Chris Butcher has an interesting collection of Wednesday thoughts over at comics.212.net. (I can’t seem to directly link to the post, but it’s “Catching Up” from March 1.) This passage in particular caught my eye:
“Related, it really is a nightmare out there if you’re not a superhero, manga, or ‘art-comix’ publisher right now. They’re soaking up a lot of money, much more than they’re growing the market (and this is primarily supers and manga), and it’s tough for the new-mainstream alt-supers publishers out there. Hell, for any small publisher.”
I can’t really argue with that. You hear the “rising tide raises all ships” theory a lot, but sometimes it just lifts the big boats as it swamps the smaller crafts. And Marvel and DC and manga publishers aren’t really obliged to look after anyone but themselves, but audiences still seem pretty compartmentalized.
Looking at the pattern of my own buying habits, manga has almost entirely supplanted super-hero purchases. Part of the budget usually spent on Marvel and DC has transferred over to independent publishers like Oni and Slave Labor Graphics, too, but it was mostly a straight financial line from the Big Two to Viz, Tokyopop, Del Rey, Digital Manga, Go! Comi, etc.
I do wonder about small publishers within the manga sector, particularly Go! Comi. I’ve really enjoyed their line so far, and I think they’re smart people. They may not have the licensing muscle of Kodansha behind them like Del Rey, but their roll-out strategy has been similar (a small number of titles initially, presented with a great deal of care and solid extras), and I hope that serves them well. I’m still scratching my head over the volume of new releases Netcomics seems to be dumping at once on the Direct Market. Manhwa doesn’t seem to have built quite as much of a dedicated audience as manga, but maybe their bookstore release schedule is more sensible.
Speaking of bookstores, David Taylor reports on a really, really smart UK bookstore chain that’s started a Manga Collector’s Card program. (Ottakar’s is the store that ran the very successful Tokyopop event a while back. How they resisted the urge to call it Ottakar’s Otaku I’ll never know, but I’m a whore for tacky wordplay.) It’s a simple “buy three, get one free” deal, similar to short-term sales I’ve seen in U.S. chains, but ongoing. I’ve been wondering why a Borders or Barnes & Noble hasn’t done something similar, or, even better, combined it with some means of subscribing to certain titles for regular readers.
They all have some kind of pre- or special-order mechanism in place, and it doesn’t seem like that much of a stretch. Of course, it might be tricky with younger readers. On one hand, it would guarantee arrival of their favorite titles at a cheaper price. That might lead to less “read but don’t buy” behavior from the floor-dwelling tweens you hear so much about. On the other hand, the stores would need to know that they were going to get paid, so minors would probably have to get their parents to sign off on whatever they pre-order. (I would if I worked in a bookstore.)
Still, if there was a convenient way for bookstore customers to guarantee that they would get future volumes of their books in a regular and timely fashion, combined with the usual big-chain discounts or, even better, an extra, manga-specific cut like Ottakar’s… sorry, I think there’s something in my eye. (I was in the comics shop the other day, and the owner had no idea about the disconnect between when books show up at a chain store and when they arrive in the Direct Market. He was not amused.)