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.