Forum - View topicJake Forbes on why Manga is Broken- FANTASTIC read.
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Paploo
Posts: 1875 |
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http://www.mangablog.net/?p=7492
Fascinating article, that looks at a lot of stuff affecting manga, from quality in the industry, to issues with the japanese side of things, to fandom itself. Forbes is pretty spot on, and I'm glad Briget posted his article- it's something everyone should read, and the commentary is interesting too [publishers like Simon Jones and longtime manga editors/critics like Jason Thompson also comment] Worth reading! Mostly just asking people to read it and consider all the issues Jake brings up. It's really good and wellbalanced stuff, and asks a lot of good questions of it's readers. Jake takes on everyone, and has some valid points. I think the stuff about the issues with fans mostly just posting threads that are mostly catchup lists is one members of any forum should consider [doesn't ANN actually have a rule against that?], an I liked the discussion he starts about actual creativity as an alternative to making pirated material. Fandom would be better served by that in my opinion. This grows out of all the dicussion of the Nick Simmons affair and the assorted blog and news postings at anime sites that have grown out of it [which bridged to other recent and past scandals]. |
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jjwitdaheydiddydiddy
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That was really insightful. You can tell that the guy's been in the business for a long time.
I think the thing that I most clung to were his references to the support networks of both the publishers and the creators. So many people put their hearts and souls into just one little book, that it's staggering. It borders on sick how the industry and the fanbase just sweep them under the rug, because Kubo made Bleach, and VIZ made it in America. Period. He also made a good point about the Japanese Manga Industry's isolationist approach to the market. In any other area in the business world, they would be full partners, because the American, Spanish, (insert country here) companies are taking their original published content from their own hands, translating it, and selling it again. This, in turn, expands their market, because the more manga that these companies sell in their respective markets, the more they'll be requesting from the Japanese companies, and the more money everybody makes overall. As for the "expect things to be free" part of the argument, there is another thread in this forum that addresses this. And I don't remember what I said, but it was a lot, and my comments are there if anyone wants to go and read them. But to sum it up, I agree with Jake--not free, but not so expensive. |
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Tamaria
 Posts: 1512 Location: De Achterhoek |
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I'm not sure I agree with that. L.E. hardcovers and the like, are one of the reasons our European comics are broken. The industry has shifted from cheap entertainment for everyone to pleasing the collectors who don't want to grow up quite yet. The balance has been gone for a long time. Dutch manga readers even have a name for those collectors: the linnen bag brigade. They're named after the linnen bags they use for snagging up those limited editions and other collectibles. They don't just do it for themselves, it's not uncommon for them to stand in line twice to get an extra copy and sell it online for a profit. So, uhm, that's not something I'd like to see happen with manga. Other than that, I agree with pretty much the whole article. BTW the article mentions doujinshi and I was wondering, are self-published comics common at American conventions? Over here (in the Netherlands) we have a bunch of circles and all of them publish their own comics. Most of it is original work and quite affordable (you pay €7-10 for 80-200 pages). Some circles make fanbooks once in a while, but these are usually thin and cheap looking books with an even lower price (Persona 4: Second Banana and Badly Animated Naruto were both €3,50?). It is like that in de US? The image I have of American fanwork and original art at animecons, is that it's mostly individual artists showing/selling illustrations/single images (on T-shirts, buttons, etc.) instead of sequential art. |
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Wooga
 Posts: 916 Location: Tucson |
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Me, too. When I was younger my big brother had a stack of comics taller than I was. Nobody was supposed to touch them, since they were all limited editions and #0's and foil variants... It wasn't until i discovered manga some years later I realized...oh! Comics are meant to be read! Blew my mind. 
