AG 110 delayed | Major manga mags losing money?

Some good news and bad news about Comic AG issue 110, the last, very final issue of our magazine…

First, the good… it’s complete.  Ready to print.  It’s oh so delicious.  It’s a full 80 pages of comics – that’s right, no ads (except on the interior cover and back cover).  All 80 pages devoted to manga porn by Hiroyuki Andou, Satoshi Kishinosato, Kemonono, and Yamatogawa.  I spent months planning the stories in these last few issues, just to find ones that would fit together and hit that magic 80 page mark for this, our last hurrah (not very easy!).  I think for any comic or magazine that is ending, you’d want to make the last issue the best issue.  Remind everyone what a great thing it was.  Leave on a high note.  Leave ‘em sobbing for more.  I think Comic AG 110 does that.

Now, the bad news… to Diamond, we’re horribly late.  This comic could start printing TO-DAY, and they wouldn’t want it.  It’s so late, we’ve exhausted all the extensions, all the good will, at Diamond.  This means we have to re-solicit the comic.  Resolicit in the March issue of Previews Adult.  Wait for a new purchase order to come in April.  To sit on this wonderful comic for another 3 months.

Ppppppppphhhhhffffudge.

It’s either that, or not do the issue at all.  Well, I promised AG issue 110 would be the last, and I want to keep that promise.  So we’re going to resolicit.  I know, by that time, many readers would have lost interest and moved on.  Many retailers would have lost faith.  So much, perhaps, that by the time for the orders to come in, Diamond may end up passing on the comic anyway.  But that’s not what I’m worried about.  My concern is with the fans who still want that last issue of Comic AG, and the retailers who continue to support us.  So we’re going to get 110 out.  We’re asking that you patiently wait with us.  Keep your eye out for it in Previews March.  Bug your local comic shop guy about it, but just a little.  And come April, whether or not those final Diamond orders come in, we’re going to print this darn thing and get it out to you.  It’s going to be worth it to me, because I think the comic is going to be worth it to you.

It’s done!  Freakin’ done!  And we have to wait ’til April!  Argh!

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Spotted via Mania’s forum… Comic Attack has a rather substantive interview with Dark Horse Comic’s Director of Asian Licensing Michael Gombos, touching upon the specifics of DH’s licensing and production operations.

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Japanator looks at some of the more otaku-centric offerings at this year’s AEE.  They weren’t plenty, but they were there.

And in case you’re wondering, no, we’ll probably never be there.  The adult industry doesn’t care much about bookworms like us.  (And the comics world doesn’t care much about porn hounds like us, either.  Sigh.)

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AnimeNation’s Ask John discusses why older anime receive little commercial support.  The short answer is that no one’s buying, but the article digs a little deeper into the American anime consumer psyche.

And I’ll throw this one out there: do video mediums become “dated” faster than literary works (the best of which are timeless)?  I certainly think so.  Anime may have an inherent disadvantage here.  Manga might fall somewhere in between.

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ANN points to a couple posts by Japanese mangaka on the state of the manga industry: first, Shuuhou Satou reveals that a major Japanese publisher is losing tens of millions of dollars per year, and 60 of its 70 magazines are not breaking even.  Second, Alt Japan translates a diary entry by Ken Akamatsu on falling tankoubon (individual collected book, i.e. trade paperback) sales and the hollowing of the bottom of the market.

Having 6 out of 7 magazines losing money is actually not as bad as it sounds; the value of the magazine (of the manga variety, at least) is not measured by whether it’s in red or black ink, but on the books it produces.  This leads into Akamatsu’s post… the real source of worry is not so much dropping magazine circulations, but dropping tankoubon sales.

Also, a book publishing company’s losses aren’t completely tied to losses in book sales, because the book isn’t it’s only business.  Licensing is huge for manga pubs, and as we all know, anime hasn’t been doing all too well lately.  But do you know that video games, once thought to be unstoppable in Japan, is in its worst slump ever?  So it isn’t just manga doing poorly, but also licensed anime, licensed video games, and everything connected to those industries.

The dropping sales, the widening gap between the top and bottom manga, the fewer breakout manga hits, there is one factor affecting all of these which exists outside of issues of publishing, or the quality of product:

It’s the internet, stupid.

No, no, not piracy.  Well, that is a factor, but that’s not why I’m bringing this up.

The internet was supposed to liberate us.  It gives us easy access to anything, any kind of information we want.  All distribution barriers, gone.  The playing field, completely even for everyone.  But that’s not what has happened.  Sure, there are occasionally some net-driven hits, web celebrities, stars of new media like webcomics.  But what we really have is a sea of noise, and the only ones able to break through are the most generic, the most well-known, and often, the lowest common denominator.  The popular movies, games, music, and manga, their audience drowns out everyone else on the search engines, and that popularity is self-feeding.  Look at the most pirated torrents… is it the indy game?  A critically acclaimed movie from a first time director at Sundance?  No, it’s Call of Duty, or Transformers 2.  The gaps between those and everything else is huge.

There is no shortage of capable talent, of good manga.  Not yet.  The physical publishing world is merely bending, acquiescing, morphing, comforming to the online reality: a tyranny of the mob, an altar to popularity, sustained by the ease of finding anything on the internet that has made us so lazy, any dive into the unfamiliar begins to look like work.