
. (last ranked 25 May 08) : Variante 1 – CMX, Oct 2007 [0] ::

1105. ↑8 (1113) : Versus 1 – CMX, Apr 2006 [2.7] ::
1142. ↓-23 (1119) : Versus 3 – CMX, Oct 2006 [1.9] ::

932. ↑70 (1002) : Young Magician 1 – CMX, Dec 2005 [6.2] ::

##

Like me, you may be pleasantly surprised at the number of volumes. (that’s 113 manga — and those are only the ones that charted.) I look at this stuff every week and it still caught me off guard.

And to no one’s surprise (either in so much as the volumes rank or that I’ll recommend them) I’ll recommend Tenjho Tenge, even with the edits. Over and above that, however, I’m going to point you to Penguin Revolution: This is one of the must-read shoujo titles on my current reading list, a favourite that had me at volume one. (I would have reviewed it by now, you know, if I could find the time around compiling all of these goddamn rankings). And of course I like Emma so much I own the DVDs: a review on those is forthcoming just as soon as I can re-watch them all (I say ‘re-watch’ because I had previously downloaded a fansub).

Can you believe that? My first RocketBomber anime review is going to be maids, not giant robots.
[actually, don’t comment on that]

I’m using the rankings (numbers for the week ending 6 July posted Tuesday) to look at the output of selected publishers — Covered Previously: Aurora Publishing. Today’s spotlight is on

ADV Manga

So, what’s up with ADV manga? Who do I have to threaten, bribe or cajole to get my copy of Yotsuba vol 6?

We have had relatively recent confirmation that ADV Manga isn’t dead: Brigid Alverson interviewed Chris Oarr for Publisher’s Weekly and he was able to confirm, yes, they still print manga, they’re committed to keeping the current volumes in print, and they’re doing a fair job selling them. That’s the good news; alas, no new series are in development at ADV and the rest of the PW article paints a less-than-rosy picture for the beleaguered manga division. And as Oarr says himself, “our main priority is our core business, which is anime.”

Launched in 2003 with a strong slate of licensed titles, and flush at the time with otaku cash (we were buying anime DVDs reqardless of shows’ respective merits like they were about to go out of style) ADV boldly entered the Manga business.

And Failed. They had some solid hits, but bad business decisions — and the scale of what they were attempting: more than 50 series apparently all at once — meant that decisions had to be made about where to cut, what to write off, and what they could realistically bring to print.

Ed Chavez over on MangaCast has done the hard work for us: his periodically updated Cancelled Manga List is the best resource for this kind of thing, and it is awfully heavy on the ADV titles.

Still, if ADV’s new mission is just to keep Azumanga Daioh and Yotsuba in print (as the vital historical documents that they so clearly are :P ) then I have to wish them the best. That, and bug them about finishing up the few series that they have left. [*cough* Yotsuba *cough*]

It looks like ADV managed to bring 76 volumes to market (assuming that their own web site lists all the volumes they’ve released) and of those, 5 series are genuinely popular, at least according to my charts:

[as of 6 July, out of 1672 ranked titles]

144. ↓-18 (126) : Yotsuba&! 5 – ADV, Oct 2007 [227.2] ::
228. ↓-67 (161) : Yotsuba&! 4 – ADV, Jun 2007 [144.3] ::
317. ↓-79 (238) : Yotsuba&! 1 – ADV, Jun 2005 [96.7] ::
334. ↓-82 (252) : Yotsuba&! 3 – ADV, Oct 2005 [92.4] ::
347. ↓-76 (271) : Yotsuba&! 2 – ADV, Jul 2005 [87.2] ::
1147. ↓-9 (1138) : Yotsuba&! 6 – ADV, TBA [1.4] ::

375. ↑84 (459) : Azumanga Daioh Omnibus – ADV, Nov 2007 [74.4] ::
658. ↑19 (677) : Azumanga Daioh 4 – ADV, Apr 2004 [17.5] ::
663. ↑13 (676) : Azumanga Daioh 3 – ADV, Feb 2004 [17.3] ::
664. ↑20 (684) : Azumanga Daioh 2 – ADV, Dec 2003 [17.1] ::
1404. ↑204 (1608) : Azumanga Daioh 1 – ADV, Sep 2003 [0.2] ::

688. ↑128 (816) : Gunslinger Girl 3 – ADV, Jun 2005 [14.7] ::
1179. ↓-5 (1174) : Gunslinger Girl 2 – ADV, Mar 2005 [0.8] ::
. (last ranked 29 Jun 08) : Gunslinger Girl 5 – ADV, Sep 2007 [0] ::
. (last ranked 29 Jun 08) : Gunslinger Girl 6 – ADV, Nov 2007 [0] ::
. (last ranked 8 June 08) : Gunslinger Girl 1 – ADV, Oct 2003 [0] ::
. (last ranked 23 Mar 08) : Gunslinger Girl 4 – ADV, Jun 2007 [0] ::

