My Writers Block Cure

I was a guest at Mizucon this past weekend in Miami Florida. I had a great time at a very well-run and well-attended show. This was the first show where I held a writing panel. This was a request of my hosts, and I warily obliged them. I have always tried to avoid panels like these because I rather do goofy fun panels than meat and potatoes sort of things.

It went extremely well, to the point that I am adding this 'Writing 101' panel to my programming arsenal for future shows. The one hour panel went three since there were no other events in the room. I felt strongly that the attendees really took something of use away with them.

One thing I shared at the panel was my advice on Writers Block. With all the writing articles, books, etc., I doubt I'm the first one whose thought of this method. Still, it really helps me, and it set off some oos and ahhs at the panel.

Sometimes I get in the 'zone' with a project, where words are flowing and pages are filling one after the other. I keep going until the energy is spent, and I get to a stopping point. Occasionally I find myself avoiding getting back to the project. I don't open the file. When I think of working on it I go play an online game instead. I get to where I can't force myself to work on it no matter how hard I try. Even if I have notes on where the story should go from there, I'm blocked. I don't want to write it anymore.

I've come to realize that when I reach points like this something went wrong with the last part I'd written. The characters were doing something wrong for their personalities, or the story was focusing on something that wasn't pertinent, or it just got corny or convoluted or inconsistent. That's why I'm blocked. I know in the back of my head something is wrong. I don't want to keep building on that fault line.

The way for me to get unblocked is to go back to the point last point where the words were flowing and delete the rest. I think about why that part is killing my momentum and get it back in the right direction. I consider the motivations of my characters, what their after, where they're supposed to lead the story, and make the adjustment.

I plan to post more about writing in the future. For now, I'm off to Anime LA. See you there!

Diamonds

Four years ago I made a good decision. I decided to have our graphic novels distributed by Diamond Book Distributors. This is the other side of Diamond Comic Distributors, the company that supplies every comic shop in North America with their comics, and also puts out the monthly Previews catalog. DBD was the division set up to sell to book stores.

In 2005 Yaoi Press had published several books, and was established enough to work with a major distributor. I thought of Diamond because it was a company I'd known most of my life. I'd ordered from the Previews catalog for years as a comic collector. Graphic novels were just thicker comic books. I decided they should be the one to sell them.

This was an instinctive decision, not based on much research. I'd looked at a few other distributors, but not really in depth.

Diamond Distributors has a love/hate relationship with the industry. I'm aware of it's haters. You'll excuse me if I don't go into why some businesses take issue with them. They're my distributor. I'm not going to spread bad press about them.

However, there was a time when I was strongly pressured to find a new distributor. My friend at Hirameki was very unhappy with them. He told me horror stories about how their account was handled. He warned the same would happen to me. Then a person from Dramaqueen told me how they refused to ever do business with Diamond due to bad experiences of their own. Last was Bebeautiful. They also were not happy with Diamond.

Then I spoke to a friend from DMP. She had also heard what the other companies said about Diamond. We agreed we were both going to stay with them. We hadn't had problems. We didn't know if the grass would be greener elsewhere. We were staying put.

I think a great deal of the success both Yaoi Press and DMP has seen is because of this decision. No distributor is perfect, but there still hasn't been one whose shown they can do better for us.

State of the Yaoi A-Press

Year End Post - 2008

Like most publishers, we've been tightening our belts in anticipation of a lean period ahead. We're grateful that book store sales have continued to increase despite the USA officially being in a recession for over a year. This is largely due to sales from Borders.

Despite strong book store sales we know better than to assume the trend will continue in 2009. We'll be putting out fewer titles with higher page counts going forward. For instance, rather than publishing a series like Dark Prince in three volumes, we will release entire series in single 450+ page one-shots. The length and height of the books will increase also. From 5" wide, 7.5" long, and .5" thick, to 6" wide, 8" long, and 1.5" thick. This will result in less printing costs, more value for consumers, and fewer titles for stores to try to find shelf space for. We'll also be able to more keenly focus our promotions with fewer properties.

We've seen a marked decrease in anime convention sales at regional shows, but sales increased at the largest shows. Smaller shows and college-based conventions were the worst hit by the bad economy. We saw many attendees not able to afford anything other than the admission. Shows are being forced to crack down on people without hotels trying to sleep in the AV or game rooms. In Georgia, an area still reeling as late as 2007 from the effects of Hurricane Katrina, shows had far too high a number of attendees without any money for food. This is not a new issue at conventions, but we'd never seen it so extreme as in this area. The shows we participated in Florida had cheap fast food all around within walking distance. We didn't see as many attendees weak from hunger, but we did see a 77% decrease in sales at one Orlando convention from 2007 to 2008.