I listened to the mangastuds podcast earlier this week, and someone mentioned that manga isn't a collectible. You can get volumes of stuff from 10 or 15 years ago for around $3 on any site. And I think, that's the way it should be. |
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littlegreenwolf
 Posts: 4796 Location: Seattle, WA |
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The actual doujinshi thing is something I wish I could see more off. The artist at conventions for the most part stick to just fanart they sell, but every once in a while I will see a lone doujinshi. I've done my own comics before, and have looked into "self publishing" them with things like cafe press, but it's still too expensive over here in my opinion. I think half of it is lack of acess to printers, and the other half is fear of getting sued. That, and they don't really seem to be united/organized as a whole. I think if a convention, a major one, were to announce far ahead of time a special doujinshi haven for a day then the artist would be flocking. But for now all these artist are stuck in the abyss that is deviantart. I would buy special editions of manga. Tokyopop went into this to some degree by release hard covers of certain CLAMP titles back in the day, like Shirohime. I, being a huge CLAMP fan, as well as an avid book lover, went for the hardcover. I may have been the only fan to do so, but it appealed to me on several levels. Viz also did it one time with a special edition of Naruto volume 1, (full of color pictures and some bonuses) and you can still find it in some stores, and as a Naruto fan, and again as a book lover who also regularly lends out books, I adore the hardcover of Naruto. They do it in Japan, just slightly different in some cases, but I'm such a "collector" I imported. Tsubasa, Reservoir Chronicle, had an amazing release in hardcover, with completely different covers, slip cases, and they went so far as to add a bonus page and new art. These however got very expensive to import, so I didn't collect more than 5, but as a CLAMP fan they're a bit of a prize in my collection. Another series from Japan in which I've imported special editions of would be with Mythical Detective Loki. Every couple of volumes the publisher would release a special edition, sometimes with an alternate cover, and it would come with either a special little book, or a toy, or some other thing. Collector/fan in me had to go for it since I was importing anyway. I agree with the writer of the article fully, publishers here should look at each series they have, and think about how they can make owning it more appealing. I will say right now that as a fan who regularly imports manga from Japan, CLAMP's Japanese release of XXXholic are some of the most gorgeous manga I have ever seen. The dust jacket covers have an underlayer of some sort of metalic ink they print in, and the cover design layout is a lot more appealing than what Del Rey has chosen to go with over here, and they make the brightness/contrast so different that they're clashing the colors a lot from what was originally intended. The Japanese paper stock for XXXholic is pretty much cardstock, and the book is wider giving all the comic a nice, spaced white border, and at the edges of all the pages the paper is inked, so when the book is closed you see nothing but that color (each volume has a different color). And I'm not even on to what's below the dust jacket: the actual inner cover is lovely, different by far from the jacket, but it fits the atmosphere of XXXholic. Japan manages to have an amazing book release for 533yen, and here in America I have to pay around 10 dollars for a much more inferior edition. If Del Rey were to have followed the Japanese style of release for this book, I'd be willing to pay 15-20 dollars per book. Manga here are boring, ugly, and one size fits all. They don't appeal to me as a book collector, making all of the manga based on the same template. Don't even get me started on the random Naruto volumes I have to import because I want an un-edited version of something Viz decided to edit out. |
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Paploo
Posts: 1875 |
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I have the french editions of xxxHolic Vol.1+2 which use the same metallic slipcovers, and thick paper of the japanese edition- they also have some keen colour stamping on the edges of the pages, so it looks like a purple/maroon book with white pages.
