Maiden Rose YES!!!

[Shroud]

Choutomaraseru's Live journal page states she will stop translating MR when it becomes licensed, and she will have sites take it down. Mangafox left a message there stating they would take it down in accordance to her wishes when she asks. Yet, she is still scanlating it despite public licensing announcements and Mangafox and others still have it up. They also have up a good many titles DMP has licensed under their various imprints, but most of them are the June titles, and some of them are book scans. I rather suspect the sales slumps are due to it being available to read for free rather than paid for. I also rather suspect that if the sales went up, then more of the mature titles would go on to 801 because DMP would not need to make up for such large losses.

[sun22]

I also rather suspect that if the sales went up, then more of the mature titles would go on to 801 because DMP would not need to make up for such large losses.

Well, I really doubt that. I think the decision to license something via June vs via 801 Media is just DMP's preference, for a number of reasons, which may vary depending on the title. A usual reason I hear on this forum is that June makes / brings them more money as compared to 801-Media. I personally think it's just a higher RISK-adjusted return - in other words, it may or may not always bring more money, but given that they make it a much less explicit imprint, whatever they publish via June has much less litigation / bad public image etc risks as compared to explicit 801 Media titles. I honestly doubt that any increases in sales etc would change that type of reasoning. 801 Media has to sell whole lot better than June to be on "equal footing" with June.

[Shroud]

That may be, but it still stands that from a business POV, if their main money making imprint loses sales, then they have less money to put out things under their less widely distrubuted imprint as they have more money to "recover".

[sun22]

That may be, but it still stands that from a business POV, if their main money making imprint loses sales, then they have less money to put out things under their less widely distrubuted imprint as they have more money to "recover".

That's true, but let's put ourselves in DMP's shoes. June is their main / original imprint, and must be in line with their major business strategy / vision etc. I suspect they came up with 801-Media out of fear of competition, from Kitty, DQ and partially Deux. If none of these competitors are posing any serious threat, we will see more and more "June-type" June titles, and licensing of Finder (or MAIDEN ROSE) under June (contrary to the expectations of most) is yet another sign of this. If I were a publisher and wanted to earn relatively safe money and reach the whole national market (not just a few most progressive states), I'd not venture in publishing explicit titles unless absolutely necessary / driven by a huge income or competitive pressure.

That's my point: given today's realities and DMP's overall business priorities, 801 Media titles have to bring them whole lot of money to be "prioritized" at least as equally as June. This is not going to happen as 801 Media cannot be "widely" distributed, and DMP didn't even trust 801 Media distribution channel with "Finder", a super popular title, which I had previously thought would sell well under any imprint, any publisher (apparently, not...). In this country, my guess is that only REALLY niche companies (that do not target "wider distribution" across all states) or fan-driven publications will try to bring explicit / uncensored titles over the long run / in the future. [In case it's unclear to anyone: I have nothing against June or DMP in this respect, and do NOT criticize them. In fact, I WANT 801 Media to flourish. But regardless of what I want, reality appears to be different, and I'm just stating what I see..)

[2old4yaoi]

I am all for branding & brand differentiation works in most cases. In the case of DMP, their main imprint DMP books (that publishes "Beserk) is probably the money maker & the genre is quite clear there. The BL money maker is probably June since I bet they are looking by revenue by brand (more titles = more likely hits - law of statistics). But I think they are diluting their Doki Doki / June / 801 Media imprint. There are shounen ai titles in both Doki Doki / June imprint & both mild & hard yaoi in June / 801 Media imprint. Frankly, it is quite confusing - one would imagine the logical route would be Doki Doki - shounen ai / slash / shojo, June = soft & mild yaoi & 801 Media = hard yaoi. I would admit that the marketing assumption is that all brands will try to maximize their distribution channel. I am just not sure how DMP co got itself restricted in the 801Media distribution when both June & 801 Media books share the same 18+ Mature label.

Back to Maiden Rose - I understand that projects sometimes slip to various factors etc ... but it will still be nice if the co will at least publish the new ETA dates? Isn't this how typical good corporations work? Can you imagine if co like McGraw Hills missed the publication date of Harry Potter w/o updateing the fan w/ the new release dates?

[Shroud]

I still don't see how June will recoup full costs and make much money with the scanlations up and ongoing. Is June going to be issuing cease and desists? Seriously, it is not just this title, there are literally over a dozen, including a few of their novels on site, in some cases scanned directly from the actual June printed book, ironically showing the June copyright notice. For example
Don't Cry mama and Only the Ringer Finger novels are scanned directly.

I personally don't want to see things like this hurting sales, resulting in fewer releases and incomplete series.

[kinziechan]

I read scans but when they are licensed I buy, I'm going to be honest. I'm actually a whole lot of peoples least favorite person on there as I have asked them to stop uploading scans from English books.
I love to preview before I buy. I recently bought a few yaoi from Blu which I wish I hadnt.

[ChibiKami]

Okay-so once again-another title topic has turned into a discussion on censorship on a title that isn't even out yet. >_< Honestly-we've allowed you all to make a whole thread on the topic, and at this point-we've just had a user jump ship because each book topic goes into this censorship direction. We're gonna let the thread stay as is-because this was an open discussion on this particular book. But honestly-if the a good chunk of users are sending us messages that they're annoyed each book discussion goes one route-and they don't have actual discussions on the books themselves-we believe you all as forum members should take that into account in how you want these forums to be. If each June' topic turns into an argument, and people aren't enjoying themselves-why keep June' forums at all? We want people to enjoy themselves and have a good time. And we're saddened that many aren't. As an appeal to current forum members-we hope you'll take that into account. We're just here to moderate and answer questions-we don't want to tell you guys what to talk about (that's why forums are here)-but let's start having some more wide-spread discussions here. I can see some of you guys are trying, and we appreciate it.

Re: the release schedule: we don't want to go back and start working through the release schedule title by title-once we catch up, we catch-up. We're sorry about the delay on this book-which we've said before. No-we're not Houghton Mifflin/Penguin/Random House-we are a small independent company that is doing the best it can right now-and no, we're not the only company with delays. It's a tricky time right now, and we've always appreciated the support from our fans.

Shroud-we would like to ask that you not link to scanlations in our forums. We understand the point you're making, but we'd appreciate the link removed. You can still discuss it, however-just not link directly to it.

We may end up putting up some June' forum rules as things go on-as we previously hadn't because most of the other forums have been very mild in their interactions. But man-we're getting lots of private messages and reports lately...

[Shroud]

Sorry, I edited it tp remove it. But my point is, it is NOT merely scanlation. The examples are actual scans of the June novels, complete with the copyright pages. Though the scanlations of licensed things is an issue as well.

[ChibiKami]

Thanks Shroud! No-we are aware of it. That's why we created a place for people to read manga legally, and having previews and free giveaways of our books to read online-but the concept of "free" is very hard to combat. And we've consistently tried to ask groups and sites that actually scan OUR books with copyright pages to pull them down-but it's been fraught with resistance, and general apathy. Policing sites is very difficult and time consuming to do-and yes, it's hard as a publisher to see stuff you work very hard on, and put investment into just shared like that online. All we can ask is that our fans not support things like that where its a direct scan of copyrighted material, and that includes sharing a link (albeit inadvertently) to the actual pirated content. Hopefully the copyright laws that are being discussed will help us battle blatant scanning of our actual books.

Anyways-I took a tangent- so back to Maiden Rose! Is any guy in real life as pretty as Taki? Really?