The regional convention hit means that we saw reduced sales at 14 of the 24 conventions we exhibited at. We countered this by lowering expenses. Many regional shows had local staff who didn't need to travel or stay at a hotel. It's also important to note that even with 14 conventions seeing reduced sales, overall convention sales increased by 2% from 2007. The big shows really did well for us, particularly those that we'd been at several years. Fans hunted for our booth, attended our panel(s), and gave us tremendous support.

We should be at as many or more shows in 2009 as 2008. Even small regional shows are worthwhile for us when there's a local staff person. We'll be revisiting some larger shows we missed in 2008, and will have first-time exhibits at several of the smaller shows.

Comic shop sales continue to be weak for us. We saw a small decrease in the already minuscule sales from 2007 to 2008. We had planned a release for Free Comic Book Day, but had this knocked out of the water due to new content policies. One bright spot was the number of holiday bundles we saw shops pick up. Our new format with higher page count might help sales in this area going forward.

There's been steady growth in digital sales with our titles on Netcomics.com. This is the only area where we see our young adult titles continue to flourish. The audience for the site is much younger than the audience purchasing our hard-copy books. We're investigating offering downloads of Yaoi Press titles in foreign languages. This venture is still in it's infancy.

Web site sales through everythingyaoi.com continue to generate significant income for us. Sales spike certain months, and level off in others. Everythingyaoi.com is a great market research tool, telling us which types of books fans want the most, and what time of year to release them.

Just as with most everything else we have to brace for an online sales decline. Our east coast shipping nexus was closed in November. The store still runs smoothly. There have been several navigation updates and great deal of pruning.

Speaking as the Publisher of Yaoi Press, I want to be sure that nothing in my annual wrap-up is misconstrued. I haven't understated or overstated any of our circumstances here. Yaoi Press is in a great position for the start of 2009. I see a challenging next two years, but nothing that we aren't poised to handle. I know that all the yaoi companies that closed in 2008 have fans on edge. You can't help but get shaken when you see this. It makes me even more grateful that we're doing so well. I know how fragile publishing success is. We don't take it for granted.

Free Yaoi Bag Etc.

Free Yaoi Tote bag with order right now at www.everythingyaoi.com. It's a Dark Prince image. Last time I did this they flew, so I had another 100 made for the holidays.

ANIMA review: http://www.activeanime.com/html/content/view/4264/36/

Winter Demon 4 review: www.kuri-ousity.com/?p=798

Winter Demon 3 review:
http://www.activeanime.com/html/content/view/4238/36/


I'll be a guest at Mizucon mizucon.com December 27 to 29 in Miami Florida. Then come by our booth at Anime LA January 2-4. Cactus Con in Phoenix will host us Jan. 23-25. Finally we'll be at Ohayocon, but I'm not going to be there personally. Staffers Anna and Ray will be running the Yaoi Press booth.

Yes. It's true. I try to only go to warm places in winter. Miami, LA, Phoenix - Me. Cold, snowy Columbus - staff.

Broccoli Books

My heart sank when I read the news on ICV2 today. Broccoli Books is shutting down its USA operations. If the publisher of Juvenile Orion can't make it, what are the chances for the rest of us? How disheartening.

Yaoi For Christmas

We've gone to our holiday version of the everythingyaoi.com site. Be sure to see our balls.

Also there's an offer for a free copy of The Aluria Chronicles with purchase from now until the 22nd. People on the newsletter are the first to know about any special sales or offers at everythingyaoi.com. You can sign up for it here: Yaoi Newsletter.

Follow-up Part 1

I think that somehow switching to Blogger or integrating our blog onto our site has made readers no longer able to do 'trackbacks'. I regret that. I didn't know there was so much discussion about the last post until I did a search. There is a lot of really good feedback to my thoughts. It's worth covering here.

To the depressed creators: cheer up. When a door closes you open a window. And that's not saying that the OEL door is even closed. Yaoi Press is not the only company giving new OEL creators a break. However, to say the opportunities are the same as they were in 2006 is deluding ourselves. Creators who limit themselves to this narrow market are trying to find excuses to fail which don't include 'lack of talent.'

