Returns Clarification

This is a quick follow-up to explain what I meant about companies returning books that they reorder again at around the same time of the return.

In case there are people not familiar with the book sales cycle it goes like this: I publish books. My printer sends them to my distributor. The distributor sends them wholesalers (and to some stores that have accounts directly with them). The wholesalers sell the books to the book stores and libraries.

Sometimes a wholesaler who bought 3000 books and sold 2500 will pay for the 2500 and return the remaining 500, even if they need those 500 for upcoming sales that month. They reorder the books they're returning, sometimes right when they're returning them.

By returning and reordering they get another 30 days to pay. They can wait until they get the money in hand for those last 500 books before having to pay the distributor. By returning and reordering they don't have to put money up front for books that haven't been paid for by their customers (the book stores and libraries) yet.

The distributor and the publisher are the ones who suffer extra expense and book wear due to this tactic. The distributor has to handle a new inbound and then outbound shipment, then the paperwork for a credit and then a new order. The publisher gets unnecessary wear on their books and a returns fee.

I think the book business term for this is churning, but I'm not 100% on that.

These aren't book stores doing this. It's not every wholesaler either. Still, large wholesalers have the best return agreements with the distributors. The biggest wholesalers don't pay for the product to ship to them. They ship a high volume of returns, so the cost per book that they return is negligible. In some cases the distributors pick up the returns at no cost to them with the same truck that delivers the books.

My information is based on anecdotal evidence. I am aware of one publisher suing right now over a practice similar to what I describe, but from my side of the business it would be hard to prove. I just see my sales reports and go Hmmm sometimes.

A Word About Returns

Our friends at Aurora were badly bitten by returns lately (according to Deb Aoki). I want to mention that Yaoi Press gets similarly stung on a regular basis.

Returns are a racket in the publishing business. A few companies will return books just to get a credit on a bill with the distributor. They reorder the same books they're returning, often at the same time they return them. This isn't a wash, because publishers like Yaoi Press and Aurora get charged a fee for every US return.

There was also an instance where a book wholesaler went bankrupt and had their inventory purchased by another wholesaler for $.25/pound. The purchaser returned all those books because if you buy something for $.13 (two soft covers = 1 pound) and can 'return' it for the wholesale price that's easy money. Never mind that they were prohibited from returning books that they did not buy directly from the distributor. How could the distributor prove that these books were bought from the defunct wholesaler and weren't old books they'd bought in the past and just magically decided to return enmasse at that time?

I mentioned at Twitter that due to the cycle of returns Yaoi Press rarely sees payment from our distributor except with a new title is first released. Most weeks we have a negative balance with our distributor that carries over week after week. After a new title is released we get one large payment a month and a half later. This is usually sufficient to pay the printing/shipping bill for the book that was released. For all our other bills we rely on sales from everythingyaoi.com, conventions, and a few other things like Netcomics. This is how we stay alive. Publishing is a tough business.

You can help Aurora by contacting Elisa Tung at e-tung9(at)aurora-publishing.com to purchase their titles direct from them. Books published prior to January 2009 are $4 a book and anything more recent than that for $8.

Anime Wasabi

Yaoi Press' first time in Colorado is coming soon. Yamila Abraham (me) will happily be a guest at this show to provide all your yaoi needs. I hope to see you there!

Rhea Silvan Coming to USA for ACEN

We love Anime Central. Last year they brought in our famed Italian creators Dany&Dany who were enthusiastically received by fans. This year they are bringing in Rhea Silvan, the artist for Winter Demon and many other projects.

Rhea is coming from Indonesia. This is particularly exciting for us since we've worked with dozens of Indonesian artists, but never had the chance to bring one to the USA for a show before.

If you follow Yaoi Press you know that we regularly bring artists from overseas to the US for different anime conventions. It's one of the perks our artists get for working with us. Studio Kosen of Spain has been to the USA twice, for Yaoi Con and San Diego Comic Con. Dany&Dany of Italy have been here twice, for Yaoi Con and Anime Central. Two woman studio Le Peruggine of Italy did Yaoi Jamboree and Anime Expo. Studio Kawaii of Spain did Yaoi Con. Yishan Li of China did Yaoi Con, Sac Anime, and Anime Expo. M.A. Sambre of France was our most recent guest at Yaoi Con 2008.