Collectors books/hardcovers serve a market, and that market are readers, that just want a really nice reading experience- it's the same with how novels are often released as hardcovers first, and then a paperback is issued later on. Marvel often issues highly anticipated collections as hardcovers first to mirror this- and Yen did this with the Twilight graphic novel. I kind of find it odd to have some kind of distaste for that...... they have to make money somewhere, and more profitable material does allow for them to take risks- I imagine the pricier format of the SigIkki books plays a part in why they can experiment with free online content with that line. Can't blame publishers for sticking to a dedicated, profitable audience. Mind you, if the material does have mass market appeal, making it cheap and easy to get is a good idea- which is why when Tokyopop priced their GN's at 10 bucks, the market exploded for the material back around 2002-ish with their Sailor Moon "pocket mixx" GN's, the precursor to the current standard. That's why I'm glad to see some shifts in terms of offering some material that might not break even as cheap paperbacks being offered as hardcovers or larger trim/betterpaper 12-15 dollar books with Vertical and VIZ's revived Signature line. I just hope publishers eventually consider cheapo collections with really thin paper and more page counts [like Marvel's Essential line but for manga- like a cheaper version of the VIZBIG omnibuses, which are still a good value mind you]. I think there could be a market for reprints of older manga as cheap reprints, like say, along the print quality of Archie digests- it'd be a good route to reoffer stuff like Basara or PSME which is now going OOP. As for comic back issues, those've lost their value- now that DC and Marvel have extensive GN divisions, I've seen comic shops shift away from large back issue bins to making back issues very low priced and only having stuff the truly rare items [like say, comics form the 50's that are OOP] as collectors items. Comic issues are mostly being collected by those who want to read them now [in a quick, cheap format of 3 dollar issues as they're published, rather then waiting for the more deluxe TPB edition] PS--- One thing Jake doesn't mention is that in Japan, the reason why books are cheap is due to cheap distribution, and cheaply produced recycled paper. Japan is a very small, densely populated country, so it's very cheap to deliver product to a large number of readers- I imagine there's some titles that could get along on their fandom in Tokyo alone. The recycled paper is a result of years of producing paper in that format, and again, the small area of Japan makes it easier to transport the paper and cut down on the costs associated with recycling. Meanwhile, a smaller number of manga fans are spread out over the entire North American continent, a lot of it in less densely popular areas like Canada [which has a 1/4 of the population of Japan, and is one of the largest countries of the world]. So, a lot of the costs associated with books are due to the distribution networks required to get them where they need to be sold. The fact that lower priced manga sit around the same price as Mass Market Paperback novels says to me that the Shonen Jump pricing of 7.95 is about the chepest they could probably go, and that depended entirely on sales being at boom levels [which is why many publishers put prices up- sales went down, and a lot of bookstores have been having trouble due to the economy, so print runs aren't as large]. And again, smaller print runs make it more expensive per book- the lower selling/niche books in Japan probably seller better than the majority of the midlist titles here. |
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Tamaria
Posts: 1512 Location: De Achterhoek |
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It's expensive over here too, but that is exactly why artists band together. They usually make anthologies while the popular artists of a circle may get a chance to make a book individually. The circles don't make a profit, but they earn enough to pay for the printing of the next book. Sometimes artists from different circles contribute to the books of other circles if there is a theme they like (most anthologies have a theme). That way, they can make really cool stuff like: 
Original work. 384 pages for only €9.95. And yes, it's good! Dutch conventions don't have artist alleys. Doujinshi circles are put in the dealerroom together with the regular dealers. I think that encourages circles try to offer books of high quality. Bringing only fanart and maybe some original illustrations would just be a waste of money and they would probably not even grant you a table anyway.
Well, there are older manga that go for more than that , but yeah, it's nowhere near as much as what you'd pay for rare comic books. |
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Paploo
Posts: 1875 |
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If you check outside amazon for used books, you can often find lots of OOP titles for very, very cheap. Anyone selling a comic or manga from the past 5 years for 200 bucks is just crazy- and if enough fans go for that, it's probably going to get reissued anyways- reissues are a big market for classic titles like DH's CLAMP Omnibus line, MB's new Lodoss Wars boxsets, or DMP's upcoming reissuing of OOP/unfinished BeBeautiful titles. I don't shop online much nowadays [I find the selection I can get at comic shops and bookstores locally pretty good], though it's a good option if you're in the middle of nowhere [I used Ebay a lot when I was in university to get used or clearanced vhs/dvd]. I know that just looking around used book specialty sites like http://www.powells.com/ shows that you can find deals on the harder to find stuff if you look around enough and are patient.
