Five Kosen Poker Decks Auction

We shipped merchandise for Anime Central to our staff in Louisville Kentucky so they could drive it to the show. They stored our boxes in a storage unit and it flooded. I asked how much could be salvaged for the show. I was told it the books are 'mush.'

This is extremely devastating to our business which relies heavily on convention revenues. There aren't funds available to replace all our ACEN merchandise. I am starting the long climb towards this goal by putting for sale the last five Kosen Yaoi decks. On Monday I will consider other sales. For now I must focus on the Animeland Vegas convention this weekend.

Please let others know about this auction:

Yaoi Poker Decks

AnimeLand Vegas Moved to Westin

This weekend (May 1-3) you can meet me, Yamila Abraham, at Animeland Vegas. But not at the Alexis Park Hotel as originally planned.

ANIMELAND VEGAS HAS MOVED TO THE WESTIN CASUARINA ON FLAMINGO

Westin Casuarina
160 East Flamingo Road
Las Vegas, Nevada 89109
Phone: (702) 836-5900

This was not a voluntary move by the convention staff. Here is what the Chair says:

"It would seem that they [Alexis Park] found the loophole and exploited a miscommunication on both our parts that allowed them to sell our space to the bigger group that will be spending more money than we were. While I don't like it and want nothing more than to stomp my foot and cry "it's not fair", I UNDERSTAND it. Business is business, and in this economy you get every dime you can get when you can get it. I wish them the best of luck...cuz kharma is funny, and I want my kharma bases covered."

I have tremendous empathy for this group to have to deal with a venue move just days before the show. I was a guest at two other shows the Animeland staff put on: Otakumex and Anime Wasabi. They are a group of well-meaning fans dedicated to putting on fun shows. This was an unavoidable change.

A member of the Animeland staff will be at the Alexis Park hotel to make sure everyone is redirected to the new venue. It's very near to the old venue.

Yaoi Press on ITunes

Soon you will be able to enjoy nearly every Yaoi Press graphic novel on your tiny IPhone screen. We have signed an agreement with Fika Publishing for distribution through the ITunes ap store.

Yaoi Press aps will sell for $.99 and will be available to IPhones worldwide. Young adult titles will be presented in their entirety. Mature readers titles will be modified as little as possible to adhere to ITune's content policies.

A 120 page manga is turned into a 500+ page ap for the IPhone. Each page is one or two panels so there isn't the need for excessive scrolling.

We expect to have the first five aps launched by August of this year. We've chosen to debut with Zesty Vol. 1, Zesty Vol. 2, Surge, Treasure Vol. 1, and Treasure Vol. 2.

How to Print A Doujinshi for $1/copy

This article has made the rounds on Twitter and Facebook. I felt it was worth posting here also. This is how we're saving money on printing a Winter Demon doujinshi for Anime Central:

http://www.ehow.com/how_4908283_print-comic-book-doujinshi-cheap.html

How Yaoi Press Letters Manga

Letterers who work for Yaoi Press get our guidelines document. They don't have to follow it by rote, but we do expect to be able to directly edit their work in Photoshop. I've put up the instructions we give our letterers on Ehow:

http://www.ehow.com/how_4888435_comic-book-manga-adobe-photoshop.html

Some of our letterers don't like using the shape tool to make balloons. They prefer the hand-drawn balloon look that you see in most manga. I come from the comic book lettering side of things where stencils were used to make perfectly round balloons before digital lettering took over. You see a lot of perfectly round balloons and perfect triangle balloon tails in our books. These instructions are where that comes from.

Some letterers want to use other software for lettering besides Photoshop. I wish we could be flexible, but there's a lot of people who get their hands on the lettered work before it goes to press. You have a copy editor who needs to fix typos, an author who may want to edit her digital galleys, and possibly even me doing that last once over. The program we most have in common is Photoshop. If we get files that can't be edited in Photoshop it means a lot more back and forth. All of our production staff work remotely. If we need a letterer to go back and do edits it means waiting for her to see the email, then edit and upload the page. Then the next person on the line could have other edits to the page and we start all over again. By having the page be editable right on the spot it lets us just get on with it.

Yaoi Cards

The Kosen Poker Deck is an incredible success. It's an incentive on everythingyaoi.com right now. It's very likely we're going to run out before the April 10th deadline.

The promotion on everythingyaoi.com is where we're giving 9 different cards each month to total one full deck in 6 months. At Anime Wasabi last weekend one of my buddies in the industry came by asking about the decks. His customers were asking him about them. They didn't want to go along with the 6 month incentive thing. I traded him some decks for some merchandise. He said he's going to give them to some of their best customers. Loyalty has its perks. :)

At this point in time I don't want to devalue KOSEN's work by coming out with all sorts of different poker decks. However I do want to put out more cards. The card medium is perfect for small, beautiful works of art.

Trading cards can be used for all sorts of different things. I'd love to hear suggestions from fans about what type of yaoified deck they'd like to see next.

April 1st

::Insert blatant April Fools Yaoi Gag that only a few nitwits fall for here::