We're so thrilled Rhea Silvan is going to join this list soon. Anime Central is a veritable hive of Winter Demon fans. A few Fuyu and Hakuin cosplayers have already reported that they'll be there. I've been a guest there before (and will be this year as well) and am overwhelmed with how beloved Yaoi Press is. It's a fantastic time every single year.

Rhea has her interview with the American Embassy in Indonesia tomorrow. Please send prayers and good vibes her way so that she's successful in the very difficult visa process. It's not easy for Indonesian's to be allowed into the USA. We're starting the process early so that if we need to hire an attorney to appeal a visa denial we'll have time. Let's hope it doesn't come to that. Rhea is extremely deserving of this experience. She's a dear friend of mine. I can't wait to meet her in May!

Photo: Rhea is a model as well as a manga artist. She's custom-made for an American audience!

Bungled Bundles = More Work/Frustration

Part of our strategy this year was to capitalize on our large backlist of titles. This involved repackaging several older titles in bundles to sell (more or less exclusively) to Borders Books.

This has been very successful for us, so the bundles keep coming. When we first release them Borders has a big preorder on file. Our warehouse ships the individual books to a packaging company who bundles them with postcards that have the bundle UPC code on them. Then the packager ships them to our distributor who sends them out to the 400 or so different Borders book stores.

Our first bundles went off without a hitch, and gave us some much needed capital during a particularly lean time. We've listed several other bundles. Some for the summer book season, and one for holiday sales later this year.

In the meantime, Borders reordered the first two bundles we launched. Even though they weren't supposed to. They were no longer available through wholesalers. It was up to us if we wanted to fill these reorders.

For one bundle there was no way. One of the titles was now out of print, and I didn't see justification for another run on it. For the second one...yes, I could fill the order, but it wasn't a large enough batch to use the packaging service. If I wanted to get these bundles out it would mean gathering a crew of staff and friends in Las Vegas and having a 'Book Bundling Party.'

My friends are working endless hours at their jobs so that they're not the next head on the chopping block. The only day I could get everyone together for my 'Bundling Party' was Saturday, March 6th.

My house is almost on the end of on a deadend street. It's quiet enough for us to put tables in the street and work outside in the beautiful Vegas weather. I set everything up. Tables and chairs. Shrinkwrap equipment. Inserts. Beer. Books.
Books?

This is when I realized my warehouse had sent me volume 2 of one of the titles I needed instead of volume 1.

That was not a good day.

Today is Bundles - Part 2. And it's just me and one staff person. All the other fires I need to put out have to keep burning until we get this done. Hopefully it won't take more than one day. I don't think we'll be taking reorders again.

Anatomy of a Cover

Here it is. The most jeered cover out of any book we've ever published. "Word balloons on a cover? Ewwww!" This is the gist of what a few reviewers some convention attendees complained about.

Winter Demon three came out in our fourth year. I had enough experience to know what a cover needed for it to sell. BL titles that promise sex inside sell better than those that don't. This is often as easy as having the 'adults only' warning label on the cover.

The folks at DMP know this warning label sells books, particularly online where a lot of sellers don't bother to give the age rating. It still helps to have an eye-catching picture. One that has action and/or drama, and the promise of sex.

This cover without the balloons still makes BL fans look. When the books are lying face up on the table at conventions this is one they always pick up to examine first. (Along with Yaoi Hentai 3).

If the cover was good enough without word balloons, why block the art with them? It was an experiment to see if people would click the thumbnail when it came up online. Thumbnails are to online stores what spines are to brick & mortar. All customers see in Borders is our half inch spine. That's why there's always a tempting picture there. The first step to a sale is getting the customer to pick the book off the shelf. For online sales you want them to click your thumbnail.



After a year in print I can now look at sales figures and decide whether the gimmick was worth it. It's true that we had higher than average amazon sales for this title. I don't think there's enough to warrant us doing something that fans don't like. It didn't hurt sales, but only mildly helped them in one area. No more word balloons on the cover. Got it.