1174. ↓-1 (1173) : Neon Genesis Evangelion Angelic Days 4 – ADV, Mar 2007 [0.9] ::
. (last ranked 29 Jun 08) : Neon Genesis Evangelion Angelic Days 2 – ADV, Aug 2006 [0] ::
. (last ranked 22 June 08) : Neon Genesis Evangelion Angelic Days 1 – ADV, May 2006 [0] ::
. (last ranked 1 Jun 08) : Neon Genesis Evangelion Angelic Days 6 – ADV, Aug 2007 [0] ::
. (last ranked 25 May 08) : Neon Genesis Evangelion Angelic Days 3 – ADV, Nov 2006 [0] ::
. (last ranked 25 May 08) : Neon Genesis Evangelion Angelic Days 5 – ADV, Jun 2007 [0] ::

. (last ranked 29 Jun 08) : Full Metal Panic! 3 – ADV, Mar 2004 [0] ::
. (last ranked 25 May 08) : Full Metal Panic! 5 – ADV, Jun 2004 [0] ::
. (last ranked 4 May 08) : Full Metal Panic! 1 – ADV, Sep 2003 [0] ::
. (last ranked 4 May 08) : Full Metal Panic! 6 – ADV, Oct 2004 [0] ::
. (last ranked 4 May 08) : Full Metal Panic! 7 – ADV, Jan 2005 [0] ::
. (last ranked 4 May 08) : Full Metal Panic! 8 – ADV, Jul 2005 [0] ::
. (last ranked 4 May 08) : Full Metal Panic! 9 – ADV, Feb 2006 [0] ::

Of these five, there is Yotsuba&!, which of course we all love, and the rest are anime-tie-in-titles. (though one could argue whether the Azumanga Daioh DVDs sell the books, or vice versa.) Note also that folks are already pre-ordering Yotsubato 6 without even knowing when or if it will come out. Hey Chris Oarr, call Amazon and Buy.com (buy.com will take your preorder right now, if you’re so inclined) and heck, I bet you’d find enough demand and all-but-guaranteed sales to pay for the print run.

ADV has also had a smattering of other books on previous charts

. (last ranked 22 June 08) : Chrono Crusade 8 – ADV, Jun 2006 [0] ::
. (last ranked 25 May 08) : Everybody Cosplay 1 – ADV, Nov 2007 [0] ::
. (last ranked 25 May 08) : Maburaho 1 – ADV, Apr 2005 [0] ::
. (last ranked 18 May 08) : Najica Blitz tactics 2 – ADV, Oct 2004 [0] ::

…but noticably absent is Cromartie High School, a fav of many critics (and damn funny besides) but perhaps a bit too old for my charts, which only extend back about 4 months now.

Unless I just added wrong, this makes 34 out of 76 books that made the rankings — which as I noted in the Aurora post is great no matter how low in the rankings they place, as it means the books are still selling. Considering the vintage of some of these (3 and 4 years old now) having any sort of new sales is a good sign. Where there are sales, there is hope.

It’s obvious to me that no one gives a flip about the great big honkin’ list because it is literally too big. One cannot take it in all at once, and to date my lame attempts to make it marginally more digestible, well, haven’t worked.

So let’s take one more stab at carving this beast into chunks that people can figure out at a glance:

I’m using my chart (numbers for the week ending 6 July posted yesterday) to look at the output of selected publishers, starting with

Aurora Publishing

Aurora is the American branch of Ohzora Publishing Co. and they are often pigeon-holed as a ‘ladies’ comic publisher, which may be unfair as I find their books have a lot of crossover appeal, though the label is accurate and is perhaps the best way for a first-time reader or casual industry observer to get a handle on the company.

From their first press release

Headquartered in Tokyo, Ohzora is a manga house widely known as a pioneer of comics for young women including: ladies comics, shojo manga, romance novel adaptations, and game-related anthology manga. In total, Ohzora’s publications are read by over 15.8 million people each year. … It is Aurora’s mission to introduce the highest quality Japanese manga titles to the wider population of North America, and develop the manga market here for a more mature audience. In order to provide North American readers with the best titles in a variety of genres, Aurora Publishing, Inc. has organized a consortium with several other manga publishers in Japan.

So there you go: Ohzora is planning to not only play to their strenghths, but is also looking toward the general market — and they’ve only been at it for about a year. Correction: they been publishing for a year but the company was actually started 2 years ago

Aurora has already released over 2 dozen books, with another dozen or so slated to come out before the end of the year. By far the largest number of releases are under their Deux imprint, for teh yaoi. Which only makes sense, as the genre is popular these days and they could use the all-but-guaranteed sales to help get the company started. There are also a mere handful of titles being released under the LuvLuv imprint (about 4 so far) aimed at an adult, romance market — if Aurora can get a line into the same demographic that snaps up Harlequin paperbacks then there is a lot of hope for the imprint, but so far there’s no indication that a crossover audience exists.

