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Omnibus Doing Great in the Market

Results have been satisfying, according to Smith [TOKYOPOP]. “Sales on all of our editions have been great,” she said. “The ultimate editions predictably did very well during the holiday season and our various discounted bind-ups have been selling fantastically before, during, and after the holidays. We did work closely with retail while developing all of these. They, like us, are looking for ways to engage fans in new manga series and to offer existing fans of a series something new and special.”

“Everything came together as we hoped it would for Tekkonkinkreet,” Lu [Viz] enthused. “When we released it as Black & White, years ago, we knew it had an audience — which would not be your typical manga reader — but it never reached its potential. Whatever it was — the format, the price point, the anime, the critical reaction (which was tremendous), all of it together — we hit it. The numbers we are seeing changes the game as far doing this kind of ‘arthouse’ manga goes.”

That approach – introducing series in omnibus format – is one that Del Rey is ready to embrace.

“We’re using the omnibus model with some new series,” he said. “Like I said, there’s a lot of competition for shelf space these days. With two new series, Me and the Devil Blues (by Akira Hiramoto) and Mao-Chan (by Ken Akamatsu and RAN), we’re going to publish in a two-volumes-in-one omnibus format right from the beginning. We want to try this with a few different types of series (and I don’t think you could get two manga series more different from each other) and see how the audience responds. The first volume of Mao-Chan will be out in August, and it will be about 400 pages for $14.95. Me and the Devil Blues also will be in stores in July, and it will have a larger trim, 544 pages, and a price of $19.95.”

Dallas Middaugh, Associate Publisher of Del Rey Manga, neatly summarized the benefits of the multi-volume collection for publishers: “All manga publishers share the problem of shelf-space constraints, and publishing omnibus editions is a great way to address that problem,” he said. “It’s a lot easier to sell one backlist title to Barnes & Noble than it is to sell three. It’s also very useful for keeping interest in a series that has no new volumes coming out. A new volume usually bumps sales on previous volumes, even if it’s not a huge amount. Once a series is done, it’s way too easy for retailers to not restock it on the shelves when there are so many new manga coming in.”