Other Yaoi Publishes - Discuss

[2old4yaoi]

June Mod - please feel free to delete this topic if deemed inappropriate

I thought we should have a forum discussing other yaoi publishers here too because let's face it, we buy yaoi books from different publishers. The economies & the biz decisions of the publishers affect each other etc ...

So I was shocked to recently discover that Crimson Spells 2 was temporarily (?) OOO and the prices for it on E-bay had gone as much as $80's??? I was shocked because I thought Kitty Media get it right w/ the CS series - I know CS 1 is up to 5th ed so far & thought CS 2 will be just as well executed. What is going on? I heard that due to biz & economic condition, MB is de-prioritizing yaoi? Has anyone else heard anything? Are the yaoi publishers seeing a possible double dip recession in manga demands too?

[lore]

Media Blasters laid off 4 employees several months ago. The articles at the time implied that this was a significant chunk of its work force. MB did hire back one employee a few months later. However, in that time, MB canceled all the BL titles it had up for pre-order at Amazon and other places. There's been no news since the last round of cancellations. MB seems to be concentrating on its anime arm right now.

It's sad, but all the manga companies are feeling the economic squeeze and most have been trying to deal with it since 2008. Unfortunately, the smaller publishers are the ones falling by the wayside, and the larger publishers and smaller surviving publishers have had to adjust things like output and focus. There are less BL books coming out of all the remaining BL publishers, and Yaoi Press has switched its focus, for now, on downloadable BL novels.

However, I believe BL remains a reliable seller. There's a reason we've seen 2 - 3 BL books out of the Tokyopop BLU line this year, and that's because the BL books sell consistently, whereas the regular mass of TP titles do not. The problem is, BL is still a niche market. Hundreds buy BL books in a given week as opposed to the thousands that buy non-BL manga in the same week. You can make a tidy profit on BL, but you're not going to get rich selling it -- at least, not right away.

Sometimes I do worry that the BL publishers are focusing on maximizing profit on their books and forgetting to build the BL audience, which would mean more people to buy their books. But I'm guessing that they're all just making sure they can stay afloat with the books they can produce for now. Building audience costs money and time the publishers probably don't have. Or, perhaps in DMP's case, they're putting money into the big-name books right now in the hopes that the sales will help and the big-names will draw in more audience. It's just that I don't see the other companies even trying, in terms of audience-building.

I would guess that MB makes more money through its non-BL anime sales, and that's why it's concentrating its efforts there. I'm sure the BL did make money for MB, but the margin between cost and sales did not offer the company as much profit as non-BL works did. As for Crimson Spell books - Yamane is known for being incredibly picky with how her work is presented. It's possible that MB let its licenses lapse (or is letting) because the effort to produce the books became too great. The print quality of the CS books was far above the normal Kitty book, and the cost of a reprint may be more than MB can shoulder, let alone the cost of putting out volume 3.

love, lore

[mo2468]

Media Blasters' problem isn't about yaoi. They themselves have admitted on more than one occasion that the BL titles sell well for them. What they have done is halt production on pretty much their entire manga line, BL and non-BL titles alike. They're focusing on their anime licenses, because they make a lot more money in anime. And they don't just license niche stuff, either. They're the ones that decided to relicense Voltron, and they made a killing off it with sales to people outside the anime fandom (that title was a mainstream property back in the 80s by children who are now adults with disposable incomes). It's unfortunate, but we also know that Media Blasters paid a LOT of money for Crimson Spell, not just for the license, but to produce the book to Yamane's specifications (printing costs would have been much higher than for regular Kitty books). It also isn't unheard of for a BL book to go out of print. They probably looked at the numbers, saw that they had peaked and decided not to print volume 2 again. If they aren't going to license or work on volume 3, I hardly see a point in them doing so anyway. And on top of that we don't even know if they hold the license to it anymore anyway. It was several years ago now, and the cost of relicensing and reprinting may very well have outweighed projections on future sales, so they didn't bother to renew and let the license expire.

[2old4yaoi]

And on top of that we don't even know if they hold the license to it anymore anyway. It was several years ago now, and the cost of relicensing and reprinting may very well have outweighed projections on future sales, so they didn't bother to renew and let the license expire.