That’s enough with the information anyone could obtain by visiting Aurora’s web sites, let’s move on to the online rankings:

[as of 6 July, out of 1672 ranked volumes]

Main Imprint:

1545. ↓-125 (1420) : Flock of Angels 2 – Aurora, Feb 2008 [0.1] ::
1546. ↓-125 (1421) : Flock of Angels 3 – Aurora, Jun 2008 [0.1] ::
1614. ↑42 (1656) : Nightmares for Sale 2 – Aurora, Apr 2008 [0.1] ::
1640. ↑52 (1692) : Walkin’ Butterfly 3 – Aurora, May 2008 [0.1] ::
. (last ranked 29 Jun 08) : Nephilim 1 – Aurora, Apr 2008 [0] ::
. (last ranked 18 May 08) : Nephilim 2 – Aurora, Jul 2008 [0] ::
. (last ranked 13 Apr 08) : Nightmares for Sale 1 – Aurora, Nov 2007 [0] ::
. (last ranked 6 Apr 08) : Walkin’ Butterfly 1 – Aurora, Jul 2007 [0] ::

Deux:

285. ↓-53 (232) : Yakuza in Love 2 – Aurora Deux, May 2008 [111.8] ::
702. ↓-33 (669) : Tomcats – Aurora Deux, Jun 2008 [13.1] ::
802. ↓-147 (655) : I Shall Never Return 3 – Aurora Deux, Jun 2008 [8.6] ::
830. ↑23 (853) : Say Please – Aurora Deux, Apr 2008 [7.9] ::
944. ↑19 (963) : Lovers and Souls – Aurora Deux, Nov 2008 [5] ::
947. ↑21 (968) : Future Lovers – Aurora Deux, Sep 2008 [4.9] ::
1281. ↓-58 (1223) : Kiss All the Boys 1 – Aurora Deux, Mar 2008 [0.3] ::
1410. ↑new (last ranked 15 Jun 08) : Mister Mistress – Aurora Deux, Jul 2008 [0.2] ::
1613. ↑42 (1655) : Hate to Love You – Aurora Deux, Jul 2007 [0.1] ::
. (last ranked 29 Jun 08) : Oh My God! 1 – Aurora Deux, Jul 2008 [0] ::
. (last ranked 29 Jun 08) : Seduce Me After the Show – Aurora Deux, Apr 2008 [0] ::
. (last ranked 29 Jun 08) : Tough Love Baby – Aurora Deux, Feb 2008 [0] ::
. (last ranked 15 Jun 08) : Kiss All the Boys 2 – Aurora Deux, Jul 2008 [0] ::
. (last ranked 18 May 08) : Yakuza in Love 1 – Aurora Deux, Jan 2008 [0] ::
. (last ranked 30 Mar 08) : I Shall Never Return 2 – Aurora Deux, Feb 2008 [0] ::

LuvLuv:

829. ↓-275 (554) : Love for Dessert – Aurora LuvLuv, May 2008 [7.9] ::
. (last ranked 4 May 08) : Real Love – Aurora LuvLuv, Mar 2008 [0] ::

While low rankings may seem to be bad (and of course I’m sure every publisher is envious of Viz) the thing to remember is that ranking on the charts (no matter how far down) means books are being sold and in enough quantities to register with one of the online booksellers. How many copies does the last ranked book actually sell? That’s the big money question; my method doesn’t track sales that way — but I can tell you that it outsold at least 5,500 other manga that week on one, possibly more, sites.

Recent releases:

From this May: Love for Dessert, Walkin’ Butterfly 3, Yakuza in Love 2
June: I Shall Never Return 3, Tomcats, Flock of Angels 3
July (current new releases): Kiss All the Boys 2, Mister Mistress, Oh My God! 1, Nephilim 2

And preorders for: Future Lovers (September) and Lovers and Souls (November) — Both are Deux titles.

Excluding the two preorders, I’ve got 23 of the 29 books Aurora currently has in print in my database — that isn’t bad for a new publisher; it shows that some folks are finding the books, at least. And the Deux title Yakuza in Love is obviously their break-out title; it may lead readers to the rest of the catalog, given time.

If the guy (girl?) spreading rumours a couple of weeks ago had used his/her real name, I could apologise to them.

I stand by what I said then — rumors without, you know, some sort of corroboration (like say, a link like this one) are worthless and more than a little irritating, at least to me — But it looks like ‘chthulu’ was right, or at least, has good sources.

