Forum - View topicNEWS: Spice and Wolf Author Hasekura to Appear at NYCC
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Alan45
 Village Elder Posts: 10033 Location: Virginia |
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All seventeen volumes in one?
 It is going to be interesting to see how this will work out physically. The current volumes measure 11 1/2 inches across the spines. They will have to use larger pages, smaller type or thinner paper, or possibly all three. Also, medieval manuscript? Are they going to have it bound in leather, wolf skin perhaps? Maybe a gothic typeface.
The $150 price tag is actually cheaper than buying the individual volumes at normal retail price. |
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Agent355
 Posts: 5113 Location: Crackberry in hand, thumbs at the ready... |
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Oh, man, NYCC is getting some great Japanese creators of works that I'm not (or barely) familiar with. Trying to decide if its worth it to try to catch up on the Assassination Classroom manga or marathon the anime just so that I can appreciate the con more. And now maybe giving Spice & Wolf a peak? Too much work to prepare for a con.
17 volumes in one? Is it meant to be read, or just displayed on a fancy bookshelf, like a law book in a lawyer's office? That's just surreal. $150 is a premium price point. I wonder what there projected sales are...and how popular Spice & Wolf is in America that they're willing to pull out all the stops for it, when they didn't do this for any other light novel series (granted, they haven't completed the majority of light novels they publish, but I would think Haruhi Suzumiya would warrant the premium treatment before Spice & Wolf. |
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Bastille
 Posts: 70 |
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944 pages (according to Amazon) across 17 volumes means an average of 55.5 pages per volume. If Yen Press isn't cutting out/down the art then that would cut down on available page real estate for text even more. If they think it can work, then all the power to them. Regardless, I want to see example photos before committing to it.
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Paulo27
Posts: 400 |
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And 17 volumes in one book is insane, that's like 4500+ pages if they put the normal volumes together, and could go as high as your knee in height when set sideways, obviously going to depend on the pages. Here's a 5000 page book: http://www.geek.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/wikipedia_book_02.jpg |
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Agent355
Posts: 5113 Location: Crackberry in hand, thumbs at the ready... |
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Actually, 944 pages isn't bad. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix was just less than 100 pages fewer than that, at 870 pages. Many textbooks, law books and religious texts are even longer. Yen Press describes its design as "giving the impression of a medieval manuscript," so they're probably going the "religious text" route--larger size overall, with a larger page size, maybe even a movable cloth bookmark sewn in and leather covers. Its doable, but its significantly more expensive than most young adult/light novels. Really wonder what the sales have been like and/or what other considerations were behind their choice of this particular title. |
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Pokenatic
 Posts: 581 Location: Neo Venezia |
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I'd imagine sales were pretty good throughout most of the series since they stuck with it for over 6 years. Plus, this series kept on going before Yen On was a thing and the profitability of localizing a light novel series was still very questionable. I gotta say though, while I like Spice & Wolf, I only read up to the the fifth novel before fizzling out (there's something about that particular arc that failed to captivate me both in the anime and in the light novel) so this would definitely be a good way for me to catch up with the light novels. |
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Themaster20000
 Posts: 872 |
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Both the LN and manga were constantly on the NY Times list. It helped that they started releasing it around the time Funi was releasing the first season. |
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Suena
Posts: 289 |
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The megavolume is currently at #18 on Amazon's historical fantasy book sales, so I guess it will get a decent number of orders.
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Alan45
Village Elder Posts: 10033 Location: Virginia |
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I'm not sure how Amazon provided a total of 944 pages or 55 pages per volume.
I have all 17 volumes. MSRP ranges from $10.99 for the first volume to $13 for the final volume. Total MSRP for all 17 volumes is $205.91. Of course, Amazon doesn't usually charge full MSRP. The $150 quoted in the article would be a bit more than 25% off. As far as page count goes, the volumes range from a high of 296 pages of text and black & white illustrations to a low of 181 pages. All 17 volumes total 3890 pages. To that you would have to add 136 color pages (eight per volume), 35 pages of author's afterwards and the 17 color cover illustrations. This brings the page count to 4095 pages if you don't want to lose anything from the softcover edition. As I said above, using the original pagination the book would be almost a foot thick. As with most light novels, the type is fairly large compared to regular novels. They could make the pages larger with slightly smaller type and reduce the page count. This would substantially increase the cost of creating the volume. If they include all the color pages and covers and provide a fancy binding, the $150 cost seems like a bargain. It would still be a very unwieldy book to actually read. |
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Agent355
Posts: 5113 Location: Crackberry in hand, thumbs at the ready... |
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Yen Press released a preview image of the book on their Twitter account: https://mobile.twitter.com/yenpress/status/770246623989534720/photo/1
It looks like they're doing a double column format on extra wide pages, and I can't tell, but they might be using a smaller print/type font size. So I wouldn't be worried about them editing the content, they found a way to make it all fit. But it looks like it might be harder to actually read. |
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JGZinv
 Posts: 13 |
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I just hope they include any illustrations as is typical with LNs.
I never picked up a S&W novel, so this is a great opportunity to get everything and catch up from where the anime dropped off. I was checking out in the grocery store when I saw the article, before checkout was done I had it in the cart and bought by the time I got to my vehicle. 
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Tanteikingdomkey
 Posts: 2350 |
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Tweet from yen press "Each cover will appear in full color in the interior at the beginning of the volume, as will all the color inserts."
It appears nothing will be edited out of the book They also did state that only 2000 copies of the book will ever be made. |
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AnimeLordLuis
 Posts: 1626 Location: The Borderlands of Pandora |
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No way this is the best news I've heard all day especially I might actually be able to attend NYCC this year if a friend pulls through. Also I'm really excited for that Spice and Wolf mega book from Yen Press.
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AksaraKishou
Posts: 1414 Location: End of the World |
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Visual of the hardcover translated omnibus that contains all 17 volumes. Only 2000 will be in print for $150 each.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0316504017 - I saw the book... it's big and thick (hoho)
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Aura Ichadora
 Posts: 2304 Location: In front of my computer |
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Wow... that's one heck of a book. o.o I think I'll stick with getting the individual volumes as I go along. I enjoy paperbacks more than I do hardcovers, and on top of that I don't think any of my shelves could take a book of that magnitude - in addition to the weight of all other books on it - without breaking. I lost a bookcase once due to excessive weight; I'm not about to do that again. >.> I'm also not a fan of the double column style they're using, although I understand that's basically the only way to make this book work within the page count.
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