Japnese manga magazines don’t feature that many advertisements and usually do not make much profit, some are even in the red.

Manga magazines are not supposed to make any money in Japan. They just are a way to advertize the content that will be published in collected volumes later. -That- is where the money is.

So unlike US publishers who have to promote and series they publish, Japanese publishers only have to promote their magazines and a few flagship series to lure people to buy/read the magazines, then hopefully the’d like one of the minor series too.

Japanese mangas are not subzidized by the magazines. It’s the other way around.

Manga magazines is like TV and tankobons are the DVD’s. Series like Heroes were a hit on DVD because millions of people saw them on TV before. Same reasoning with manga magazines. You buy a cheap magazine with 12 to 20 different series and then buy the tankobons of the series you really like.

So it does not matter if the magazines make the publisher lose money as long as they earn more with the collected volumes.

As for the US, I think it is more that
publishers don’t see an incentive to lower their prices unless the competion starts first (a la Tokyopop) so they will continue selling manga as if it was a luxury item until a courageous publisher decides to further slash down the prices.

Manga will not become much more popular in the US unless it becomes truly cheap with a price range of $2 to $6.

[...] of the commenters points out that Kindaichi is a Kodansha title, so with their US branch opening, maybe there’s hope yet to see more translated into [...]

Publishers that sell books on a returnable basis can accept returns on those books in one of two ways. Either they require that the retailer return the entire book in order to receive the return credit, or they require that the retailer strip off the front cover and return that for credit (trusting that the retailer will destroy the now-coverless books.)

From what carpboy describes, Barnes & Noble records which books are to be returned in which way. So something that is coded as a “Vendor Return” would be returned as whole copies, and something that is coded as a strip return will have stripped covers returned.

Strip Cover returns are mainly Mass-Market Paperbacks, like the kind you’d find in a grocery store. It’s very rare that a Trade Paperback is a Strip Cover (usually Kensington romance novels).

“They often rip off the covers to indicate they’re returns.”
Ah, how infuriating. I used to obsess over the little warnings in books that said if you bought a book with no cover, it was a stolen book. I could never understand why anyone would rip off a cover… until now. And it sounds like it only screws over the publisher, to boot.

“LOL. Yes. But I ran a publishing company for two years before getting into graphic novels, and six years before that working in the print industry in general. Print is my passion.”

Interesting, and interesting. I’ve always wondered what TP’s OEL cartoonists had to say about the job.

I tried to do some research on print several years ago, but my math skills aren’t that great, so the correct combinations of the image’s dpi with the printer’s dpi tired me.

“Our books were theoretically more expensive to produce because of cost of time with editors, promotion, etc.”
I kind of figured that would be the reason, but it seems like they spent the most time and money on Keroro Gunso, Princess Ai, Meg Cabot’s stuff, and Fruit Basket, so I couldn’t understand the price. It’s nice to hear an explanation (^-^)

“wrong characters speaking”
Oh man, that’s the worst! It took me years to figure out why some of the scenes in Mars and Marmalade Boy (my first TP comics) didn’t make sense. It must be really frustrating that they added so many mistakes. I make enough on my own, so to have even more would drive me nuts _

“Scan the printed versions.”
Yeah, I used to wonder how publishers did that stuff, especially when you could see some of the Japanese in the text bubbles they forgot to erase. After seeing some Japanese originals (which, as you would expect, have the text on a separate sheet of paper to be typed up), I kind of figured that’s what they do some of the time.

I forgot to mention as well sometimes with licensed properties, there are no digital files (not everybody’s in the digital age!), and the publishers (or creators) aren’t about to send the originals overseas for rescanning, so all that was left to the publishers to use were to scan the printed versions. You can imagine the trouble with that already . . .

Depends on the publisher. I know that Tsubasa and Fruits Basket both have omnibus editions and neither are completed yet.

“I think that US technology is probably just not there yet, which is why art books etc. are usually printed in Japan”

That used to be the case, but a lot of US companies go to Canada for high quality printing now and since the value of the dollar has plummeted, I wouldn’t be surprised to see much of what’s being printed out-of-country imported back to the US, which means increased demand, which means more money for printers, which means (hopefully) more money for better equipment. A lot of US printers are still functioning on equipment decades old . . . but not all.

The majority of US printers are used to printing either b/w text or 4-color CMYK books. Until a decade or so ago, the idea of B/W illustration printing was relatively foreign to publishers and printers alike and few new how to handle it well. So even while many may have had the equipment to print truly stellar b/w illustration printing, few knew how to process it. Color is handled at 300 dpi in a computer while b/w illustration is handled at 1200+ dpi, but many publishers and printers handled those b/w images at 300dpi, as though they were color. When color is printed at 300 dpi, that means EACH CHANNEL is 300 dpi, making four channels (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black), meaning that 300 dpi in color is actually 1200 dpi. Any higher, and the colors start to muddy. But if you’re working in b/w, that’s only one channel at 300 dpi, not four. To compensate, b/w should be printed/scanned at NO LESS than 1200 dpi, and I’ve seen far higher because you can actually benefit in b/w printing from some of the dot gain (when droplets of ink start to get so close, they begin to bleed into each other).

Anyway, it’s actually all far more complex than that, but you get the gist that it isn’t so much that we aren’t capable of very fine printing in the US so much as this particular type of printing still being a relatively new and previous rarely used process. :)

“Sorry, can you explain what you mean about ripping off slipcovers.”

