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Forum - View topicAnswerman - Why Are Some Manga Printed In Such Limited Quantities?
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mgosdin
 Posts: 1302 Location: Kissimmee, Florida, USA |
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So where would / does Print on Demand fit in this? You would think that being able to do that would reduce the risk on more niche titles.
Mark Gosdin |
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Brand
 Posts: 1028 |
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Also, don't give up looking. I've found manga and books going for around a hundred dollars online in a five dollar bin. Like, I picked up a volume of Ai no Kusabi (which was going for around $80 at the time) in DMP's bin at a convention for $5 or $6 dollars.
I've also found Basara at cover price in comic book stores. It helps if you have a couple of friends who go/live different places than you do. I've had friends pick up that last volume I need in the weirdest of places. Forever ago (in my now semi-defunct blog) I wrote some collecting tips. Good hunting my friend. |
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Sakura-Alchemist
 Posts: 489 |
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It would fit in under when you want the book but you don't care about the quality of the printing. I've gotten a print on demand book before and the printing was really streaky and bad. So I think there is a lot of risk on the buyers when doing print on demand. You don't know if the quality will be consistent. |
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maximilianjenus
Posts: 2866 |
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not to mention that kickstarter's morality rules won't allow most yaoi titles to even be considered.
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Brand
Posts: 1028 |
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Interesting because DMP has done two yaoi titles: -Publish SAKIRA Bara Yaoi Titles -Finder Vol. 1 - 6 Restock |
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adam_omega
 Posts: 256 Location: Seven Seas |
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Manga sold into bookstores are also returnable. If a volume doesn't sell, then that chain will return it to the publisher. Printing lots of a book that doesn't sell can mean tons of returns. And once returned, those books are largely worthless, as they can't be reshipped out. They're just pulped.
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RHorsman
 Posts: 151 Location: Loch Loman |
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And their page for the KOR omnibus editions Kickstarter is really leading with the teenage boobs too. It's a flexible morality. |
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lys
 Posts: 1010 Location: mitten-state |
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I've heard the "hundreds of dollars" listed for some books (on Amazon marketplace, etc) is just a result of computer algorithms gone out of control and may have nothing to do with what people are actually willing to spend on an OOP book: one seller's price goes up by some increment, then another's automatically goes up to remain competitive, and they keep cycling through until the price is way out there.
I've found good deals on used manga from Powells' website (finished my PSME collection that way!). If they don't have the book you're after (best to search by ISBN), you can set an alert and will be emailed if they get a copy. You still have to react fast though, in case it's a book other shoppers have set alerts for as well. |
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Thread_Alchemist
 Posts: 51 |
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The thing that upsets me the most is that the street date for a lot of DMP manga will be pushed back further and further with retailers while the book is sitting at "in stock" on their own website. This wouldn't be such a bit problem if they would send out an email but I have yet to be notified when this happens. I have lost a few books because I had them pre-ordered through Amazon and didn't notice they were selling them on their own store front until the where sold out.
As far as the second hand market goes here is what I do. Set yourself a cost limit. Then you have to keep checking your usual shopping spots. (Once a month or every other works fine.) Then when you start to notice that the price is dipping for the title you want watch it like a hawk until someone posts it at the price you are willing to pay. This does mean that you will probably get volumes out or order or that it will take a long time to get the book you want but there will always be a point where the price will drop low enough to grab a copy. And if all else fails then a few companies have started bringing back the older titles digitally. I myself would prefer a physical copy but sometimes it just isn't in the cards. (glares at my digital copy of "S. Vol. 4") |
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CheezcakeMe
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I always wondered why Please Save My Earth volume 13 was randomly worth $200 when the rest of the series averaged $10-15 a book. I'll never forget the relief I felt when I found it at my local comic shop for a reasonable $12 after spending hours online searching for a copy that didn't cost as much as the rest of the series combined. |
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TsukasaElkKite
 Posts: 3952 |
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Challengers volume 1 cost me $50 on eBay
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nargun
Posts: 925 |
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I work in printing; I don't do sales so I can't give you exact numbers, though. Remember, actually physically ordering the books isn't free; it takes labour to make the call to print more and to call the printers. Not a lot of labour, but if you're only selling a hundred copies at twelve USD or what-have you you're looking at call it seventy-five clear, not a lot of money to pay for labour. And this cost remains constant regardless of the expected sales; there's a certain level of expected sales below which it just doesn't pay to order the books at all, regardless of printing method and printing cost. And... single-colour offset printing is so cheap per-unit -- they can afford to give newspapers away, remember -- that the point where it becomes clearly more expensive than POD processes is also pretty low. So the scope of "jobs that are long enough to cover administrative costs but too short to justify running offset" is pretty narrow if it exists at all. This is changing, though. There's new web-inkjet technology that's getting deployed that's cheaper than the current toner-based processes; my copy of The Three-Body Problem was printed this way. But this mostly changes the selection of printing techniques; the internal administrative costs don't hugely change with technology.] |
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Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11378 |
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This got me curious, and looking at amazon, I see that for some reason Vol. 7 is running from $400 to $3,570! Lol! But that highlights the question of why sometimes random volumes of both manga and anime run short compared to others in the series. I could understand if there was a lower print run on everything after the first or second volume (depending on sales and assuming some people may buy it to sample, but then drop it), but I don't understand why a volume in the middle of a series ends up in the hard-to-find category. People generally don't all suddenly pick up a series on the 5th or next to last volume...and then drop it without buying anything before or after it. |
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Brand
Posts: 1028 |
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In this case I am going to guess the reason is volumes 7 and 8 came out a few years after the rest of the volumes did and the print run was probably close to pre-order numbers. Since, they are not going to sell a lot of 7 when 6 came out three years earlier. |
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Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11378 |
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Well, ok, this is an unusual case, but I've seen it a lot with anime series from back when they shipped 3-4 episode volumes every couple of months (I don't usually buy manga and light novels, so I don't know how often it happens with that). Obviously with the current Parts I and II sales model, that doesn't really happen anymore.
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