Publisher Kodansha To Sell Manga Comic Books In U.S. On Its Own as reported by Nikkei just this afternoon (about an hour ago)

icv2.com sent out an email with the buzz, they’ve an article up already with the details that we know, pulling from the Nikkei article (at least the free, non-subscription part of it we can read) almost verbatim.

Let me pull from some comments I left on The Beat when the original rumor started circulating:

Kodansha Intl. is and has been an English language publisher for quite some time; notable recent releases include “A Geisha’s Journey: My Life as a Kyoto Apprentice” by Kodomo (a nome de plume) and “Izakaya: The Japanese Pub Cookbook” — along with a slate of Japanese Language titles (as in, learning the language), a number of drool-worthy coffee-table-grade art books, and the “Draw Your Own Manga” series of art how-to books (which may be the source of the error and rumor; though the first volume is 4 years old… nothing new here)

The deal between Kodansha and Del Rey/Random House is a strategic alliance, and also a two-way street if my hazy memory of old press releases can be taken at face value — I don’t know which RH titles have been translated into Japanese, but if they’re out there at all then Kodansha is publishing them.

Whatever the deal with Del Rey, Kodansha seems to have kept noted educational and cultural titles off the table, and reserved them for their own imprint. Gacha Gacha, though, is Del Rey’s for as long as they can stomach to publish it.

Kodansha Intl. titles are distributed in the US by Oxford University Press.

I don’t know if Oxford has the distribution muscle or the desire to move manga into chain bookstores; I’d say odds are good the new “Kodansha Manga USA” or whatever they want to call it will find some other distributor.

And I think the deal with Random House/Del Rey is still valid —
there’s a company in Japan called “Random House Kodansha” after all, and when the Del Rey imprint was repurposed for manga they touted the “large-scale cross-publishing relationship” between the two.

I don’t know if Del Rey is losing all their Kodansha titles, or is going to be frozen out of any new properties, or if they’ll just get leftovers from now on, or what. (So far, no one knows.)

Oh, and just because Kodansha says they’re getting books out in September, I don’t know that we’ll be seeing them at the local Big Box Bookstore — again, let me re-post something I wrote earlier

From the New York Times:

“Chain stores like Barnes & Noble and Borders generally buy books at least six months before the publication date and know about particular titles even farther in advance. Much to the anxiety of midlist writers clamoring for attention, chain stores determine how many copies of a title to buy based on the expected media attention and the author’s previous sales record.”

So if one had a new manga line (and as noted above, I give: you have your new manga line and it is all that, a bag of chips, and a side of fried chicken) and you were perhaps looking for placement in the major chain stores (I’d call that a given, but you can figure out your own business models) then I’m guessing, it wouldn’t be an “oh by the way” announcement at a trade fair, your would have potentially shopped the idea around at B&N and Borders (combined book sales of around $8 billion last year, and estimated sales of $98 Million in manga — assuming the % of manga sold through B&N/Borders is a constant fraction that directly relates to overall book sales)

So, just looking at the prospect from a publishing perspective:

Either Kodansha has been planning this in secret for at least 6 months and has convinced the B&N and Borders buyers to sign on to a brand new company, sight unseen with no sales record, just because it’s ‘manga’

Or they’re going to screw their current American partners, look for new manufacturers (unless they’ve been printing English manga on Japanese presses in anticipation of this announcement) and are willing to wait a half-a-year for the shakedown, whiplash, possible court case, and in the mean time lost sales….

Well Sure. Makes all kind of sense.

Now we have an announcement. And a date (September). But really — how are they going to make this work in just three months?

All of 2007 —That’s a large mandate; I tried to take a look at retail, publishing, and some specific trends relating to graphic novels — at least as much as I can manage, given my resources.

Bullet points

Economy
[source: Census Bureau]

• Retail Sales were up 3.2% in 2007 …but inflation was up 4.1%. Excluding energy and food prices, inflation was only 2.4% — but I’m not an economist so I don’t know what, exactly, that says about retail. Call it a wash
• Likely fan purchases (Books, DVDs, Games, Computers, Software) were up 3.34% year-to-year
• And you don’t have to be an economist to know what this means: 2007 E-commerce sales were up 24%.
  [read more]

Publishing
[source: publishers.org]

• 2007 Book Sales total $25 billion, up 3.2%
• …but it’s more complex then that, depending on the format. Hardcovers are up, paperbacks not doing so well.
• Trying to boil down publishing-as-an-industry into a single set of comprehendable numbers is more than I can manage: but there are a lot of links for you to take your own look. I’ve attempted an index of publishers in addition to the sales data.
  [read more]

Book Retail
[source: multiple retailers’ annual reports]