When bookstores return books because they aren’t selling, they often rip off the covers to indicate they’re returns. What sucks about this is that publishers then can’t resell the books. Using slipcovers (as they do in Japan and for hardcover books) enable bookstores to remove the cover (indicating a return) without damaging the actual book. The publisher then receives the returned book (sans slipcover) and if they wish to turn around and resell it to another bookstore/distributor/etc, then they can either print more slipcovers or print new slipcovers (to make them seem different and new).

“Random question: are you Rivkah the cartoonist?”

LOL. Yes. But I ran a publishing company for two years before getting into graphic novels, and six years before that working in the print industry in general. Print is my passion. :)

As for why OEL is the same price point, according to TP, our books were theoretically more expensive to produce because of cost of time with editors, promotion, etc. Considering my (previous) editor didn’t once give me feedback on my books and that there were over 150+ mistakes (ALL of them TP’s fault, btw, and not all of them typos: wrong characters speaking, missing dialog and balloons, pages missing, etc) in my first book, I’m not sure what they were talking about.

IMHO, I’d have preferred all three of my books in a single, cheaper edition as well. The story was really written to be read as a single volume, not three.

While I was talking about Japanese printing as opposed to US in general, I think the ink is still a little heavier than Japanese printing, and feels a somewhat gritty. I think that US technology is probably just not there yet, which is why art books etc. are usually printed in Japan (although admittedly, I haven’t done any research into this topic). I agree that US quality has improved significantly, largely thanks to companies like Del Rey and (feel free to disagree) Viz. On a side note, I think ICE Kunion does a nice job as well, despite being hard to find (Hissing??), choppy translation, and nonexistent website.

My comments on the covers is really just my personal opinion, because I think the slipcovers look a little nicer and the US covers get ruined too easily (which is why I can’t buy manga at B&N often). Also, since the volumes are larger and thicker on average, they take up more of my precious bookshelf space (I double-shelf now) :).

Sorry, can you explain what you mean about ripping off slipcovers?
And yes, lower prices are a definite must.

Random question: are you Rivkah the cartoonist?

I should probably have said, “This is currently untrue.” The first several months of most new GN publishers in the US have all had bad printing, Tokyopop being the worst culprit in their first year (though IMHO, they now have the best printing of anybody) and even including Del Rey in their first few runs of Othello. But it seems most everybody has learned the hard way and caught up in print quality.

That’s actually untrue. Japanese GN use a lower quality, high acid paper that yellows quickly with age, the pages are smaller, the cover stock is thinner and prone to bending, the binding is cheaper and prone to breaking, and US b/w illustration printing has improved to the point that it’s on par (and often even SURPASSES–just use a loop and see) the Japanese versions. The only reason you get fuzzy b/w printing anymore is a result of publishers new to b/w illustration printing not knowing what they’re doing yet.

However, I’d still take that for the lower price point in sacrifice of quality ANYTIME. I have Sailor Moon, Utena, and You Higuri graphic novels that are all over ten years old, and even though they’re yellowed and bent and the binding is broken in spots, it doesn’t detract from my re-reading enjoyment. I’m not an archivist; they don’t need to last fifty years.

I also like the idea of removable slip covers because then book stores can return them by removing the sleeve instead of ripping off the cover, though quality-wise, I think the printed non-slip covers in the US are a higher print and paper quality as well, especially the ones that have the special sealant inside that keep them from bending in high humidity or overuse.

Besides, when I buy a tankobon, I’m not happy with the price because it’s fair compared to other American comics. I’m irritated because it’s pricier than that same comic translated in other countries, and two-to-five times more expensive than the original, for significantly worse quality, and usually a large number of mistakes.

Additionally, I bought Watchmen last year for 1.5x the price of a tankobon (list price is 2x), but it is over twice the size of a manga (thicker than one volume and roughly twice the size), full color with better print quality on better paper and no mistakes. I also remember as a kid paying less than five bucks for Betty and Veronica and Archie digests and double digests, which at 200 or so pages are the same number of pages as manga, but in full color with no mistakes, and many more (credited) artists and writers than a volume of manga. (I just saw the newer style, which is a strange turn considering the old feel of the comics, and the new Sabrina is hideously unacceptable.)

So comparing it to US comics, I still believe the pricing is unjustified.

[...] maybe, just maybe, they know what they are doing. At Comics Worth Reading, Johanna Draper Carlson wonders whether this move will cause prices to drop across the board. And here’s an interesting [...]

[...] for the day: Simon Jones ponders Kodansha’s plans to publish manga in the United States. Johanna Draper Carlson, meanwhile, wonders if the move will lead to lower manga [...]

It’s largely an issue of scale. Just as Viz’s Shounen Jump can be sold for 7-8, Marvel can sell it’s Runaways or Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane tankobon-sized volumes for 8 (including color pages), since they have a wider appeal.

As for US prices, how does that explain other countries low price points (e.g. Korean translations are pretty much the same price as Japanese originals)? I suspect it might have started with one company starting off with a high price (when manga was rarer) and everyone just followed that.

BUT, assuming the US prices for translated manga are justified, I can’t understand why I would have to pay the same price for a OEL manga (maybe the artist gets a bigger cut of the profits? I have no idea).

I can understand the US price point, beacuse you’re adding in licensing and translator costs. The only cost you’re cutting out from this is the licensing. While that’s a big chunk of money, that’s only up front costs. I don’t think they could push down the price much lower than what viz does for Shonen Jump/Shoujo Beat.