How are Licensing Determined??

[tsukimori]

I was just curious how do you determine how many volumes of a certain series you license at first? do you license all available volumes that are in japan or just a few volumes at a time to test the market?

[starlightmuse]

Please keep in mind I don't actually work on the licensing committee, but from what I know, we have to pay what is called a "minimum guarantee" for each title we license. It would be pretty costly for us to put up that much money for a whole series, especially if we're not sure it will sell well. So I would say a little bit of both, some we license a few volumes to see how well it does, and some we license the whole series.