After I Win Reprint?

[Vata_Raven]

Okay, a question. Why the hell can't DMP set up a print-on-demand thing? Even it does cost more to print, I'd be willing to pay $20 for a book, instead of an insane price like $100. I keep hearing that DMP is on a tight-budget, but they could still do it. Charge a bit more for them, make the people happy and get money out of it.

And also, what I don't get, my book quality of DMP books have been going down, but yet pries are the same or have gone up. Like my Only the Ring Finger Knows manga has this thick paper, I can barely bend the manga. But their manga now are cheaper in quality, but still the same price.

[lore]

Vata - The thing is, you're not going to get very far with DMP or the other members here by making posts that read as rude and ranty. Also, one unfortunate thing many members don't think about when they're making demands of the publisher is cost.

For example, DMP can't "the hell" set up print on demand without owning or renting a machine or machines that can actually print their books and bind them in an acceptable format. Even a duplicating machine that could print books on smaller paper and staple them would cost many thousands of dollars, and I don't think people are going to pay $20 a book for copy paper and staples. An even better printer would probably get into the tens of thousands range, and I doubt DMP could afford that kind of up-front cost.

Then, even if DMP could buy nice enough equipment to do proper POD, there's the time it would take to handle each individual order. DMP would either need to pull people from their existing work load, which means less work on new books for print, to handle the volume or hire a whole new employee (or two or three). All of these extra costs would go into the cost of the books you buy. $20 + shipping and handling might be a low estimate. If DMP farms POD out to another printer, you can expect even higher costs than if DMP owned its equipment.

As for paper, there was a global weather event that affected the paper supply drastically about 5 years ago now. High-quality paper was no longer affordable and many publishers had to scale back to cheaper paper. If publishers had stayed with the higher-quality paper, the book costs would have gone up quite a bit - more than the 1-2 dollars DMP books have risen in the past 5 years. As for the book prices going up anyway, inflation affects everyone. In these tough economic times, I appreciate that DMP books haven't gone up even more.

Some credit also should be given to DMP for continuing to innovate printing solutions when it can, such as using Kickstarter to help fund its recent reprint of "Swallowing the Earth". You might want to keep you eyes out for other such print campaigns and support them when you can to encourage DMP to keep innovating for us.

Finally, I'm not sure why you're posting thinly veiled complaints here when you made sure to post identical comments about people complaining in two other forum threads at the same time. If you want answers to your questions, I suggest posting a new topic in June Titles with your questions asked calmly and clearly. If you receive no answer, then you could copy the topic link in a private message to a mod to point it out to them. It's pretty clear that the DMP staff doesn't have time to stop in here often, so a little patience and honey will go a long way toward receiving real answers. Good luck!

[Vata_Raven]

Hate to tell you this, but they don't need to own the printers, they take it through the people that they normally print through, that is what TokyoPop did before they folded. Such as how Lulu does, it's a matter of setting up everything though a place like that.

And those Kickstarter projects do jack to me because I only buy yaoi manga, and those two they did though that site were the main character was clearly female. If they do that and got all that money, they can clearly do a fund raiser to get them a little extra money and get them out of that said "tight-budget".

[lore]

they take it through the people that they normally print through, that is what TokyoPop did before they folded. Such as how Lulu does, it's a matter of setting up everything though a place like that.

Let me sort through this....
1. If DMP takes books to its printers to be printed on demand, that assumes that more than one book of each title is going to be printed. In fact, it assumes that several books of each title will be printed, or the price point per book would be as much as Ebay sales.

2. Tokyopop folded and I don't know many people who actually got their POD books. So we don't know if that was a successful program.

3. DMP would have to set up POD with a press willing to do POD for it and not need any licensing agreements. For example, if DMP were to try to set up POD from a small press reseller like Lulu, basically making the titles available for purchase there, a small press like Lulu would want agreements in place so it could collect part of the royalties as its payment. (I know you didn't exactly suggest this, but in case anyone else would wonder about it...)

4. It would cost DMP significant money and set-up time to create its own POD, even using its existing printer. DMP would have to set up ordering, possibly an entire web site, which, again, would either take someone's time from making new books or result in a new hire. There's no guarantee that POD would generate enough money per year to justify the cost of a new staff person.

5. DMP might not have it in the licensing agreement with a book's publisher to do POD.

6. DMP might not have the license to older titles anymore, meaning that DMP can sell what books it has, but cannot make anymore.

I know you want to think POD is an easy thing, and DMP is just holding back on us, but like any new venture, there's costs and issues that prevent it. Otherwise, I'm sure DMP would be happy to sell us more books.

[Senyoru-Chan]

It makes me sad, I still want the Kazuka Minami title from 801. I really want it. :B

[Vata_Raven]

Could hope that JManga has a printing service. That would be something amazing if they did that.