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February 13, 2006
Publishers Find Growth in Comics (Comix Scholars List | NY Times)
For the big publishing companies that provide distribution services — companies like Random House, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, the Time Warner Book Group and Holtzbrinck — Tokyopop was not just another potential customer, however. Graphic novels generally, and manga specifically, are among the few rapidly growing areas of the publishing business, so securing the right to distribute Tokyopop's books was a hotly contested prize.
The prize went to none of those giants, however, but rather to the Perseus Books Group, a medium-size publisher whose imprints include Basic Books, PublicAffairs and Da Capo Press. That is notable because Perseus entered the distribution field just last year through the purchase of one of the largest independents, Client Distribution Services.
[John R. Ronan offered this story on the Comic Scholars' Discussion List. I am familiar with manga's rise to popularity, although I occasionally watch its anime counterpart, bowing down to superior animation and overall character development compared to current American offerings. Alongside those manga titles in bookstores are trade paperbacks and hardcover editions of comic book story arcs from Marvel and DC. The Big Two are catching on to getting comics back into the mainstream and publishing fewer "collector's edition" issues, which I think is the right direction as Bradford Wright claims in Comic Book Nation that comic shops may have saved the industry in the 1990s, but now they are a bane to progress. I am optimistic that comic books will always be around, but someday, my work needs to cross the Pacific. BK]
Posted by kuechebj at February 13, 2006 03:02 PM