• Major Chains account for over $14B of the $17B book retail market.
• Online sales of books (or at least of ‘media’: books, CDs, and DVDs — the way Amazon defines their sales) is over $5 billion.
• Taken at face value, and without more detailed categories from Amazon, we might guess that as much of 20% of all books sales are now done online.
  [read more]

and the point of the whole article: Graphic Novels
[source: icv2 and the numbers cited above]

• direct pull from icv2: GNs in at $375M, manga at $210M.
• Graphic novel sales account for 1.5% of all book sales.
• Manga was only up 5% from 2006, but is still more than half of all graphic novel sales.
• …and may be as much as two-thirds: unit sales were not reported but a rough calculation shows manga outselling other graphic novels 2 to 1.
• As sales of paperback books were only up 1% year-to-year, growth rates of 5% and 12% (for manga and graphic novels as a whole, respectively) show that the category continues to outpace inflation, other books, publishing & retail in general — which is why retailers are still looking at ways to expand their comics & manga departments or otherwise tap this market.
• …as much as they can, anyway. The number of new releases is outpacing the ability of the market to absorb new titles, and stores are also running into physical limitations: we’re running out of shelves.
  [read more]

[or skip to my conclusions.]

##

I really like perspective, background, and context. It’s just awfully time consuming to research said background and context, so a lot of the time I’ll skip it, take one ‘fact’, and then pile on the high levels of umbrage and certainty that only blind fannish devotion and a certain portion of beer can provide. It’s certainly easier to write posts that way. (ref: 2007 in Review: Manga in Japan)

Every now and then, however, my predilection for getting things right will trump my desire to get articles up on time, and the result is one of very occasional opinion/research columns that used to post under the 5by8 tag.

As a 2007-year-in-review-post, obviously this is a shade over 4 months late. But when you consider that my vintage 2006 review actually posted in September then I’ve improved quite a bit over last year. And of course, since I like using corporate Annual Reports and other financials as a launching point, I guess I’ll never manage a review post like this one before the end of March at the earliest.

I really like manga. I buy a lot of it. And I can talk for years (apparently) about manga. But manga is just a portion of the comics market, which is a subset of book sales, which is just part of the overall retail sales picture. So we’ll try to put the numbers into their proper context first:

From the US Census Bureau:

2006 Total Retail Sales: $3.939 Trillion
2006 E-Commerce sales: $109.8 Billion — 2.79% of the total

2007 Total Retail Sales: $4.065 Trillion
2007 E-Commerce sales: $136.0 Billion — 3.35% of the total

Year to Year, Total Retail went up 3.20%, E-commerce was up 23.8%

3.2% wasn’t quite enough to keep up with inflation (4.1%). But rising food—and of course gas prices—are making the single-top-line-item comparisons like this dificult. Excluding food and energy, inflation is a much more reasonable 2.4%. Current economic forecasting makes my head hurt more than a little, so for the purposes of this essay we’ll call 2007 a wash and just move on.

The more valuable point to note from the numbers above is that online sales were up 24%.

##

While still mucking about with Census Bureau numbers, let’s take a look at the HMBSEI* index:
(dollars, in millions)

2006
Book stores 16,733
Hobby, toy, and game stores 16,471
TVs/electronics stores 65,056
Computer and software stores 21,676
Beer, wine, and liquor stores 36,737
Bars & Pubs 21,005

HMBSEI* 2006 total: $177.7 Billion
Adjusted total: $119.9 Billion

2007
Book stores 17,021
Hobby, toy, and game stores 17,279
Electronics stores 67,293
Computer and software stores 22,353
Beer, wine, and liquor stores 39,584
Bars & Pubs 23,362

HMBSEI* 2007 total: $186.9 Billion
Adjusted total: $123.9 Billion

The HMBSEI index tracks (obviously) the *Highly-Matt-Specific-Economic-Indicators which are further adjusted (removing the beer) to reflect more normal fan consumption patterns

In keeping with general retail trends, it appears that likely fan purchases (Books, DVDs, Games, Computers, Software) were up 3.34% year-to-year, and that my own discretionary purchases (all of the above + beer and bar tabs) were up 5.18%. Which sounds about right.

Of course, total book, DVD, and games sales are a much bigger chunk then just the manga — but we’re describing trends here. Actual numbers for comics and manga will follow further down in this post

and on that topic—an aside: I’m sure the comics ‘direct market’ is part-and-parcel of the ‘Hobby, Toy, and Game’ component as tracked by the US Census Bureau, but unless someone from Diamond would care to comment, there is no way for us to know (even as a rough fraction) the total retail contribution of the local comics shops.

If we knew what that fraction was, we could look at monthly census numbers on a, dare I say, monthly basis to get a feel for how the direct market is doing. Figuring out that fraction is a worthy exercise, but one that I’ll leave to the readership.

##

Demand is only half of the equation: Let’s consider supply.

