Yes, it’s that time of the week again: Jack and I get our podcast on about anthologies, drunken manga-ka, and underage manga-cafe denizens. Check it all out at the MangaCast. For further reading, here are the show notes:
We want anthologies!
Queenie Chan, part 1
Queenie Chan, part 2
Pata on how we read and how comics complicate computer interfaces
Rivkah on digital ink
Netcomics releases web manwha simultaneously in U.S. and Korea
Osamu Akimoto: “Booze is my enemy.”
Jakala to Dark Horse: Get the lead out!
Edits to FMA 8
Viz on edits: Who cares?
ChunHyang72: All manga are edited!
New title announcements
New manwha from Netcomics and Dark Horse, at MangaCast
Lengthy press release on upcoming Viz titles
Ode to Kirihito: So good we just can’t stand it!
Hints on new Broccoli titles, so obscure even insiders can’t figure them out
Analyzing the August direct market sales figures
ICv2: graphic novels sales
ICv2: August overview
Analysis at Love Manga
Manga cafe busted for letting kid stay all night
Incoming
New manga releases this week:
After School Nightmare
Night of the Beasts
Kurogane
Wallflower
Berserk
Anne Freaks: No link because it’s not on the ADV site. Helloooo… anybody home??
Orphen
Oyayubihime Infinity
Gerard et Jacques
Naked Jewels
White Guardian
Links I got Links I got lots and lots of links
http://www.onedramaqueen.com/content/products_whiteguardian.php
http://www.onedramaqueen.com/content/products_nakedjewels.php
(have this one as a bookmark as I am waiting impatiently for these books)
Thanks, Ed! I updated the post.
Fantastic episode, well done both of you!!
Brigid, your segment was good and offered some interesting advice, although I’m not certain on one thing. With the online manga thing you suggest that publishers avoid readers needing to load individual JPEG files. How do you suggest people supply pages then? The Cdisplay CDZ or CDR formats (which are just zipped jpegs) are popular methods for viewing comics, and I’ve read comics online this way, but I can’t think of any other practical alternatives to this.
Thanks for the kind words, Dock!
My point was that a paper anthology has an edge over scanlations because you don’t have to sit there while the jpegs open. I’m not advocating online anthologies. However, the best viewing method would probably be something like the manga reader that Tokyopop uses, where you just click on “next” to turn the page. Of course, I have no idea what’s underlying that interface.
Okay – I wasn’t aware the manga reader interfaces were so popular, we should consider coding one for Sweatdrop. They’re pretty simple to make. People seem divided in terms of what they prefer. For example, I would prefer if Netcomics would allow people to download all the jpegs of the files to enjoy however and whereever I prefer (such as using the CDisplay viewer or even on a portable device such as a laptop on a train without internet access).
Of course I agree with you and we /much/ prefer printed books. I’m in the thick of working on production for several new books right now.
Actually, we might have to start using a different terminology for our books. We currently refer to our collected short stories as anthologies, but it seems that everyone regards magazine serials as anthologies.
“Actually, we might have to start using a different terminology for our books. We currently refer to our collected short stories as anthologies, but it seems that everyone regards magazine serials as anthologies.”
I was just thinking about the same thing this morning. I was looking up something about Fanfare’s Japan book, and realized I’d called it an anthology, wondering if that was an accurate term. The more I think about it, the more “collection” seems more appropriate. (Not that I don’t want more of both anthologies and collections, mind you.)
However, the best viewing method would probably be something like the manga reader that Tokyopop uses, where you just click on “next” to turn the page.
netcomics uses a similar format for their online manhwa. but they have an advantage to other publishers since they are literally using the same interface they perfected in Korea. That said, their reader can have the size adjusted for different sized screens, can be set to one or two page at a time, they use a different format for scrolling vertical manga and their reader is mac and PC compatible. (something that eBook Japan cannot say… PC only bah!)
Hi, Just listened to the podcast.
Small correction though. I’m not the writer of the Broccoli Blog. Blogger Shiz writes both the Broccoli Books Blog and the Synch-Point Production Blog.
Sorry, Ardith! I thought you were awfully prolific to be writing all those blogs!