For selfpublishing, I mostly use a photocopier to make minicomics. You can vary the quality a little by using nicer paper or opting for colour printing, but it's pretty lowpriced if you're doing a small run. I know with POD, a lot of it is US based, so that makes it expensive if you're outside the US........it'd be a nice option if the shipping weren't so expensive. |
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littlegreenwolf
Posts: 4796 Location: Seattle, WA |
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I'm not sure how it is in Japan, but surely something like a first edition of a Tezuka manga has to go for something. I think people who claim manga aren't as collectible as something like Superman have to keep in mind that these comics that are going for so much money are issues over 30 years old in most cases. I think manga is very collectible here in the US, the problem is the industry here in America is still really young, as well as their buyers in comparison to the comic fans buying up expensive single Superman issues. Take a look at the used book sellers trying to sell Mixxzine/Tokyopop's original release of Sailor Moon for a range of 15-60 bucks a volume, and those were crappy, flipped, falling apart when exposed heat manga with crappy translations. Or random volumes of Please Save My Earth that had limited printings. Then there's art books. I don't know many people who collect them, but I do, and I own just about every art book Tokyopop released, in particular the CLAMP ones. Take a look at how much the Art of Magic Knight Rayearth books are going for now. They're out of print, and it's hard to not pay 30 bucks at the very least, and it's similar to that with the paperback Cardcaptor Sakura art books (MKR was only released hardcover). Yoshitohshi Abe's English release of Essence (all these books mentioned so far were released around 2002) goes for at least 60 bucks IF you ever see it being sold, and that was originally released for 20 bucks. And anyone recall that lovely Tokyopop release of Clamp's Clover? They were flipped, yes, but Tokyopop went out of their way to release them as close to the Japanese format as possible, giving it a treatment like no other manga before in America, and those editions (new condition of course) are still highly sought out by Clamp fans, even after Darkhorse re-released Clover, unflipped, in a omnibus edition. Tokyopop's release of Clamp no Kiseki (the mini-art books with CLAMP chess pieces) is now out of print, and I've seen the first issue/volume of that easily going for 40 bucks now (unopened with chess pieces of course). Take a look on ebay sometime to check out how much a full chess set, be it with the actual books or just the chess pieces, go for. Well over 200 bucks in most cases. How about Robot? The older, out of print releases (volume 2 in particular) are boarding between 15-40 dollars now. Wait for another year or so to pass as those various artist discover more fans in the English speaking world. Junko Mizuno out of print titles are also becoming quite a collectible with various out of print releases over here. Japanese comics are very collectible, the West just doesn't really have their foot in the door yet. North American comic fans are still generally young. I've been reading them since I was twelve, spending all my allowance on Sailor Moon when it was released chapter by chapter in comic book form (still have them in protector comic bags, no idea if they'll ever be worth something, but I'll never get rid of them), and now I'm 24. Wait til this generation of manga fans gets into their 30s-40s. I think the best comparison for manga collecting versus rare American comics however in the end, is doujinshi. I'm not talking about the random no-name circles doing a comic based off a licensed property (though those do have a value, depending on what circles you collect), I'm talking about the doujinshi releases of popular artist such as Yoshitoshi Abe and Range Murata. They release a doujinshi in limited numbers at a con, everyone is out to get one, and next thing you know you can't get one for less than 60 bucks the first year via auction sites, and no less than 120 the following year. |
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Paploo
Posts: 1875 |
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Yeah, I think the dojinshi thing is a good example of the something that matches the actually rare US comics. Limited, hard to find stuff that has a demand to it.