If you have talent that talent is not restricted by format. I can't comprehend any writer who says the only thing they're able to write is OEL manga-style scripts for graphic novels. And artists? If you have exceptional talent in creating sequential art in the manga style then you have work. There are companies looking for you to illustrate those licensed properties I spoke of last time.

The last category here are the writer/creators or teams with their heart set on that project that doesn't fit elsewhere except OEL. You hear companies don't want to take a risk. That your amazing, but unproven, idea won't even be given a chance.

Well, PROVE YOURSELF. Put this incredible work online and cause such a hysteria that large companies are forced to take notice. It worked for MegaTokyo. If your stuff is truly one of the undiscovered gems that would blow up if a publisher just gave it a chance then you are committing a sin not to fight for it.

My next point is in response to Mr. Raiko's comment at The Beat about the broader sales potential with original works vs. license works. He said:

"Setting aside the more pie-in-the-sky scenario of a publisher benefitting by selling film rights (either in the publisher-as-IP-farm business model or just by being able to publish tie-in editions) there are also less controversial scenarios such as being able to sell other translations. An publisher that retains translation rights to original material might be able to generate worthwhile income by selling translations; a publisher of licensed material is less likely to access such revenue streams, since those rights will likely be retained by the licensor."

A very good point. Part of the scratching, fighting, and bleeding I mentioned in the prior post includes doing everything we can to sell foreign language rights to our books. It's gratifying that we are more successful than most other OEL publishers in getting these works licensed. Unfortunately, our gratification comes more from being to able to say, "Our books are so good that they've been published in Polish, French, Spanish, Italian, and German," rather than the income we see from these licenses.

The stigma OEL more or less conquered in the US is still strong in many countries that publish manga. Even in Germany, where they have a thriving OGM (Original German Manga, a term I might have just made up) market, they still expect to pay less for OEL and Korean manwha than Japanese licenses.

Still, Germany is the top licensor to sell OEL to. You can expect to make 7-10% of your costs back by licensing there. There is no other country which currently licenses OEL or manwha, that rivals what Germany pays. You often find yourself giving licenses to countries with smaller markets for free as an investment in future opportunities.

In short, foreign language licensing, especially for OEL, is a very small piece of the financial pie.

Yaoi Press

I recently had a discussion with a business associate about the state of original English language manga (OEL). This person is very much in the know about this segment of the business. He and I were on the same wavelength. We both had the same views:

1. OEL manga must sell much better than licensed titles to be successful, because it's at least 3 times more expensive to publish. It is absolutely cheaper to license manga than to produce OEL works. The idea that companies were making their own graphic novels in order to save money is a myth. It's cheaper and easier to license titles than to create them from scratch.

2. Unfortunately, opportunities for OEL manga creators are almost zero in the USA right now. A sad fact is that OEL manga that sold well, even as well as licensed titles, were still publishing money-pits. There is no incentive for publishers to continue taking chances on relatively expensive new talent.

3. Large publishers which still appear to have calls for OEL submissions are actually looking for licensed properties. Not licenses from Japan. They want to do manga adaptions of Dean Koontz novels, or manga based on CSI. This is why the encourage artists to submit far more than writers. They don't want writers submitting their unproven original ideas. They want artists to draw the 'Star Wars' manga, etc.

These three pessimistic points are the reality right now. All of us on the industry side of OEL know it.

Getting back to that conversation, my colleague asked me how it was that Yaoi Press was able to continue publishing OEL. The assumption of some fans is that it's because it's yaoi. That our niche somehow gives Yaoi Press a leg-up in the business.

The market is flooded with yaoi right now. People don't have to buy Yaoi Press books in order to have their needs satisfied. Yaoi is no golden ticket. Publishers and imprints have folded in the past.

Yaoi Press has survived these last four years, and thrived, because my staff and I fight, scratch, and bleed for every sale we make.

Every time you see a Yaoi Press book at Borders, Rightstuf International, Comic Shops, Netcomics, or at a vendor's booth at a convention you are seeing something that we worked desperately to achieve. It's an ongoing battle. We have to work every single day to keep our customers buying. Keep the wholesalers stocking. Keep the store buyers biting. Yaoi Press is a 72 hour per week job for me, as well as full-time jobs for two office staff. Most of my time isn't spent writing yaoi. It's fighting for sales.

