Graveyard of the Manga: EDIT
First day off the mountain in months. I’ll pay for it by doubling up on work tomorrow, but my adventures today included an afternoon at a regional book fair. Held in an enormous warehouse in the middle of a wheatfield in the middle of nowhere, this semi-annual event features thousands of remaindered books and book product at rock bottom prices. I walked out with two big shopping bags full of goodies and spent only $60. That includes 2 unabridged audio books by James Owen and Clive Barker, as well as a cute kitty frame, boxes of notecards, hardcovers with dustjackets, a nifty set of design art reference books, gifts for almost everyone in my family. The design reference books retailed at $22 each alone. I bought the boxed set of three.
I don’t know what it says about the state of the industry, but the shelves groaned with manga at 75% off or more. There were more manga in that remainder house than in the big city bookstore where I used to shop. Tokyopop provided the bulk, though there were many how-to art books and some very fine reference books on manga as well.
The children’s section featured even more stacks of manga, and most of it had no business there. Yaoi does not belong anywhere near My Pretty Pony.
Yeah, I know some people swing that way, but I don’t want to hear about it.
Greedy for bargains, I looked for GN’s, but the only two I saw in quantity were the ZOT collection by Scott McCloud, and The Fate of the Artist by Eddie Campbell. Big stacks of them. I wept, because I already had them at retail.
BTW, Shojo Beat from VIZ got the axe today. And reaction links here.
As I wrote, I’m not sure what all those piles of remaindered manga might mean (if anything), but I was surprised to see them.
One art book publisher, Impact Books, had lots of product, including some of their best sellers by authors like John Howe, and those books are recent releases.
Computer how-to books dominated an entire wall of the warehouse. Many Stephen King hardcovers could be had for just a few dollars, and all those unabridged Anne Rice audio books I bought back in the day at $30 were selling for only 99 cents!
It took serious self discipline to walk out of there without buying 10 times what I settled on. I did some major early Christmas shopping.
Anyway, I thought it odd that there were shelves and tables buried in manga and just a handful of US GN’s to be had, though I did see a number of books on the history of comics and comics collecting.
Thoughts?
c
PS: I worked on a teen magazine 2 years ago which was canceled for selling a lowly 100,000 copies per issue (Sweet 16). Shojo Beat was moving less than half that.
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May 20th, 2009 at 7:32 am
I’ve learned to be careful of these huge bargain sales after ending up with shelves full of stuff I picked up only because it was dirt cheap…as it is, the comic habit has me clearing out boxes of stuff every so often.
Here in the UK there’s a discount book chain called The Works that is very variable: our local branch has great art supplies (20 black sharpies and a silver one for only £4.99!) However, a friend’s local branch is the only known one that regularly carries graphic novels, primarily DCs…
May 20th, 2009 at 8:34 am
My guess would be (far from professional) going by the evidence I’ve seen in many shops and stores, that publishers like Tokyopop and similar were riding an enormous wave of popularity cut short by a suddenly cruel economy.
They printed vastly more books than they could realistically hope to sell. There’s a comic shop here in Minneapolis that had a fairly sizable section dedicated to those, and now they are being replaced with other books, while at the same time a long table in the front is covered in manga – with a sign that promises all you can fit into a bag for $20.
It was a kind of paper Gold Rush, and now that the boom is over…
May 20th, 2009 at 2:02 pm
I suspect the manga blood bath is a company problem as well as an industry problem, but I don’t keep such a close eye on the market anymore.
But I noticed shrinking manga sections in major bookstores lately.
I thought it odd that one OEL manga artist complained of low advances on their books, when as far as I could tell, the books really weren’t selling that great. Sure, 10,000 copies of a $9.95 book is nice: for a small press. But that’s not enough to sustain a major publisher.
Publishers don’t pay advances based on how long and hard you work, they pay advances based on expectation of financial return.
