Yen Press made quite a splash at NYAF. You couldn’t miss the huge Yen Press banner as you walked in, and the huge banner of Svetlana Chmakova’s Nightschool hanging in the main concourse. And then before anyone even had a panel, Yen kicked off the fest by announcing they had signed a deal with James Patterson, decribed by Yen co-publisher Kurt Hassler as “the best selling author in all the country.”
The first four books are 4-koma, four-panel cartoons, the same format as Azumanga Daioh:
Shoulder a Coffin, Kuro, by Satoko Kiyuduki. This manga is based on Western fairy tales and features a little girl who walks around with a coffin on her back. She is very philosophical, but she travels with a little man who is both the voice of reason and the voice of snark, according to assistant editor Tania Biswas. As with the original, color pages will be interspersed throughout the book.
Sunshine Sketch, by Ume Aoki, is known to anime fans as Hidomari’s Sketch. It’s about a group of girls in a dorm in an all-girl school—”It’s kind of like a harem manga without the guy,” Biswas explained. You can see a sample on its Wikipedia page.
Suzunari! by Shoko Iwami, is about a girl who finds a twin sister with cat ears on the street; she brings the new girl home, and her parents treat her like a member of the family. Hilarity ensues. You can take a peek at the cover of the Japanese edition on its Baka-updates page.
And finally, SS Astro: Ashaio Sogo Teachers Room takes a peek at what really goes on in the teachers lounge. Hilarity, apparently.
(Satsuma, who blogs at One Potato Two, is translating Shoulder a Coffin, Kuro and Sunshine Sketch, so she posted covers on her blog.)
Biswas also mentioned the three Lily Hoshino BL manga that Yen announced at Yaoicon: Love Quest, Mr. Flower Bride, and Mr. Flower Groom.
Then it was time to talk about Yen Plus, the manga anthology magazine that Yen will be releasing monthly beginning this summer. The magazine will contain a mix of original and licensed material, both manga and manhwa, and the headline story will be Nightschool, which Svet described as “Harry Potter meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” The idea is that vampires and other creatures go to school at night, in a regular public school that is transformed just for them. The main character, Alex, is a witch who has guardian demon spirits but also manages to be a surly teenager.
The anthology will also include two manhwa, Jack Frost, by Jin-Ho Ko, and Pig Bride, about an arranged marriage between a boy and a girl who hides her face behind a pig mask, by Kook-Hwa Huh and Su-Jin Kim.
And then there will be Maximum Ride, based on the James Patterson novels. “This is one of the best selling young adult novels in the country, there are film plans in works, we could not be more excited that this is going to be an anchor of the Yen Plus magazine,” Hassler said. It should also bring in new readers, as Patterson fans (like the five who showed up in Maximum Ride costumes at Hassler’s house this Halloween) pick up the magazine. Which they will, because Hassler says it will not just be in bookstores but also in mass-market stores like Target and Wal-Mart, at the allowance-friendly price of $8.99 for 460 pages.
One final note: Yen is taking over the Ice Kunion library, and co-publisher Rich Johnson said the books are arriving in the Hachette warehouse now and should be in stores shortly. The Yen Press logo will go on when the books are reprinted.