If we only had revenue through sales made from book stores, comic shops, our distributors, our web site, we would still have an insurmountable deficit. Even all that scratching, fighting, and bleeding isn't enough to stay afloat. Honestly. Publishing is about as tough a business as you'll ever find. Yes, I know it's tough on the creator side of the equation. Tougher than it's ever been. The same can be said on publisher's side of things.

The reason Yaoi Press can continue to take chances on new/unproven OEL creators is because of all the anime conventions we do. This is the answer to my colleague's question. Yaoi Press is thriving because we bring the books directly to our fans. Every month. In every region of North America.

I'm not saying that you can be successful in manga publishing by touring the country selling at anime conventions. You can lose a lot of money in travel and booth expenses this way. Yaoi Press did lose a lot of money on conventions in 2005, when we only had 8 books published and didn't sell merchandise from other publishers.

We became successful by becoming the 'yaoi' vendor. We sell the merchandise of all the publishers, and we feature Yaoi Press books. We sell our titles at a discount. We distribute free catalogs with sample pages of our books. We give an industry panel for Yaoi Press.

We make enough at the large/local shows to have profitable, successful shows. Some shows, like Yaoi Con and Otakon, pay our printing bills.

Most shows are too small for us to break even at. The smaller shows on our schedule are either local to me or one of our staff (hence we are saved travel/hotel costs and need to make very little to be successful) or the shows are bringing me in as a guest.

I'm very grateful that Winter Demon and Dark Prince have given me enough notoriety to be a guest at anime shows. Just as with our merchandise, I've become a general 'yaoi' guest. Shows have been bringing me in because I make all the yaoi fans happy with Yaoi Jeopardy, Yaoi Hentai Show, Yaoi 'Let's Make a Deal' (ala Monty Hall), along with a well-stocked yaoi booth.

I digress, but the point to this all is that manga publishing is a business just like everything else. There is no magic wand that helps people discover your web site, or gets your books into Borders. Every sale is you or your staff scratching, fighting, and bleeding. Of course publishers want the sure bets. There's more at stake than ever before to be successful right now.

SitaCon Schedule

Come meet me (Yamila) at SitaCon in Utica NY this weekend, October 10-12. In addition to bringing lots of yaoi merchandise and freebies for the dealers room I will be running these events:

Yaoi Press Industry Panel - My usual, but I make sure it's lively and entertaining.

Yaoi Jeopardy - Game show fun!

Yaoi Hentai Show - Always a big hit. One of my favorite events to do.

I will also be part of the Manga Industry Round Table with fellow guests Steve Bennett and Mari Morimoto.

New Stuff

Winter Demon 4 and ANIMA will ship from Everythingyaoi.com at the same time, around October 23rd. This is the Yaoi Press store, so of course we try to ship our new titles there as early as possible. It's a good time to preorder these books since we're giving away a free Yaoi Love Tote Bag for orders that reach 40 reward points (4 to 8 books depending on what you order). The free bag offer expires October 15th, or when we run out of the 50 bags we created for this promotion. As of right now there are 47 bags left. They're going fast.

Yaoi Con

Thanks to M. A. Sambre, the Yaoi Con staff, and all the fans for another wonderful Yaoi Con this year. This show is always worth the intense preparation and travel. We had a great time!

I apologize for having to cancel the Yaoi Press industry panel on Sunday morning. One of our booth helpers fainted, and I went with her on the ambulance to the medical center. (She's doing ok now). I know I disappointed several attendees by not being able to give our usual presentation. This panel is one of the most important we give every year. I would not have missed it if at all possible.

Other than this scary emergency the show was as wonderful as I've come to expect.

Plenty of Yaoi at SitaCon

If you're unable to get to Yaoi Con this weekend, don't fret. Check out SitaCon in Utica New York, October 10-12. I will be their guest/mobile yaoi unit bringing Yaoi merchandise, programming, and freebies.

Please help spread the word about this convention.



Forgot to mention it - Rightstuf.com has a sale on all Yaoi Press books until midnight Sep. 24th. Use coupon code yaoisavings at checkout for discount.

TOKYOPOP - Still on the Ball

Three days ago I made a Twitter post about Tokyopop's new format for showing manga contributions on their site. If you are reading this post on the Yaoi Press blog site (http://www.yaoipress.com/blog.html) you should see three of our most recent Twitters on the right. Click the 'Yaoi Press Twitter' link on the bottom of those posts to see all our Twitters. For those of you reading this from a feed you can access our Twitter account here: http://twitter.com/yaoipress

Here's what I wrote:

"Tokyopop made manga contributions unreadable. Should not have invited us to put up previews if this is where they were headed. Very unhappy."