Oh no ... That is very terrible news if they had indeed let the license lapse. I really don't mind paying more if they were to jack up their Crimson Spell's MSRP to $15.95/book. But it just doesn't seem right that despite the high cost, Crimson Spells would not have been a money maker for MB. CS 1 is in 5th edition print & I really would have expected their forecaster to order up the same volume of print for volume 2. I would think if they cancel all other BL titles just to focus on CS 3, they will still come out ahead margin wise. Even now, prices of CS 1 seem to be within reasonable range - used or new despite the big supply out there. I definitely hope KM holds on to this crown jewel of their BL titles. It just doesn't make sense to cast it to the swine (let it lapse) And I thought their recent Naono Bohra's work is pretty decent as well.

[Ruby_Alexandrine]

Concerning Crimson Spell vol.3, according to a person at AF who attended the New York Anime Expo and another person who attended a different convention, they both went to the Media Blasters booth and asked about the release date of Crimson Spell vol. 3. The Media Blasters rep stated that it was to be released at the end of May of this year but such announcement occurred prior to the layoffs at Media Blasters. So I'm assuming that they already licensed it but they have yet to release it because of the recent downsizing.

Its unfortunate that Crimson Spell vol. 2 received the ominous "OOP" status because now comes the price hikes and bidding wars at Ebay. Its been two years that it was published in English, so I'm not surprised that its out of print. I'm glad I purchased my copy when it first came out. Robert's Anime Corner store has it in stock for a limited time BUT raised the price to $69.98!

Many manga publishers will not re-print any manga to save printing costs. Many manga that were published way back in 2002-2006 are out of print and some are rare and hard to find. Licensing of those title have probably expired as well.

[2old4yaoi]

When they license the title - don't they usually license both the hard & digital media form? If so, why not release some of these OOP manga in digital format for Kindle, E-Reader, I-Pad etc..? This will help take the edge off the supply constraint for desperate, interested readers. I notice that "U Don't Know Me" from NetComics seems to be in somewhat similar situation as CS 2 but perhaps due to its digital availability, the prices had not gone up so much? Frankly, I am still waiting for June to have all volumes of "Ai No Kusabi" in digital format so I can purchase it for my kindle. I love the translations of the current editions just aren't good enough for me to want to collect in paperback form. I do love the paper & print quality of June novels though.

[mo2468]

The law of diminishing returns essentially guarantees that the second volume of any series, regardless of how popular the mangaka is or how well the first volume sold, will never sell as many as the first volume did. DMP will surely see this on VF volume 2 (and hopefully they're already accounting for it on sales projections) considering how out there the first volume is compared to the rest of the series. This happens for several reasons including: people who bought the first volume on recommendation alone (you can't really read 18+ manga in particular without buying it because of shrinkwrapping), decided they didn't like it and never continued; people get tired of waiting for the next volume and read it in scanlations illegally and then never bother buying the future volumes in print later; and people like the series, want to continue it, but can't for financial reasons or it simply slips their mind.

Digital licenses are still not necessarily the norm and many older licenses (more than three years ago) weren't licensed with digital distribution in mind to begin with. While publishers like DMP and Netcomics are now offering manga digitally, they would have to renegotiate their licenses (as in, pay more money) for numerous titles for digital distribution rights, as well as (for older titles) renegotiate lapsed licenses, not to mention talk Japanese publishers, many of whom still fear a switch to digital, into it in the first place. EBay prices might hint at demand that still potentially exists for some titles, but it does not guarantee sales payouts that would cover additional licensing costs. Older books might make them some money back, but unless it is a surefire sell and they have the capital to put into it in the first place, it isn't likely that we'll see reprints or relicenses.

[lore]

I discussed theoretical numbers behind reprints here, if that helps anyone:

viewtopic.php?f=14&t=1037&p=3187#p3187

love, lore

[2old4yaoi]

I discussed theoretical numbers behind reprints here, if that helps anyone:

viewtopic.php?f=14&t=1037&p=3187#p3187

love, lore

Very good article lore - thanks for the link. I do see your point why the new mangas will garner more attention than the older ones (the quality of the translation has improved a lot) However, I am simply not convinced that the law of saturation & diminishing return applies to CS2 ...yet. There is definitely enough pent up demand for another reprint.
I don't think we have reached the maturity life cycle w/ yaoi manga literature market in US yet. It is still a growing market here and even more so in a lot of Asian countries (ex Japan & China). As I was preparing for my trip to go back to my home country there, yaoi mangas are #1 most requested item!

As I was just preparing to shop for some of the latter volumes of "Love Pistols" on request, I notice that vol 3 & 4 are kind of hard to get. I sure hope this is temporary distribution issue w/ Blu instead of anything more serious like letting the license lapse