David, Dock, I agree it’s confusing. “Anthology” makes me think of a stand-alone book. Maybe we should be saying “serial.”
Ed, I always say if you haven’t designed it for the Mac, you haven’t really designed it! I think it’s interesting that some of the Netcomics manwha, like The Great Catsby, are really configured to be read on a screen by scrolling down. The page has disappeared. I don’t know how they translated it to a book, though.
*laugh* I wish I was an uber-blogger. I write occasionally on my personal page. Of course, between Chris, Dietrich, her are all of the upcoming manga secrets. Shiz writes a lot! Of course, she leaves the embarassing Broccoli office stuff out. We hope…
I hope you are feeling better!
Re: anthologies
I’ve read a couple of the recent blog articles about the subject (though probably not all) and I’d just like to mention a few things I didn’t notice in those I read. Caution: may be a little ranty and unstructured. Just some thoughts and ideas I had.
Concerning pros and cons of anthologies:
A very big con (at least to me) is: why should I pay for content I do not want? Anthologies (in the form discussed here) are supposed to collect different serialized stories. Probably only a minority of the readership will really like 100% of those stories. If I only read, say, 3 out of 6 stories regularly, does it still make sense to buy the anthology or do I just buy the tankobon for those series? A question of perceived relative value.
Which leads to another issue I’ve missed in the discussion:
Why should publishers produce anthologies anyways? What’s in the model for them? The received wisdom (from a similar discussion on some German boards a couple years back related to the cancellation of several anthologies) seems to be: to attract readers, nothing else. You can’t make real money with anthologies (breaking even, if you’re lucky), you just use them as loss-leaders to catch new readers where you couldn’t do so before, expand the audience for your tankobon releases. That’s where your money comes from. For the Japanese it’s only a little different. They also use anthologies to try out new talent and new stories (if the readers don’t like it: out it goes). This is not very feasible here, because the licenses needed to implement such a scheme probably would be very difficult to negotiate. But even in Japan the anthologies are mainly huge disposable commercials for the collected editions.
Another issue: disposability
Anthologies outside of Japan are not disposable (enough?). And they probably can’t ever be. The concept is a little too Japanese to really work here (for comparison: look at Raijin’s failure in implementing a weekly magazine after a distinctly Japanese fashion). And if the anthology isn’t disposable, why should any reader who actually embraced this delivery method want to buy the tankobon collections? Getting readers to buy content a second time works best if the first incarnation is of notably inferior quality. Which it isn’t, in western releases.
And a little bit of a European perspective (since the issue of anthologies is a couple of years farther along here):
Most manga anthologies here have been cancelled by now. Germany had 4 manga anthologies once, now we have 1 (and a half, see last paragraph). France had two anthologies and now has none. One was cancelled by the publisher “because it just wasn’t cost effective” (too much work for too little returns). I think Sweden also recently lost one of theirs, though I’m not really sure.
Also, IMO, most anthologies “suffocate” under their own “weight” after a while (3-4 years max). As the stories grow longer, it becomes increasingly difficult for new readers to get into them (and into the anthology). Older volumes of the anthology won’t be available anymore. So if they have to buy tankobon collections anyways, to get up to date with the running stories, why then change over to the anthology at all? Plus the main purpose of the anthology concept, to attract new readers, is seriously reduced if most new readers have trouble getting into the long-running stories.
Switching series in and out of anthologies only helps a little. And, as mentioned above, this is harder to realize with licensed properties than with your own. Staggering or delaying releases of the tankobon collections to promote anthologies would probably just get non-anthology customers on the barricades and eat into your main revenues. You can’t have tailor-made story-arcs as jump-on points, because you don’t have that control over licensed material.
Interestingly, the only new German manga anthology is exclusively comprised of local material (not licensed). Produced by a publisher that would be labeled “small press” in the US. And it’s quarterly, not in large format and there are no single-series collections planned. It’s more a “real” anthology in the sense of a collection of short stories, not of a collection of episodes of longer serialized stories.