First of all, I recant this. I was wrong. I'm not as savvy with online video as I should be, and did not realize there was a way to make the small preview videos go to full-screen mode. (See our Tokyopop manga portfolio here: http://www.tokyopop.com/yaoipress/manga)

I realized this yesterday, hence the prior blog post where I've embedded previews of our upcoming releases. I also embedded the video on our graphic novels page and on our listings in our online store. I also emailed all of our creators letting them know they could embed dynamic previews of their Yaoi Press manga on their different sites. Once I figured out that it was essentially a Youtube type thing I embraced it. Tokyopop's new platform is a way to spread previews of Yaoi Press manga throughout the Internet. I love what they've done.

Yes, they're still on the ball. Not only with this helpful upgrade, but they are still watching Yaoi Press and communicating with us. I really thought that time was over. I knew they had restructured and downsized, and I assumed they didn't have time to continue to cultivate our relationship with them. Again, I was wrong.

My knee-jerk Twitter post got to Jeremy Ross, the executive who'd invited us to post previews on Tokyopop in the first place. He called me this morning. He didn't know I'd figured out things since my 'tweet.' I was glad I could show him how I'd embraced the new content on our site and in our store. I was also glad to know that they were still committed to the goals we'd discussed in our first meeting.

Tokyopop paved the way for Yaoi Press to start our OEL line of manga. It makes sense that we cooperate with them to continue to thrive. They remain a strong pillar in the world of manga publishing. They've been good to the Yaoi Press creators who now work with them. They've been helpful to Yaoi Press. They have not abandoned us.

I encouraged our creators to take advantage of the dynamic content Tokyopop has now put at our disposal. The same goes for everyone who'd like to show our manga previews. Below is the preview for ANIMA, our new title coming out in November:



You can embed this preview on your site or blog by clicking the 'Embed' button on the bottom right, and copying and pasting the code where needed.

Some users have been unable to get the preview to go to full-screen mode. As Jeremy explained to me it's because of a problem with your Adobe Flash upgrades. Adobe recommends a full uninstall of Flash, and to install the newest version from scratch.

Winter Demon 4 & Dark Prince 3 Previews

We were invited to put up previews of all our titles on Tokyopop.com. They changed the format recently making the manga into videos you can embed. Here are our two upcoming titles: Dark Prince 3, coming this month, and Winter Demon 4 coming in October. They're available for purchase at our store: http://www.everythingyaoi.com. You can go to full screen by clicking the icon on the bottom of the player.

OtakuMex + Yaoi at Cons

I've just returned from OtakuMex, and I'm still beaming at the joy this show was. It's put on by a dedicated group of people who also do shows in Colorado, Texas, and Nevada (and elsewhere?). They're true pros, able to give everyone a great time without the typical con disasters.

I know was able to cater to huge amount of yaoi fans in attendance. In the dealers room I was the 'yaoi booth' bringing all the yaoi anime and manga people can't ever find in stores, I ran both a fun industry and hentai panel, I donated lots of merchandise for prizes and staff swag, I made sure our freebies were in the hands of many fans, I was on stage at events like the 'Match Game,' the Costume Contest, and opening/closing ceremonies to make jokes with the other guests.

At the end of the show I had an impromptu 'Let's Make a Deal' session in the hallway to give out the dozen or so remaining books I had that would have put my suitcase overweight. 'First one to show me something with a crown wins this book.' 'First one to show me a quarter from Colorado wins this book.' It was great fun.

I was treated extremely well by the con director Andi, guest liaison Bear, dealers room director Saffron, as well as by the staff I had to rely on for different things along the way. Like Justin for projector set-up and...I'm ashamed that I'm blanking on the name of the sweet tall lady who MCed some of the events I was part of (especially since I kissed her twice). I'm similarly blanking on the names of several other staff who kept things going so smoothly. This was run as well as many much larger shows (even better than a few of them, actually).

It was a treat to make friends with the other guests, Steve Bennet, Kyle Herbert, Jan Scott-Frasier, and Uncle Yaoi--er, I mean Uncle Yo. I feel I made some great new friends at this show. The attendees were some of the nicest crowd I'd ever seen. All excited, happy, and friendly. I really felt welcome.