Artbooks are a good point too- those are something it's best to bring up, because they're a niche item within a range of niche publishing, the supplement. I nabbed the Tsubasa artbook Del Rey recently , and was glad I did since it seems printruns are going down. They're pricey, but worth the quality and effort. A collection of digital images just isn't the same thing in that case. I think one of the things worth mentioning is that it seems that collectors are starting to have more influence in the manga market, as we're the ones who speak with our wallets- at the end of the day, a publisher will go with a deluxe offering for a niche market for a title with appeal to collectors, then a massmarket one that won't break even if it's not something of that sort. I appreciate that that shift is happening, and like the books we'll be getting out of it, though I hope they don't have to abandon the mass market like comics had to for awhile in the late 90's when the market was extremely comic shop centric. Both have their advantages, but it's best when the market operates off of strong markets in both types of fans. Anyhoo, to get things back to Jake's article, Simon Jones' reaction (would provide a link, but it's a nsfw blog since Icarus is a hentai publisher.... can we link to that on these forums? Brigid does linke to it in her followup post http://www.mangablog.net/?p=7497) talks a lot about how CR's success has a very negative vibe towards companies who follow the rules and how they might get stepped over when it comes to digital manga- hopefully VIZ, TP and other manga companeis can find a way to make it work without the scummy folks at MangaFox or OneManga continuing to be rewarded for their questionable activities. I do appreciate that CR has gone legit, and think it's a good thing, but their origins still cloud their efforts just a little, especially since domestic anime companies had fought for ages to get digital rights [ADV's had theanimenetwork's website in some for or another for years, Sputnik7 used to stream anime legally before I'd even heard of "digisubs", same thing with Toonami's old website, and CPM was selling their material digitally on numerous sites while they were still active in licensing- it's sad to see these innovations being overlooked, and the company who used to pirate stuff winning out in the end] |
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littlegreenwolf
Posts: 4796 Location: Seattle, WA |
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Damn Paploo, you're giving me so many blog sites I find myself bookmarking here. I'm loving each and every link. I love reading all I can about manga in America, and in particular shoujo manga and western female views on it. Anymore awesome links?
Something really does need to be done on the digital front. The ANNcast with the Yen Press head a few weeks back addressed it. Scanlations are seriously effecting the market, but instead of going after the readers and the scanlators he said they need to go after the scanlation hub sites like Mangafox and Onemanga. I agree whole heartedly with this approach (even if I am an avid scanlation reader, but it's just gotten WRONG), but they still need to break into the market. Who knows, maybe after technology like the iPad gets more common we'll see a new era in digital comics. I'm half tempted to say "join me!" in responding to Manga Xanadu's challenge of a girl run manga podcast (found it via a Paploo link).  It seems more and more it's harder to get a woman's perspective on manga, and the lack of shoujo reviews (at least done by women) on this site even is getting sad. Any girls want to give it a try?
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Tamaria
Posts: 1512 Location: De Achterhoek |
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It's the thought behind collecting that makes the difference. It's sucks when companies consciously create rarety and fans start seeing buying a comic as an investment instead of purchasing entertainment. I don't want an industry ruled by collectors who only care about status (haha!) and money. It seriously limits creativity. Publishers will be more interested in releasing special editions of known successes, instead of publishing new work by new artists. And the collectors... they'll stick to whatever they're collecting, unwilling to try anything new. Fortunatelly, collecting manga is still mostly about reading. I hope it stays that way.