Hum.. there might be a logical flaw in the idea of “suffocation”. If a new reader tries out the anthology and is induced to buy tankobon collections to get up to speed with some series, the anthology has already fulfilled its main purpose, even if the new reader never buys another issue of the anthology. There goes the whole theory… ^^;
The future of Manga Anthologies (and perhaps manga in general):
http://us.gizmodo.com/gadgets/ces/live-from-ces-the-sony-reader-146628.php
I plan to get one as soon as it’s released. Soon Japan will be promoting online anthologies and it will be common-place once e-ink readers gets popular adoption. It’s only matter of time because in case you haven’t noticed, the Japanese loves to read but don’t have much room.
As someone who has three of the same manga on his bookshelf as the picture above,
I feel a certain kinship. :)
However, I would like to point out one small, unimportant bit. While ChunHyang72’s blog entry about FMA was interesting, it was deliciously ironic that my $0.02, which I thought added a bit to the conversation about censorship and editing, was moderated away. ChunHyang72, is, of course, free to moderate her (?) blog as she sees fit. But do note that you don’t know that the blog is moderated until after you submit your message.
Cheers.
Are you talking about Paper Theatre, Sebastian?
I would say (just a guess) that the reason they’re doing anthologies is -because- it’s all German material… and they don’t want to risk releasing volumes without first establishing a base of readers. This way, they can release a variety of stories, and if one turns out to be extremely popular, they can go ahead and collect it. It’s similar to their new “doujinshi” policy- releasing limited runs of short stories by new artists to find out how many people will be interested before jumping right in and publishing full volumes that people may never buy.
I think Rush may be operating under a similar idea (I could be wrong, but it’s how it seems to me)- if they just released full volumes, few people in the scene would be interested. But with the anthologies, people say “hey, there’s a number of artists and stories that I might like, why not give it a try.”
Sebastian,
As to the question of why you should pay for material you don’t want, I guess the answer is serendipity. You know, like you buy a CD because you like one song, and then you find another track you like as well that you never would have heard otherwise. I fully expect iTunes to do away with this, and it’s a shame. An anthology, which should be cheaper than a tankoubon, should be a risk-free way to sample a number of stories.
I think that Shojo Beat over here has some of those problems licked, because they have a mix of stories that everyone buys the magazine for (Nana) and stories that rotate in and out fairly quickly.
One thing nobody seems to think of with regard to magazines is actually the most important part—ads. Most magazines lose money on subscriptions; they make their money by selling ads. I haven’t been reading manga long enough to be familiar with the older manga anthologies, but I think adding ads might make for an interesting model. That’s one reason why I suggested on the podcast that anthologies contain articles in addition to manga. My kids actually read the little articles in Shojo Beat, and they pester me for the featured products, too.
Dock, I am aware of the .zip readers (and love them to pieces) but I won’t promote that stuff on MBC. If it was CNM, i’d let loose though!
Tivome, I agree with ya! E-Readers are the wave of the future. IN 10-15 YEARS! I’m betting the iPods (or a Apple device) will be the e-reader of choice though.
My husband got on Journalista this morning and was looking at the Sony e-reader. I asked if he wanted one, and he said no, because it’s only 160 dpi. I’m afraid it won’t be good enough for serious geeks like him. I’m coming from a different place—good content and an easy interface are what matter to me—but I don’t have $350 to throw around. It seems like if Sony really wants this to catch on, they should go the Gillette razors route: Give away the reader for free and make up for it on content.
Brigid,
I guess I’m kinda like your husband… If I am going to lug something of that size around, it better be a full-fledged media player/PDA capable of playing wide-screen videos. I guess it is a few years away; I think the key will be the integration of e-ink techology with a flexible LCD screen. Then we’re there.
As for ipod idea… Not with the current gen. With the rumoured true video ipod with at least 3.5 inch of screen space, I think it’s do-able. At least the kids will do it. I can see Apple promoting e-reader functionality as part of the new true Video Ipod. I’d do that as soon as I get mine. I’m kinda sick of watching dorama on my 5G Ipod’s 2.5 inch screen so 6G can’t come fast enough.
Concerning iPods — they make 1 or 2 new models every year. I think it’s plausible by 2010 that they have a ubiquitous device that plays audio/video and performs as a reader.
IMO Sony is incapable of making a sucessful e-reader device. Even now a surprising amount of people use software to read text on their iPods (as a e-reader essentially).