I also recently bought, from a Japanese bookstore, 1-3 Nodame Cantabile in English. All indications are that this was translated here in Japan. Kondansha Bilingual Comics, says the cover.

Plus I have the few lovely Finder manga that were translated into English. Nothing like a little um… not permitted to share with youngsters.

I understand that without many scanlation groups, very few people would know of a lot of great manga titles, and many go and buy the translated manga, or the originals thanks to those groups, for offering the “taste” of that particular title.

Yet, if the websites upload already published titles that have been licensed, they affect greatly the sales!

On the Korean and Western manga topic, you might want to give a chance to “SHUTTERBOX” by a very talented female artist, Tavisha Wolfghart, and maybe, you will like “The Tarot Cafe” I loved both.

Manga readers rejected these manga because they were not Japanese. Bookstores shelves swelled with books no one wanted. The manga fad died and company after company goes out of business.

CMX just shut down, and the CMX manga were the only ones I was buying! I”m a fan of From Eroica with Love from years back, and now…sob…!

I’d put off buying Swan, but now I must grab them while I can.

I went to a book fair a few weeks ago: huge warehouse in the middle of a cow patch where books and book product are sold at remainder prices.

TONS of manga. Not one I wanted.

I don’t know if this is significant, but the manga on remainder was by western and Korean authors. Very little manga by Japanese authors. NO classic manga at all.

And I want to just drop this in here real quick: lots of fans complain that their fave books aren’t available, blah blah, takes too long to come out, blah blah.

If publishers cram stands with huge volumes of volumes, they glut the market. They have to be choosy about what they push.

I know everyone wants their fave book to be translated and available, but there is not enough of a market over here to support everything everyone wants.

I too await a digital solution. I don’t want to collect many of these books, I just want to read them. I would be happy to pay to do so.

IPad needs to stop censoring the books available on the platform.

PS: I can’t believe I did a “I told you so!”

My next post should start with “GET OFF MY LAWN!”