Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service Sells Better as Omnibus

The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service Omnibus Volume 1 cover

In this interview with Director of International Publishing and Licensing Michael Gombos and Manga Editor Carl Horn about Dark Horse’s manga business, they reveal some positive news about how the Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service omnibus is doing. According to Horn,

This is a title that has struggled as a regular series, volume to volume. We sold more of the first printing than we sold of any individual volume…. This is a title that we’ve began 10 years ago and it’s been struggling in sales, but we went omnibus with it and all of a sudden we’re in the third printing of it. It’s gathering a whole new life and a whole new readership. I would have been satisfied if the first printing of the omnibus sold but now we’re about to go onto the third printing.

Sometimes it’s a matter of finding the right combination of format, price point, audience, and familiarity. Or just having patience with a property to find its readers. Combos continues with an interesting observation:

I’d like to note that from the licensing perspective, a lot of Japanese publishers like Dark Horse’s commitment to paper. I know that sounds weird. Maybe it’s something old-fashioned, maybe it’s something more traditional, but the fact that we stress how we want to sell our paper books and not digital and our fervor for the paper book lends itself a lot to negotiating and licensing.

Dark Horse Vice President Trade Sales Michael Martens elaborated on the title “selling very well, with initial placement over five times the best placement on one of the individual volumes.” He also suggested that the omnibus format was “a lot more convenient for an older buyer who may not be visiting comic stores as often and isn’t a big buyer of individual trade paperbacks.”

So much for the manga market collapsing and disappearing.

The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service Omnibus Volume 1 cover



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