Now, last year when I looked at numbers I found a press release from the Book Industry Study Group that pegged the 2006 publishing industry total at $35.6 billion. The BISG doesn’t have a 2007 estmate, and I don’t know necessarily that they’ll post it when they do cook one up.

This year I’ve a new discovery I’d like to share with everyone: The American Association of Publishers. These guys are compiling monthly and annual statistics and posting them at their site, Publishers.org.

From this chart [PDF, w/ numbers from ’02-‘07] along with this press release, which puts the numbers in context for you, we can see that book sales for 2007 amounted to $25 Billion (24.96 billion, actually, but what’s 40 million dollars between friends?)

Before someone posts it into the comments, I’ll cover it: What happened to $10B from 2006?

Well the BISG was posting “publishers’ net revenues” while the AAP is tracking “total book sales.” Needless to say, I like the AAP’s approach much better, so we’re going with their numbers. Sales (not revenues) are what I was looking for anyway.

And the AAP is releasing a PR once a month with updates, so even if you don’t feel like subscribing to the detailed reports (if you have $800 lying around, I say go for it) you can keep a finger on the pulse of the industry.

All that aside— 2007:

Hardcovers gained, mass-market paperbacks* slipped, kids’ books (excluding Harry Potter) seem to be shifting from hardcovers to paperbacks but all-in-all are trending upwards— and taken as a whole, books in general are up.

*for those of you not up on the lingo: a mass-market paperback is the roughly 4×7” book with a cheap glued binding, printed on cheap newsprint and initially designed to be sold off of racks in drug stores, five-and-dimes, and newsstands — remember newsstands? — these things are so cheap we don’t even bother to return them to the publisher, we just strip off and send back the cover as “proof” and discard the rest. Yes, it’s wasteful. Yes, we recycle them now, instead of trashing them. And no, you should never buy a cheap paperback from some guy on the corner if it doesn’t have a cover: that book was stolen — fished out of the trash, maybe, but still stolen. The ‘mass-market’ is a relic from a 1940s business model but they’re cheap (as mentioned 3 times previously just in this paragraph; running $7-8 these days) so they are still quite popular. Genre fiction (sci-fi, mystery, romance) might not even be categories in your bookstore if it weren’t for these. [wiki]

The flip side of the “mass market” is the “trade” (referring to the book trade): Trade Paperbacks are larger (often the same size as the hardcover edition, minus the hard cover) and are typically printed on a better grade of paper. (the feel of some of my manga, however, makes me wonder… I guess I won’t know until I see if the paper yellows over the next 15-20 years). And they cost roughly twice as much for that reason.

Graphic novels and manga are “trade paperbacks,” I don’t know if the research firm compiling numbers for the AAP considers them to be adult or juvenile books — the kids’ paperbacks are up quite a bit more than the adults’ (which barely broke even) but both are up year-to-year — combining the two and doing a rough calculation I come up with just a 1% gain for 2007.

Publisher Index:

Bertelsmann
Privately held, unlisted. Incorporated in Germany.
owns: Random House, 50% of Sony BMG
of Note: Del Rey Manga

NewsCorp
Owns: Fox, Myspace, Death ray mounted on the Moon, HarperCollins
of Note: HarperCollins is our distributor for Tokyopop

CBS
owns: buncha TV & Radio stations, Simon & Schuster
of Note: Simon & Schuster distributes Viz

Pearson
Owns: DK, Penguin
of Note: GN adapations from Philomel (an imprint of Penguin), Comics encyclopedias and other guides from DK.

Hachette Livre
a wholly owned subsidiary of Lagardere SCA, incorporated in France
owns: Hachette Book Group USA, aerospace company EADS
of Note: Yen Press

Macmillan
The Macmillan moniker was recently resurrected for their English-language units: owned by Holtzbrink, a German privately-held investment group
owns: St. Martins, Henry Holt & Co, Farrar Straus & Giroux
of Note: First Second, Tor (Sci-fi and genre fiction; also recently allied with Seven Seas for manga and more)

Time Warner Inc.
owns: Cartoon Network, DC Comics, Vertigo, Mad Magazine, and duh: Time magazine & Warner Bros.
of Note: Batman, Superman, CMX

Big, but not comics:

Walt Disney
owns: ABC, ESPN, rights to Kermit and most of the other Muppets, 17% of Florida, Enough congressmen to keep Mickey under perpetual copyright, the frozen corpse of Walt, Hyperion Books
of Note: Pixar. Muppets. Sportscenter. The rest is dross.

Sony
owns: 50% of Sony BMG, Animax Japan
Of note: PS2, PS3, PSP, Blu-ray; Geeky, but Not Comics

Comics, but not big:

Marvel
Oh, wait: Marvel isn’t a publisher, they’re a character-based entertainment company that makes movies and toys. I could have sworn they used to print books, too; sorry, my bad.

