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!

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.

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.

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.

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.