There's something more at play here. I didn't think fans would wrinkle their noses as much as they did to the text on the cover. Before I read manga I read comic books. Balloons on the cover was a common enough technique.

Comic books are my roots in this business. My script writing style is more influenced by comic books than by BL graphic novels. I'm taking the conventions of BL: seme/uke dynamic, unrealistic gay romance, et. al., and am writing it the same way a superhero comic book writer would. (Assuming one wanted to start writing this stuff.)



The generation making up the vast majority of our customers got their roots in manga. There were already manga gns out there for them. Most of them never got into comics. They didn't like them, in fact. It looked like a guy thing, with boobies and muscles. A Western comic technique, such as balloons on the cover, made the book look less like manga and more like those icky comic books.

I still thank these fans for buying Winter Demon 3 despite their aversion to cover dialogue. Reviews have been overwhelmingly positive, with usually the cover complaint being the only compliant I see. Even though the adventure inside reads more like the comics with the boobies and the muscles than manga, the only glaring connection to that sort of thing is the cover.

Fans know this reads different than a manga. They assume it's got a different feel because it's OEL, and in part they're right. I was born in North America, not Japan. My influences are different. Fans speak to me with their BL dollars. They say: we like it. Just don't mess with the covers anymore.

Yaoi Poker Cards Test

We've produced several decks of yaoi poker cards with beautiful art nouveau images created by our friends at Studio KÔSEN. Right now I'm running a test on Ebay to see what their saleability is. They're very expensive to produce, and I need to know if they'd fetch a reasonable price before we consider mass production.



If we can sell the decks at a reasonable mark-up then they will go on sale at conventions. We probably won't sell them online since we try to only sell items that qualify for Media Mail shipping at Everythingyaoi.com.



If we can't sell the decks at a price that justifies the cost and time to create them we will be giving them away little by little as an incentive at Everythingyaoi.com. Meaning that you have to make multiple purchases over the span of six months in order to get all the cards in the deck. If you miss a month the incentive starts all over again once the first cycle is finished for another six months. You can keep updated on which cards are being offered each month by signing up for our newsletter.



As I said, we haven't decided on selling the cards at shows, or the incentive idea yet. I've started an auction using our Ebay account to see how much interest the cards generate. I hope they'll be a big success because it will mean more work for our artists. I'm sure several of the other top artists we us would love to do something like this.



You can bid on the cards here:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=120387289824

Yaoi Epiphany

Two days ago I was flipping through channels on the TV and stopped at some movie where two criminals where in a car together. It was a man and a woman. The woman was driving.

The woman was angry at the man for something and said that she was going to take her share of the money they stole and leave him at the next bus station. The man reached his foot over to the driver's side and stepped down on the brake. Then he got out of the car and walked around to the other side. The woman locked the door.

She tried to drive, but he'd taken the car keys out of the ignition. He told her to open the door. She screamed no. He tried to unlock it, but she held down the lock. He threatened her with his gun, but she still refused to open the door. The man rammed the butt of the gun into the window, shattering it.

As he was opening the door the woman desperately crawled across the seats to get out of the passenger side. The man lunged after her. She crashed down on the pavement head and hands first. He was grabbing her. They struggled until she was lying on her back on the pavement, and he was on top of her holding her arms over her head by her wrists.

He told her that he'd never let her leave him. He leaned down to kiss her, but she turned her head away. She was angry and crying. He forced her face towards his with his hand and kissed her. She was shuddering with more angry tears.

I had a sneer of disgust on my face. I changed the channel. I hate seeing women be victimized like that, even if it is just a movie.

By now you probably guessed my epiphany. I realized that if the woman had been a man I would have kept watching. I would have been thrilled to see the same scene with two men.

I hate that my gender is sometimes a liability to me. I don't like to be reminded about it. I hate how part of college orientation has to be teaching girls how to fight off rapists. I hated hearing about girls getting raped all the time at my alma mater. I know that guy. That could have just as easily been me.

