Holiday weekend linkage

Here’s a treat to start your weekend off right: Queenie Chan has just posted a really cute little comic on her LiveJournal.

Love Manga has the latest Bookscan numbers and, ho hum, Naruto tops the list. In fact, while we’re all talking about Tokyopop, seven of the top ten are Viz titles, with Fruits Basket and two non-manga properties rounding out the list. And there’s this:

In its first full week of release Masashi Kishimoto’s Naruto Vol. 11 published by Viz sold more copies in a seven-day period than any other graphic novel has managed to do in bookstores so far in 2006. How hot is Naruto? Naruto Vol. 9, which debuted in March, remains the best-selling graphic novel of 2006 so far according to the BookScan report of bookstore sales — and all of the first ten volumes in the series would all rank in the top 12 in year-to-date sales with only DC’s V for Vendetta and Tokyopop’s Fruits Basket Vol. 13 interrupting Naruto’s dominance.

At the MangaCast, Ed looks beyond the online exclusives to something Tokyopop may be doing right: its partnership with Harper Collins. He has the cover of one of the first fruits of that venture, Meg Cabot’s Avalon High manga. And for those purists who are rolling their eyes, he has this to say:

And in a way this is not too far from what a publisher like Fujimi Shobo or MediaWorks would do. Both with their ties to Kadokawa Shoten and their own lines of light novels, tend to adapt books into manga. More often than not there is an established manga writer working with lesser known artists.

See! It’s how they do it in Japan.

Interesting books you’ll probably never see in English: Manga Junkie looks at Cat Street, a “feel-good tear-jerker” from the author of Boys Over Flowers.

On the Tokyopop site, editor Tim Beedle plugs the new Return to Labyrinth page, which is really just a portal back to the book info on the Tokyopop site. But it’s a beautiful portal. Beedle has written a nice, long editor’s introduction, which is something Tokyopop needs more of. It seems like their catalog copy has gotten very skimpy lately. And then there’s a sample chapter. Aside from the fact that the pages have the same crowded format as the rest of the site, this is how it should be done.

Still at Tokyopop, ChunHyang once again picks out the blogs worth reading on that site.

Did you enjoy this article? Consider supporting us.

Comments

  1. I want to join in a club of manga’s fan. I really love manga. That’s my favourite.

  2. There’s like a billion light novel in Japan, some of them with written with the expressed wish to be adopted in to manga or especailly anime later. For example, the hottest thing in Japan and in world-wide anime fansub community this summer has been The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. It’s nothing but a best selling series of shonen light novel, complete with read-made chara design. It sold so well that it became an anime and now manga, the exact wish of the writer.

    There are several ways for creative people to express their ideas in Japan. For those who can draw, they create doujinshi’s or original work to be sold in places like COMIKET. If they’re any good, the property gets picked up and become commercial property or professional manga-ka. If you’re good writer, you write light novels or become writers for manga or games. TYPE-MOON, for example, is just a well-known doujinshi circle made up of couple of friends, one could write and the other could draw. They made a home-grown novel-game called “Tsukihime” and it became the best selling game until another one of their own game, “Fate/stay night”, toppled it. Creativity rules in Japan, and anyone with talent has a fair opportunity to make their work popular. That is not found anywhere else in the world.

  3. hi.. I looked at manga junkie’s blog for Cat street but i cant leave a commment at all.. any idea y..? thanks

  4. Jan: I don’t know why—it looks like it should work. If you submitted a comment and it didn’t show up, it may be that comments are moderated, as they are here: The first time you submit a comment, I have to approve it before it actually shows up. After that, your comments will appear as soon as you make them.