Hit the Road, Takumi?*
Uniting today’s main themes of publicity and comic books, here’s a graf that jumped out at me in an article from last week’s PW about manga-style comics created by Americans, or OEL, for “orginal English-language” (sub required):
“Licensed manga—the translated manga that dominates the U.S. market—comes with restrictions, and publishers have always known that OEL offers important advantages. U.S. publishers of translated manga generally only have print rights while the Japanese licensor controls important movie and merchandising rights. Not only does original manga offer publishers a full suite of rights—from TV and film to foreign rights and merchandising—but it also offers real live English-speaking authors available to tour and promote their books—the conventional mainstay of book promotion. Indeed, the whole growth of manga in the U.S. has happened almost entirely without Japanese manga-ka (manga artists) to tour and meet the fans.”
Wouldn’t the fact that manga became a $110 million industry (according to a 2004 SF Chronicle story) without relying on author tours suggest that touring isn’t necesarily the path to promotional success? In particular, one might hypothesize that these books succeed both in the comics market and, increasingly, in the mainstream retail world because they deliver engrossing yet easily readable narratives of epic length?
*Takumi is a Japanese name meaning “artisan,” so the headline’s a double-layered pun, get it? Oh, never mind.
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