My heart sinks at the thought. Being brutalized, violated, and then having to force your way out of your haze of trauma to make sure you didn't catch something or get pregnant? What if you'd just lost your virginity in the most hideous way possible? This happens too often. It's too real. I don't want to think about it. I don't want it in my fiction.

But women like those 'bodice ripper' historical romances. Think about it. They're called 'bodice rippers' because the guy is ripping off their clothes. The only one I read had the initial encounter between the lead couple involve the man raping the woman. This rape was one where she was saying, 'No, no,' but wasn't fighting and kept cursing her body's responses to how he was touching her. It's pretty much the same 'forceful seductions' we like to see in yaoi.

You can argue that the romance novel heroine isn't fighting because she knows it's futile. She's a fluff of a girl and he's a ball of muscle. If you make the victim a guy he has to be smaller and weaker than the aggressor or it doesn't work. He's just being a dramaqueen if he has the ability to fight the guy off and doesn't.

Now you make it two guys with one smaller and weaker. The smaller one can't be a little drill sergeant with a buzz cut. That won't work. He won't be able to pull off the drama of succumbing to his body while still protesting. How can you go from him saying, "F you mother f-er!" to thoughts of, "Why does it feel so good? How can my body betray me like this?"

To properly switch the bodice ripper heroine from girl to guy the guy has to be smaller *and* prettier. Then he won't seem as goofy saying, 'No, no, you mustn't!'

However that digression just explains why the uke is smaller and prettier. My epiphany was a reason why women like yaoi in general.

Having the victim be a guy keeps me from having to face my own vulnerability. It keeps me from taking detours away from the fantasy where I think, "OMG, what if I was really raped?"

It totally negates the issue of possible pregnancy. A man can lose his innocence, same as a woman, but there isn't a maidenhead being irrevocably broken. His body will eventually revert to how it was before the act.

What I've presented here is one reason why some women like yaoi. Certainly it's one of the reasons I like it. Now that I've put all this down it seems obvious. I know I've tried to say this in other words in the past. It never crystallized until I saw that movie scene this weekend. It amazed me that something that disgusted me so much could have thrilled me if the girl had only been a guy.

Anime Milwaukee Yaoi Report

Anime Milwaukee was a fun, well-attended, organized show. I was asked to return as a guest next year and enthusiastically agreed.

I estimated about 600 people which is amazing for a university-based show. The crowd was the friendly, happy, eager-to-have-fun type I love. I felt extremely welcome. It helped that several good looking guys were willing to put on 'live yaoi shows' at our booth in the dealers room.

I debuted a new industry presentation at this show that was more comedic than I'd done before. Everyone seemed to have fun. Even the people who were beaned by the free buttons I threw into the crowd. The same can be said for the 'Yaoi Let's Make a Deal' Game Show I put on. Audience participation at the show was awesome. I held my final 'Yaoi Hentai Slide Show' panel and as usual it went over the hour time-slot. It's Sunday and I'm sitting at my guest table at the show typing this. Every once in a while someone comes by wearing the corn badge I gave at the panel to say how much fun they had.

I don't usually give reports on shows because I do so many. I was so pleasantly surprised with Anime Milwaukee I had to put down a few words. My expectations weren't that high for what should have been a small college show. I had an experience I'd expect at much larger event. As far as organization, I don't think I've seen it much better. My excellent driver Matt was at the airport to meet me with my name on a sign. He never kept me waiting long for a ride, and pulled up close to keep me from walking through the biting cold. I was given a stipend for meals, but staff still came to my booth with menus to take my meal orders and deliver them to me. I was placed in a college apartment which I had expected to be a dorm room, but was really a nice hotel suite with full kitchen. Staff was on hand to help set up for all my panels. When it was time for the hentai panel I didn't have to ask for anyone to come and block out the windows on the doors. They were on top of things all the way.

I realized at this show that this was a necessary area for me to visit. There were so many yaoi-starved fans here. It was like the first time I'd done a show in Florida, or Arizona. People seemed to be saying, 'Finally!' I wonder how many places there's left like this...

Thanks to all the staff and volunteers for treating me so well. Thanks to all the fans and attendees for being so friending and enthusiastic. Anime Milwaukee was just a great experience.