Quick interview: Viz on delisted titles

Lots of questions have popped up about Diamond’s decision to stop carrying over 1,000 Viz items, mostly manga. I pitched a few at Viz spokeswoman Evelyn Dubocq and got some answers:

MangaBlog: Are these volumes going out of print?

Evelyn Dubocq: No.

MB: What other retail channels will carry them?

ED: Simon & Schuster, AAA Anime, Baker & Taylor, Ingram among others

MB: Some of these series, such as Bastard and Prince of Tennis, are still ongoing. Do you plan to continue releasing new volumes of these?

ED: There are no plans at this time for discontinuing these series

So there you have it. The series are still available in bookstores and other sales channels, and none are slated to be cut. I’m guessing that these titles sell better in those venues than in comics stores, and that’s the reason for the de-listing. Ev wouldn’t comment on why Diamond took this step, referring me to them for info on their business decisions, which is reasonable enough. I’ll give that a shot tomorrow.

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Comments

  1. That’s odd, since Bastard has already been allowed to go out of print, and Viz already stated that at this time they were not planning to do re-prints of the early volumes that are now OOP. All that remains is whats in the market already.

    I suppose they could be allowing it to go OOP short term so they can bring it back as a VizBig, much like they’re letting the other VB releases go OOP. But it’s usually the other way around, or has been so far.

    I did a quick look through that list, and from what i can see some titles are listed there that Viz have already stated were not going to be reprinted and be allowed to go OOP

  2. So, if the answer to whether or not the delisted volumes are going out of print is no.
    I’m not going to grab every series with oop volumes out of that list because that would take me too much time… I will abuse my existing knowledge of two titles though.
    Basara is on the list with the exception of the already oop 19 and 20, Daigo is on the list and I’m pretty sure its oop already but the volumes ‘missing’ from the delisted list are oop and near impossible to get ahold of…

    If the volumes on the list aren’t going out of print, is there any chance of getting the missing volumes encompassed by those back in print? :(
    I mean, I’d really like to get ahold of some of those for a non-obscene price.

  3. TD, where are you getting your OOP info? I checked Viz’s site and they only have two titles listed.

  4. I emailed Viz directly a few months ago when i had difficulty getting a few titles (all of which are on that list).

    Basara, Tenchi, Bastard, Ceres, Recca, and From Far Away. All of which are being allowed to go OOP.

    Early volumes of Basara and Bastard are already hard to find. What i was told was that some of those, Basara, Recca, and Ceres, were possibly going to be re-released in the VizBig format

  5. That OOP info of Viz’s site is… I can’t even call it out of date. Its beyond that.
    Even if you ignore all the series where odd volumes are inobtainable or have been reported -elsewhere- as being out of print, a lot of the stuff from Viz’s old Pulp imprints which don’t even exist anymore aren’t on that very short list either.

    Regarding Basara, I’ve never heard of anyone having problems getting -early- volumes of it, but I have heard a -lot- of people complaining about it being utterly pointless trying to get volumes 19 and 20.
    I’m one of them insofar as v20 goes, and the prices on amazon zshops or abebooks for those two are… amusing… to say the least, not to mention pretty far out of most peoples price ranges
    (Amazon UK has 19 as unavailable and 20 for £157.45-£253.44, Amazon.com has 19 for $129.95 and 20 for $111.80-$349.69, Abe has 19 for £93.84, and 20 for £64.77 and £252.51)

    I also know from experience that latter volumes of x/1999 are “hard” to locate, and that 4 and (especially) 13 of Daigo aren’t available.
    I’ve never read Saint Seiya because I’ve never been able to find the first book, and I’ve heard a lot of people struggle finding 10 also.
    Here of Greenwood is meant to be somewhat out of print too (4 through 7… especially 7… command higher prices as the volume number increases)

  6. Makes me glad I bought Basara as it was released! :)

  7. Not sure about the US, but here in the UK vol1 dosen’t exist, no one can order it. Amazon UK has it as 1-3 weeks, then they tell you they cant get it :D Book Depository send you volume 11 instead of 1 no idea why.

    2-5 are easily available 6,9,10 are not, i got mine off of ebay. from volume 18+ it’s hit and miss. Even the last volume seems to be getting scarce on the ground. I’m missing 4 to finish my series. Wish there were scanlations of the series in full :(

    Think ill do a deep look at that list, and see which titles are really available and which ones aren’t. Be interesting to see how many of them are actually still in print, considering Viz are saying they all should be

  8. Ah, I hadn’t realised 1 was hard to get, I guess appearances were deceptive. (Went to look at book depository and try and see if 1’s entry matched up with 1’s ISBN but… yeuch. I -despise- bookdepository’s new look with a passion, though I can’t pin down why. And then, on top of that, someone stole all their book cover photos? x_x)
    I guess I was lucky scan wise, as they covered the volumes I was missing as I filled in my set. As it stands now, I only miss v20, but at the prices I mentioned before I can’t see myself buying it :(

    If you wrote that investigation up, I’d read it ;)
    After some thought though, maybe that question allows them more leeway than I first though. I guess the question asked them if those titles were ‘going’ out of print… not if some of them already were.

  9. Tiamat: for the Out of Print titles, it’s most likely that Diamond Distribution has them in stock somewhere in their warehouse. Diamond tends to “buy more” than what the retailers order so that they have immediate stock whenever someone needs to re-order them. Basically they’re acting like a distributor hence they have those back-titles.

  10. Charles, sorry but nope. My supplier uses Diamond first before trying any other distributor. Only after they come back with a Yay or Nay answer does he go elsewhere. So Diamond don’t have back copies. Though they did say that some of the volumes were officially OOP with the Publisher as well. I’ll have to ask him which of those it were

Trackbacks

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