I still love you, I’m just not in love with you

October 19, 2007 in Comics Conundrum, General Chatter, Manga Minutiae | 19 comments

USA Today has an article on the shrinking manga market in its native Japan, listing reasons for the decline that have already been discussed many times at length elsewhere.  Continually slipping sales is always a concern, but personally I don’t see why a distinction should be made between manga printed on paper, and digital manga delivered via cell phones, or manga delivered in the form of a videogame spin-off.  Manga isn’t going away because the Japanese love manga more than ever… the art form is simply becoming divorced from its traditional medium of paper.  Reports of its waning influence seem greatly exaggerated.

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Apparently the $3 price increase on Tokyopop’s Blu books (you can see the November solicitations here) is causing some grumblings from fans.  I sort of figured they were just moving in line with the rest of the yaoi industry… they’re matching DQ’s regular $12.99 pricepoint, which is still lower than 801 Media books’ MSRP of $15.95.

Spoiled, all of youse! o_-

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Speaking of which, Tokyopop is hiring.  Although this isn’t quite an entry-level job…

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Apparently, the next issue of Wired will be the one to get.

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At the risk of more reader fatigue on the subject, I’m pointing to this short article by Todd Allen on barcdes which makes a simple point: barcoding is pretty much standard in all other segments of retailing and the comics publishing industry seems rather backwater without it.  There’s still room for argument; need isn’t the same as viability, and the benefits-to-cost ratio might not work out for a siginificant number of comics publishers out there, i.e. just about everyone not in the top 20~30 range.  But the choice is no longer up to the publishers…

BTW, I have’t had any feedback about the new barcodes on Comic AGs.  Which I should take as good news, right? 

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Icarus made a few more tentative license pick-ups this month, but without official confirmation yet, I will only share with you some cropped cover art:

071019_licence_01.jpg

This book is almost 100% certain.

071019_licence_02.jpg

This one is a maybe.

071019_licence_03.jpg

And this is a big maybe…

We’re pretty much just waiting for the okay from the artists themselves…

So that’s it for this week.  Hopefully it’s all good news the next!

19 comments

  1. DocWatson on October 20, 2007 at 1:37 am

    The third one was just reviewed by Heisei Democracy, so the title is not much of a stretch (even for me): _Mazo Chichi_.

    http://heiseidemocracy.com/2007/10/15/eromanga-toshokan-vol-006-mazo-chichi/

  3. Jeff-Flowers on October 20, 2007 at 9:11 am

    #2 is Read Me by Tenma. I know because I regularly buy Comic Tenma.

  5. Jeff-Flowers on October 20, 2007 at 9:16 am

    Let’s try this again: Book #1 is a title I don’t know and can’t read but here is a link to it on Amazon.co.jp:

    Link

  7. DocWatson on October 21, 2007 at 1:25 am

    Jeff-Flowers:

    > #2 is Read Me by Tenma.

    Pin-pon! Confirmed:

    http://doujinshi.mugimugi.org/index.php?P=BOOK&ID=7739

    Number one seems familiar, but I can’t place it. (Not that I know much about eromanga besides what is published in English.)

  8. Randall Fitzgerald on October 21, 2007 at 3:30 am

    I applied for that TOKYOPOP job. Think they’ll hire me? :D

  9. Jeff-Flowers on October 21, 2007 at 8:33 am

    DocWatson,

    Isn’t that site great? I love looking through it, although I wish that they didn’t censor some of the covers.

    I’ve found #1 on Amazon.co.jp. It’s ISBN is 4871828158 and here is a link that I hope works:

    http://www.amazon.co.jp/%E6%95%A3%E8%8F%AF%E3%81%AE%E5%88%BB-%E6%82%A0%E5%AE%87%E6%A8%B9/dp/4871828158/ref=cm_taf_title_featured?ie=UTF8&tag=tellafriend-20

  10. Jeff-Flowers on October 21, 2007 at 8:34 am

    DocWatson,

    That’s a great site, isn’t it?

  11. Jeff-Flowers on October 21, 2007 at 8:34 am

    I’ve found #1 on Amazon.co.jp. It’s ISBN is 4871828158 and here is a link that I hope works:

    Link.

  12. Jeff-Flowers on October 21, 2007 at 8:36 am

    I’ve found #1 on Amazon.co.jp. Its ISBN is 4871828158. I can’t seem to post a direct link in this blog, so go to Amazon.co.jpg, type in the ISBN, and hit search.

  14. neutrino on October 22, 2007 at 3:58 am

    Your link in #11 worked. The title is “Sange no Koku”, which I translate as “Moment of Glorious Death”. I’d recommended Icarus getting it before. It’s by Yuuki, who also did Taboo District. Any possibility of Unbalance being next? Does Icarus have a relationship with the other company that publishes his manga?

  16. Jeff-Flowers on October 22, 2007 at 5:20 am

    Neutrino,

    Thanks for the title translation, as I don’t read japanese, even though I own 24 japanese language h-manga books (which makes my inventory efforts a little problematic as I have seven books with no english words in the title and no real way to list them).

    Also, my apologies to all for so many posts. For some reason, they weren’t showing up after I submitted and I kept trying to get it to go through.

  17. DocWatson on October 22, 2007 at 5:57 am

    Oh, yes€”I forgot this (hopefully my earlier post shows up…):

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASIN

  18. Simon on October 22, 2007 at 7:13 am

    That’s a nice translation, although we’re probably going by the one on the book, which is a mouthful… “At the Time of Scattering Flowers.”

  19. neutrino on October 22, 2007 at 9:44 pm

    I thought it sounded too much like a seinin title. Sange means “fall (or scatter) as flowers do”, which is apparently a metaphor for dying gloriously the flower of life falling), but not in this case. Koku can mean “time” or “moment”, and I thought it would imply a shorter period than “jikan”.

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