OtakuMex was a more intimate setting than an Anime Expo or ACEN. The organizers knew they'd have droves of yaoi fans there. Unlike many shows, that have the one yaoi panel and a smattering of merchandise in the dealers room, OtakuMex made sure that this large segment of fans would not be disappointed. All those people who said to me, 'I just came for the yaoi,' got it. They got their yaoi stuff and yaoi programming.

It's now a fact that most female and gay anime fans are also fans of yaoi. That's a segment that's easily in the top five anime fan segments overall. What I mean is, if you run a survey of what attendees are into (games, general anime, cosplaying, etc.) yaoi would make the top five interests of that list. Yet many shows are founded by people who are not interested in yaoi, and hence do not bother with satisfying those fans. They have blinders on to block out everything except their own interests. They may especially avoid yaoi because it makes them uncomfortable personally. So many fans pay the price for this thinking. Fans who support the show, who travel far to attend, and who scrounge for funds to even be there. All that effort just to be overlooked!

There are show organizers who hide their prejudice against yaoi content by claiming their bias against it is because it's porn. That this is a 'family show.'

I've been to close to 100 conventions now. There are hardly any little kids going to these things. The ones I do see are the offspring of their Otaku parents being dragged along. The vast majority are older teens and adults. They want mature content.

The other side of this is that, yes, there are yaoi dealers who just sell the smut, but that's not us. Most of Yaoi Press' titles are for 16+. It's not porn. We've just done Anime Vegas which did not allow any pornography. We left our adult-only items at home. Our merchandise was scrutinized and allowed.

I know that if I mention this to the convention organizers who won't allow us in it won't matter. It was never about the 'porn,' it was about the fact that it's with gay men. Not their thing. One show in Texas lets all the yuri in you can imagine, but restricts yaoi because, 'Isn't yaoi more pornographic than yuri?' No. It's not. That's why yaoi sells at Borders and yuri doesn't.

I'm mentioning all this because I hope yaoi fans will appreciate shows like OtakuMex that have the intelligence and guts to recognize them. No matter how icky some guys think it is, these attendees matter.

In the end, most everyone was laughing at my jokes and innuendo. The guys who didn't like it were teasing me, and the yaoi-crazed girls, unmercilessly and we loved it. We all hand fun. Any discomfort was erased by the happy, easy-going vibe of a great anime convention.

Books, Buttons, and Bags

We recently debuted 35 yaoi buttons and two yaoi messenger bags at anime conventions. The bags have sold out, and a new design created by M. A. Sambre is coming in time for Yaoi Con. The buttons have sold by the hundreds. We're expanding the line as fast as we can think of new phrases. The one inch buttons have phrases like 'Ceiling Cat is Watching you Read Yaoi,' and 'I Sold Your Dollfie to Buy Yaoi.' They sell for $1 each. The bags sell for $25 each.

We are continuing sales of the parasols. They've been extremely successful. I want to add a footnote about them. We searched for months to find a company that would make custom parasols for us at a reasonable price. The overseas supplier we found has closed down. The messenger bags are our replacement product for the parasols. After this last run of parasols is gone they will be gone for good.

All non-book merchandise will only be available at conventions. With the high cost of shipping, we want to be sure all online orders qualify for media mail.

Speaking of conventions, I (Yamila) will be a guest at Otaku Mex this weekend. http://otakumex.com/. You may notice that I've been pushing this convention quite a bit. It's a first year show in an area devoid of Anime shows. Please come out and support it.

After OtakuMex Yaoi Press will exhibit at Anime Weekend Atlanta and then it's on to our big event of the year YAOI CON! We have brought in Dark Prince artist M.A. Sambre from France to be our special guest at this show. I will also be an industry guest there.

If you're in the Northeast please support SitaCon in Utica New York, October 10-12. This is another show where I'm honored to be a guest. My final guest appearance of the year is at Mizucon in Miami this December. I bring lots of yaoi goodies and put on as many fun yaoi events as I can at the shows kind enough to host me. I hope you'll support the one nearest you.

Yaoi Computer Games Nil

A year and a half ago a Japanese shounen-ai game was offered to Yaoi Press for licensing in the US. This was a beautifully illustrated game with kemonomimi characters (not Lamento). Despite the quality of the art, we never got to the synopsis translation phase. We didn't consider the license because I knew how horribly online piracy had hurt the sales of other computer game importers. Online piracy is the *only* reason we did not look further into the game.