This one, maybe? http://www.matt-thorn.com/
I review shoujo manga for a Dutch anime/manga magazine once in a while. Shoujo and whatever weird manga I want to talk about really. I prefer writing over speaking though 
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Paploo
Posts: 1875 |
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I write reviews for http://www.kuri-ousity.com so there's an obvious suggestion, it's a pretty solid group of reviews/bloggers [which is why I blog there]
Really any of the links on Brigid's sidebar are good ones to follow or check in one occasionally. Lots of great reading. I agree that it does have to be two things- make some kind of large, legal offering [VIZ's Sigikki leans towards that, but I think it TP redesigned their site to emphasize their current digital offerings over the social aspects they'd do us all a solid favour.... and Del Rey with it's ties to Kodansha in Japan via RandomHouse is another player], and find some way to take down MangaFox and One Manga. Legally, both are messes to attempt (a large selection of legal offerings involves tons of work for something it's not clear if it'd be profitable yet. And while scanlations are definitely illegal, the fact that MangaFox and OneManga's servers are hosted overseas provides a HUGE problem in taking them on in court, a lot of which also depends on the specifics of the contracts that VIZ and co. have with japanese licensors- in some cases, it might be that japanese companies themselves have to act, as domestic licensors might not have that ability for some titles), but hopefully someone'll find a way to make it all work before things get worse. A lot of it depends on artists in Japan feeling comfortable sigining their works onto these things, so I think it's important for fandom to start coming down harsher on illegal activity, and stop defending MangaFox and co in general. Fans are a part of the Conversation as Jake put it, and we need to do our part to- we all just sit back and expect the industry to fix things, and complain vocally whenever we think they do somethign wrong, which usually gets stuff fixed [from dvd's with errors getting replaced or remastered to flipped titles becoming unflipped... companies even do preemptive strikes to suit us now like Sentia's tradein program for the dubbed Clannad boxset] and has resulted in a lot of experimentaiton with online offerings [just look at ANN's offerings]) . Fans should act more responsibly, and recognize that our actions have consequences. I think scanlators would do the industry a solid favour by directing their audiences away from the aggregators and towards publishers, going back to stopping translations when a series is licensed, or even abandoning scanlation altogether and taking up a better hobby that doesn't ruin the industry. I think that companies do have to provide something to fill the demand of fans for online content, but fans have to do their part too, and MangaFox and OneManga need to be taken down, or at the very least, not be so tolerated/accepted by fandom. PS-- Love the link to Matt Thorn's blog. One fan like Matt Thorn is a worth more to fandom as awhole than a million people reading Naruto online. |
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Zin5ki
 Posts: 6680 Location: London, UK |
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The question I ask in relation to the linked article is as follows:
"Freeloaders" certainly damage the industry, owing to their inability or unwillingness to provide revenue. What would need to be the case for their outright removal from "the Conversation" to benefit the industry? Certainly, fewer fansub/scanlation adherents would lower the demand for unauthorised material to be distributed, but one would presume that the number of conversational participants would reduce without a steady influx of new paying fans. Especially in smaller markets such as my own, the current lack of cheap access to materials imposes a financial barrier to anyone with a casual interest but a limited access to funds. Spending short periods of time engaged in the Conversation without making any personal expenditure can lead to remaining part of it later, if and when disposable income becomes available. I would fathom that fandom currently contains many of such persons, so desiring their absence from the Conversation would require a reliable means for new fans to be introduced and nurtured, without simultaneously enabling interested persons to refrain from making monetary contributions. Because legal digital distribution is currently somewhat limited in many regions, the only solution of which I can conceive involves a change in business model on behalf of Japanese publishers and animators, as regards how they deal with foreign sub-licensors. To consider such a paradigm shift occurring is, I find, optimistic to a grand degree. |
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dtm42
Posts: 14084 Location: currently stalking my waifu |
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It was a good read, with lots of good points. That is, until he started ranting at the fandom. Yeah yeah we get it, scanlations are bad. Getting red in the face about it isn't going to help. How are fans supposed to change our behaviour if we aren't forced to? People are not emotionally or logically rational but they are economically rational. Why should fans pay through the nose for something they can get in decent quality for free? If the industry wants our support (in the form of money, or ad-supported websites), it is they who have to make the first move. I know that we fans have a sense of entitlement, but no more than what he did back then. The only thing that has changed is the rise of digital fansubs. But even more salient, it is fansubs (and those who watch them) who have the advantage, and people involved in them will not give up the advantage just because of some quaint notion of "morals". Realpolitik is a word that is relevant here. Look it up. And then stop annoying us until either the balance of power shifts or new and better distribution methods are open to us.
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