Diamond
owns: Gemstone Publishing, a number of other pop-culture related ventures
Of note: they are the direct market. Wholly owned subsidiary Diamond Book Distributors is also running a separate but parallel drive to get their clients’ product into bookstores.

Smaller Fry:

McCraw-Hill
owns: Business Week, Standard & Poor’s
No Comics

Vivendi Universal SA
owns: Universal Music Group, World of Warcraft and some other game companies.
Geeky, but no comics

Wiley John & Sons
owns: Dummies’ books
Sorry, half-assed Shakespeare cough “manga” doesn’t count

Scholastic

And Scholastic is the exception that proves rules are useless and even brings our set categories into question. Scholastic sells a lot of books. As might be inferred from the name, they focus on selling books to kids who are, in fact, in school, and it might be safe to say that they own this market. Not that they have a majority market share; every publisher has a juvenile or el-hi (elementary-to-high-school) division — but Scholastic is the kids’ division that is the whole damn company.

They publish Harry Potter. ‘nuf said.

Of note is their Graphix imprint, home to the colour reprints of Jeff Smith’s Bone, Amulet, & Queen Bee (which is about as ‘manga’ a graphic novel—in terms of plot and character design—as I’ve seen come out the states).

I didn’t bother to research the annual reports and other financials of every publisher, not least of all because that would be a headache the size of the SDF-1, but also because between foreign ownership, corporate labyrinths, and private holdings, hell, half the time I don’t even know where to look. Some publishers I haven’t even heard of.

I invite the lackeys and partisans of additional small comics publishers to chime in on the comments, if only with a link to a main page.

Looking at the bottom-line number, overall publishing was up 3.15%; we’ll take a closer look at comics and manga publishing a bit further down. Before that: there’s the $17 billion retail chunk that is the Book Stores, something we can track:

##

Comicsnob.com: “We read boring corporate reports so you don’t have to! ™”

Corporate Financials:
(in millions)

Amazon
annual report [pdf]

for North American sales of “media”
2006 $3582
2007 $4630

Media, per Amazon, are CDs, DVDs, digital downloads, and the occasional book. Amazon does about that much (dollar-wise) internationally as well. Tack on electronics and $325M of ‘other’ (if I were selling hundreds of millions of dollars of merch I think I’d be more specific) and overall, Amazon grossed $14,835M (14.8 Billion) in 2007

year-to-year gains: $1048M (29.3%)

aside: It’s a shame that, as a bookstore, Amazon sucks so very, very much, since it does so well as a general, all-purpose retailer.

and note: when comparing AMZN to other booksellers, all of Amazon’s sales are .com sales.

Barnes & Noble
annual report [pdf]

2006
total sales $4534M
.com sales $433M

2007
total sales $4648M
.com sales $476M

year-to-year gains
total sales $114M (2.51%)
.com sales $43M (9.93%)

Borders
annual report [pdf]

2006 $3683.8M
2007 $3774.8M

year-to-year gain: $91M (2.47%)

Borders didn’t have a .com component in ’07, but apparently they’ve been working on that.

Books-a-Million
annual report [pdf]

2006
total sales $496.6M
.com sales $27.6M

2007
total sales $512.9M
.com sales $26.0M

year-to-year gains
total sales $16.3M (3.28%)
.com sales -$1.6M (-5.80%)

Online sales are not a panacea; if you do it wrong, then you’ll quickly discover that, yes, some guy in a garage with right proper web skillz is not only going to take your lunch, she’ll eat it too. (yeah, yeah, the pronoun doesn’t match the antecedent and all that… but she’s still eating your lunch)

Chapters/Indigo
annual report [pdf]
note: Indigo uses a fiscal year that runs from May-to-March, so I had to pull data from two different reports: the numbers below match up to calendar years ’06 & ’07.

2006
total sales 851.8M CAD (853.6M USD)
.com sales 79.5M CAD (79.7M USD)

2007
total sales 875.0M CAD (876.9M USD)
.com sales 86.7M CAD (86.9M USD)

[conversions from Canadian Dollars (CAD) to US Dollars (USD) done via Google at the 1 May 08 exchange rate]

year-to-year gains (in US$)
total sales $23.3M (2.73%)
.com sales $7.2M (9.03%)

Hastings
annual report [pdf]

2006 $454M
2007 $458M

*Hastings doesn’t bother to independently track their online revenue — which only makes sense, as their web site sucks.

year-to-year gains: $4M (only .88%)

editorial: ouch.

##

Setting aside whether the inclusion of Chapters is a good idea (as a Canadian company they likely aren’t covered by the US Census Bureau): the the top 5 US (+1 Canadian) Booksellers account for $14.6 Billion of a roughly $17 billion market. So all you local, independent booksellers accounted for at least $3 Billion in sales in 2007. Go Indies!