Two companies have imported games with BL themes into the US. One closed down. The other hasn't released a new BL game since 2006.

As of today I've removed the games category on our store site. Sales no longer justify the minimum orders we would have to place with the manufacturer to keep the games in stock. I know the remaining company I buy from is still selling copies of it's first print run of the game. This is typically only 5,000 copies.

At every convention I attend I hear one or two customers point to one of the games and say, 'Oh, I downloaded this one.' I don't have an emotional response to this sort of thing anymore since it's so common. There was a time in the 1990s when I didn't know better either (bought a fansub on VHS). However, I did get angry when one of my own employees gave out the link to a piracy site.

I really thought that BL games were going to be the next big thing. I wanted to see the library of imports grow as big as the BL DVD library has. Both categories have stunted growth due piracy. For the fledgling game category I wonder if it hasn't been killed outright. How can I blame other publishers for turning down imports when I did the same? I could be offered Lamento, a BL game hot enough in the USA to have the figures rapidly sell out at every convention, but I would have to say no. I know I wouldn't make back the licensing, translation, distribution, and production costs when I may lose around 50% of sales to thieves.

One go-around to the piracy problem would be a BL Massively Multiplayer Online Game. That's something I'd love to see. Perhaps it's something we could investigate.

OtakuMex

Please support this brand new anime show in Albuquerque New Mexico. I'm very honored to be one of their guests. I will be providing lots of Yaoi programming and freebies.



Help Spread the Word:

In Love with Otakon

I love doing this show. The fans here are so nice. The panel on Friday was a riot. Three hundred people showed up, so I pulled out all the stops. I hope some of the zanier moments makes it to Youtube.

Otakon should make its motto: 'The Yaoi Con of the East.'

New Product

Yaoi Press will be unveiling a new product that will appeal to Yuri fans at Otakon. We are at booths 217-219.

I would like to be less cryptic about this, however I need to have a photo of the item in order to do a proper press release. The items are being delivered directly to our Virginia staff right before the show. I won't have the chance to get a photo until after Otakon.

Google Book Search Significant Sales Driver

On Rocket Bomber there's a weekly list ranking sales for the top 500 manga. I trust this ranking to be accurate despite knowing nothing about the author because: A. verifying the accuracy is impossible due to my limited time, and B. assuming that it's accurate grants me a free database of useful information.

Yaoi Press usually has at least one title in the top 500. This week Yaoi Hentai Vol. 2 is #380, down from 349 last week.

I didn't understand why a title published over two years ago had consistently higher online sales than all our newer titles. It's true that the words 'Yaoi' and more importantly 'Hentai' are in the title, thereby making the series pop up on numerous searches, however, why doesn't this drive sales of Yaoi Hentai 3, or 1, or 4?

I've traced the answer to Google Book Search. If you search for the word 'hentai,' Yaoi Hentai 2 is the first title that comes up. I had an old assistant of mine get Yaoi Press in this program around the end of 2006. All our titles printed prior to November 2006 are in the program. I looked at this week's report from Google:

Top Books (2008-07-13 ~ 2008-07-19)

Top 5 Books by Book View Book Visits

Winter Demon Volume 1 24
Yaoi Hentai Volume 2 225
Stallion 17
Saihoshi The Guardian 11
Desire of the Gods 7

When you view a Yaoi Press title through their system you're given three links to buy the book. The first is Yaoi Press, then Amazon.com, then Barnes&Noble.com.

I've had the rest of our titles sent to Google for inclusion. It's nice to see a program that was free to participate in driving online sales. It's also nice to see that having the word 'hentai' in a book title is finally paying the search engine dividends I had hoped for when the series was first named. Perhaps instead of 'Happy Yaoi Yum Yum,' our new hentai series should have been called 'iPhone TMZ Viagra.'

Youka Nitta - Too Severely Punished

Youka Nitta traced photographs from magazines to incorporate in her manga works. This crime caused a disaster for her publisher. They presumably had to pull her works from stores, said works being phone-book manga filled with the manga of other creators, and scramble to replace her slot in future anthologies. They were left open to severe legal action from the plagiarized magazines.

There is no doubt that Nitta-sensei deserves some of the heartache she's now going through. This was a costly crime that warrants more than a slap on the wrist.

By no stretch of the imagination does Nitta-sensei deserve to have her career ended over this incident.

First, from a strict monetary point of view, a talent like her has made more money for her publisher than this incident has or will cost them, and her future works would continue to make money for them regardless of this incident.