As far as I can tell, most manga aren’t pulling much in sales. They have a periodical model sales curve, with sharp dips after volume I. The publishers just seem to be throwing everything out there without much regard for quality or longevity.
Oh well, the part of me that enjoys all the cheap books is in battle with the part of me that knows the authors are getting a pittance on these stacks of remainders.
I saw a Neil Gaiman co-written YA novel I wanted to go back and pick up, but was so tired after wandering the aisles, I didn’t have the energy to seek it out again.
May 20th, 2009 at 8:29 pm
Last year at San Diego I was listening in on a panel by people working at Broccoli books. They said it used to be that everything Manga would sell in large numbers, even if it was from a small publisher (them) and got a lot of horrible reviews (they mentioned one of their books).
It’s not that way now obviously. I think Tokyopop lost the line on all the “big” books to Viz/Del ray and just flooded the market with mediocre mid list stuff in hopes of maintaining their market share and probably in hopes something would unexpectedly hit big and pay for whatever losses they got on the other stuff.
I suspect bookstores were just ordering everything in the same large numbers as before, unable to gauge the correct level. Now the with economy the way it is they ain’t playing that game anymore. The flood of books have been sent back to the publishers and orders are being cut to the bone.
May 20th, 2009 at 9:40 pm
Great post, Jamie.
I was at a book fair this past year where many mainstream publishers were promoting these God awful OEL manga of romance novels and whatnot – very badly drawn, no storytelling sense at all.
I had multiple romance novelists admit, however, that they didn’t really even like manga, and wanted other types of art for their books, but their publishers were wedded to the manga style. Everyone was convinced that’s what sold.
Now that I’ve seen some Jane Austin comics with porno face art, I’m not sure that’s an improvement, but there you go.
Right now, you can’t swing a dead cat without finding some publisher trying to get into GN’s, but I think the manga gravy train may be over. I know a lot of manga-style artists looking for day jobs.
PS: If memory serves, the manga returns started before the economy started to tank.
May 21st, 2009 at 2:18 pm
Yeah the gravy train is over.
What I recall is TokyoPop knew they had to do something different a few years ago because that’s when Viz/Del Ray were getting all the “big” books. They tried OEL, licensed stuff done “manga” style and the mid list stuff. The returns started after those books didn’t sell.
I’m not wholly convinced the entire manga market is in trouble, I think TokyoPop flooded the market and those books got returned. In the process the smaller publishers books were either not ordered or were simply lost on the shelves amongst all the other mediocre stuff (which isn’t to say they weren’t publishing mediocre stuff too). It just feels like the manga market in whole is in trouble due to TokyoPop’s large market share and the smaller publishers going under.
I do realize Viz and Del Ray have laid off employees as well, I suspect it’s more due to Borders situation than an actual reduced readership for their books. Bookstores may just end up doing more re-orders instead of having a healthy initial stock. Or at least I hope so. It is possible they’ll order enough to sell out and forget about it (like a comic shop).
One thing I hate about down economies is companies all over the place start layoffs in preparation for a slow down. Which then becomes much stronger than it would have been self fulfilling prophecy.
May 22nd, 2009 at 10:08 am
Yeah, I’m sure the core of manga will be fine, and there’s some great stuff out there, but alas, good stuff will get burned in the conflagration.
What’s happening with these inexperienced book publishers who just jumped on the manga bandwagon is no different than what I’ve seen a dozen times with GN’s in general. People who have no idea what they are doing or what makes good storytelling decide anything they can produce quickly and cheaply in comic format ought to sell big. And they get inexperienced artists with minimum skills, they produce bad books, lose a bundle, and they all wonder what the heck happened.
I had a former client of mine with whom I had not spoken in more than 15 years approach me some years back and insist I do a GN for his new company, 200 pages, full color, and in six months. He thought he could get me to do it for dead cheap (like, $10,000), and he thought I should be grateful for the gig.
I did not take the job, obviously.
But he thought he was going to get rich doing GN’s. Everybody’s doing it! Whee!