The .com chunk, or at least the Amazon-plus-websites-of-brick-and-mortar-booksellers portion, is $5.22 Billion.

There are a lot of subcomponents to consider, not to mention the diversified nature of Amazon that makes tracking only their book sales more than a tad difficult, but it looks like (roughly) a fifth of all books are being sold online.

Now let’s change gears.

I’m about to lean heavily on icv2 and their reporting of 2007 sales:

Graphic novels had a fine year: Up 12% to $375 Million in sales.
Manga was also up, 5% to $210 Million. Manga still accounts for more than half of all graphic novels (56% last year) but that means as a percentage they actually slipped a bit; in 2006 manga sales of $200M was 60% of the total.

Dollar sales are not units, though. Here’s some really rough math:

Capes:
$165M / $15 a book = 11 million units.

So assuming an average cover price of $14.99 (a few are cheaper; my take is that most are 15 bucks or more) then bookstores and comic shops managed to move 11 million non-manga GNs.

Manga:
$210M / $10 a book = 21 million units.

Some mangas cost more. Naruto, Death Note, & Bleach are only $8, though, and those are our top three series. ($10 is going to be close to an actual average price — and it makes the math easy.)

It’s all about the money. Add in periodical comic pamplets (another $330 million) and the strong growth in sales (12%) and it looks like spandex is on the rebound. At least, 2007 seems to have been a very good year. And I like comics, too, so go Team Capes. rah. But the unit sales make me proud to be a manga snob: that’s a 2-to-1 victory — at least that’s the view from this cheap seat.

Not that it’s really a competition. And this is still only 1.5% of the book business.

The troubling sign is that growth in the number of new titles released is outpacing the growth of sales.

I say troubling. New titles are great, choices are good, and it should be a sign of a healthy market… but unless you are making online sales a new priority then you have to face one cold, hard fact: there is limited shelf space. New comic shops, or old shops opening new branches & moving to larger locations, or continued category expansion in the major chain book stores might increase the overall linear footage of shelving space — but I don’t see that happening in ’08.

Growth is going to hit a wall. Or websites are going to become even more important. Or both, or neither. I don’t know.

One thing that I can predict: The manga boom hasn’t busted but the gold-rush-years are over. Big Box bookstores physically can’t expand their manga sections any more. Space for manga (and other graphic novels got to ride along) was carved out of other genre fiction space: stores had to shrink sci-fi, role-playing & the RPG associated novels — and to a lesser extent things like mystery, romance, classics, and other fiction sub-categories depending on individual store layouts — in order to shoe-horn a brand spanking new category into existing footprints. Sales have been great, and growing by double digits for several years, so some tough choices were made and each year more shelves have been given over to manga.

But this process has reached its limit, I think, at least in existing stores. New stores (like the new Borders concept stores) can make unlimited shifts on paper before they open, and a company can even open a GN boutique-store-within-a-store if they think customers will respond to that. But the expansion in older (and usually smaller) locations is done.

New titles (33 of them a week by some counts) no longer have an unlimited lift ticket and automatic orders-and-placement in stores. Manga is still a great market to be in, but you’ll have to have quality product and maybe even a bit of luck to make the scrooge-mcduckian-scale profits that seemed to be every manga publisher’s right just a few years ago.

Though honestly, looking back on the past 5 years: I think Viz was the only really big winner.

##

One likely result of the shelving crunch combined with the title flood: The manga-only book shop is coming —or at least a graphic-novel-only shop, which would of course sell manga. This is still a mythical beast, with a sighting occasionally reported (a friend of your father’s brother’s nephew’s cousin’s former roommate knows he saw an ad for one in Peoria, or Commerce, or Springfield, or Riverdale — you know, that town just one state and two counties over) but the actual critter has yet to be documented in the wild. And no, at least in my book, Kinokuniya doesn’t count.

Manga shops aren’t a ‘solution’ to the ‘problem’ by any stretch, just proof of popularity and what I see as a logical outgrowth of both the comic shop tradition and the success of manga in mainstream, big box bookstores. (making a profit with one… hm. that’s a much tougher proposition)

Some fan is going to open the newtype of comic shop soon. At least they should. Floppy comics still have a place in this pipedream of mine, just like magazines are still sold by most large bookstores, but I can definitely envision a shift in format from pamphlet to trade paperback.

You know, if digital delivery of comics doesn’t kill off print entirely first. ;)

2008 will be a good year but not a great year for comics. Movie adaptations don’t hurt but they are not a panacea, a bad economy is bad for retail generally but comics are “cheap entertainment” and often substituted for more expensive purchases, at least historically. But my feeling is the boom years are over, and unfortunately that means that merely good is no longer good enough — unless there are home runs, some analysts, bloggers, and fans are going to feel let down.