Second, no matter how much American and Japanese fans love a juicy controversy, no matter their passion in witnessing her shame, they will continue to buy her works. Nitta-sensei is one of the best BL mangaka working today. Her art work is phenomenal. Her storytelling breaks the mold of so many cookie-cutter BL manga being translated from Japan. She didn't say she was bigger than Jesus. No fan is making a bonfire out of her books.

I don't know if it was her publisher who pushed her into ending her career, or if she performed career seppuku out of her own sense of guilt, but it shouldn't matter. Fans should endeavor to make her feel just as guilty for abandoning them. The response I'm seeing more than any other is disappointment over the fact we won't see anymore Embracing Love. The series was available for relicense as of a certain date, and may have already been licensed by the same company who licensed Finder Series. We were going to have our crown jewels of yaoi readily available once again. We've been robbed not due to Nitta-sensei's crime, but her drastic decision following it.

An apology was warranted. A temporary withdrawal from the business was warranted. Permanently ending the career of such a shining star is far too great a punishment. From this publisher's perspective Nitta-sensei should have withdrawn for a certain period of time, then returned with a new project preambled with her continued apology over her past crime, and a desire to make a fresh start. Her current publisher should give her a second chance, if they haven't already offered her one. She can make financial amends to them by virtue of her talent.

I may be naive with regards to Japanese culture. What I'm suggesting may be impossible. I hope this isn't the case. However, I know such a talented woman with such a large following can always find a publisher for her work.

Bits and Blogs

Here are some recent reviews of Yaoi Press Books:

http://www.kuri-ousity.com/?p=415

http://www.kuri-ousity.com/?p=424



http://www.comicbitsonline.com/

http://www.kuri-ousity.com/?p=410

Girls Want Flowers, Boys Want Swords

There are several bloggers lamenting the lack of sophistication of manga buyers in the USA. We're not seeing sales outside of the Shounen and Shoujo genres, which are two areas readers eventually grow out of.

Of course, with BL I find readers from jr. high to retirement homes. The eroticism satisfies a drive that doesn't dissipate all that much with age. That said, how many 30 year olds continue reading works like Card Captor Sakura? The thought is that older readers leave manga for other forms of entertainment, never discovering the thought-provoking works that would satisfy their intellectual growth.

I see something happening here that I've noticed before. Younger people are being attracted to the gender-specific manga and anime 'candy' because this candy is no longer available in other mediums.

It stems from the change in North American children cartoons. They've stopped targeting a specific gender for their audience. Shows like 'Strawberry Shortcake' got replaced by 'Fairly Odd Parents,' 'GI Joe' got bumped for 'Courage the Cowardly Dog.'

I'm convinced this shift has the goal of preventing children from being pigeon-holed into societal roles that might stifle them. Boys shouldn't have to be macho, and girls shouldn't have to be dainty, etc. This is well-meaning enough, but the fact is: Girls want flowers, and boys want swords.

The cartoons from Canada and the US weren't meeting their needs. Japanese anime was. The cartoons for girls are flowery and poofy enough to make any modern child psychologist block them from the TV set. The boy shows are a bit less macho than the ones from my generation, but still has the hero(s) kicking ass and taking names.

Anime that separated the genders is indeed the gateway to manga. I believe the North American manga boom correlates with the 'gender-neutral' cartoon trend. Although I did read the Ranma floppies from Viz when I was a girl, it wasn't because my girly needs weren't already being met by cartoons like Jem and Rainbow Brite. (Ranma and Donna Barr's 'Desert Peach' comic was the closest thing to yaoi I could find in the 1980s, actually).

This doesn't change the pessimistic outlook for future manga. I just feel it should be noted. If it weren't for the shounen and shoujo candy consumers there wouldn't be any manga-boom at all. Also, so long as our cartoon makers keep with their current agenda there will always be a need for gender-specific fiction. The decline in sales will be seen in the stagnating population growth. Fewer new kids to replace the ones that grow out of the stuff, but still--an audience.

Winter Demon Cosplayers at AX

Barbara and Claudia of Le Peruggine have been in the USA for a week and a half doing a convention tour with me. They're the artists of Yaoi Press' Winter Demon series and the creators of Cain. I told them Winter Demon had a large following here. They met fans one after the other throughout Yaoi Jamboree and Anime Expo (including some from Germany). Then, at Anime Expo, these two walked up:





That was so fantastic for us.