Rumor Alert: Kodansha to Start Own US Manga Pub?
Now HERE is the most interesting rumor I’ve yet heard come out of the whole TOKYOPOP thing: in the comments of Chris Butcher’s thoughts on the matter a person going by Cthulhu who claims to be an industry insider pronounces that Kodansha is going to start its own manga publisher in the US, bypassing both Del Rey– who has benefitted greatly from their deal with Kodansha, one of the big three in Japan –and all the other US publishers.
Is it true? There’s plenty of snarky arguing between “Cthulhu” and Matt Blind in the comments; Blind clearly doesn’t buy it. Ryan from Same Hat! says he vaguely recalls hearing a similar rumor, while Cthulhu claims it was announced at Book Expo America with no one noticing (…really?). There’s a continuation of Cthulhu and Blind’s debating over at the PW Beat.
As for me, it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if Kodansha did it– but it seems like odd timing. I mean, Del Rey JUST announced that they’d be releasing Kodansha’s Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei about a month and a half ago (April 19th, to be exact). Now Cthulhu says that they’re “aggressively cutting off the existing contracts” with publishers and that this has been “in the wind” for a couple of weeks. So, did they basically put this company together in a single month? Or did Del Rey just slip that last license in thanks to the contract the two have had since Del Rey’s formation?
“Cthulhu” offered to let Butcher e-mail him to check his credentials, and I hope Chris follows up. In the meantime, I went ahead and placed a call to Kodansha America’s NYC office to see if I might be able to get anything from them– if they mentioned it at BEA I should think they’d be able to confirm it by phone –but no one picked up and I had to leave a message. (There IS a phone number for their foreign rights department in Japan, but for the moment I only have my cell phone, and let’s just say that the per-minute charge for a call to Japan is not one I wanna pick up right now. Besides, it’s like 2am there.)
Tags: del-rey, kodansha, TOKYOPOP
June 5th, 2008 at 8:22 am
Fantastic! I’d love to see more Japanese companies going into the American market. After all, it worked so well for Toei Animation and Bandai Visual USA.
June 5th, 2008 at 8:31 am
@Scott: it’s worth noting that BOTH of those are anime companies, not manga. The manga companies that have started competing directly in the US have done fairly well for themselves– namely Shougakukan and Shueisha. AKA VIZ Media, the top manga publisher in the US to date =P
Also, Tpop is actually incorporated in Japan, even if their HQ is in LA, so they’re technically a “Japanese” company as well. Del Rey was created as a cross deal with Random House and Kodansha– which means that Kodansha starting a publisher would make things tough for them. And then of course there’s Aurora/Deux, created by Ohzora Shuppan.
…So I wouldn’t go poking fun about that just yet. ;)
June 5th, 2008 at 10:03 am
Not to mention Geneon (RIP), Kadokawa, and Bandai Entertainment. FUNimation, while owned by Navarre, has a Japanese CEO. Really, only three Japanese companies have failed in the US–one of which most fans were pleased with.
June 5th, 2008 at 12:39 pm
Say what you will, but having a Japanese company break from their American divisions and partnerships to do their own thing is a completely Toei / BVU move.
What reasons would they have for doing besides for “Oh, the Americans are easily profiting from our works. We can do that! Why don’t we take over and do it all ourselves?”
June 5th, 2008 at 1:23 pm
@Scott: Wow, quick to characterize much? =P I don’t know anyone at Kodansha or much about how they run their business, so I’m certainly not going to assume that they’re that cavalier about it.
That said, Kodansha isn’t a charity, they’re a business. They already have relationships with printers and bookstores in America– Kodansha International has published (non-manga) books in the US for quite some time. If they think they can make more money by participating directly, of course they’ll go for it. And yes, Del Rey may get shafted in the process.
That said, I’m still not going to jump the gun and come to any conclusions when all we know to date is rumors one guy heard. It could be happening, but even if “Cthulhu” IS 100% right in everything he says, we still don’t know how it’s all being handled by the companies involved in any detail.
So, to sum up: let’s chill out and wait, shall we?
June 5th, 2008 at 1:29 pm
While it’s true that they could be looking for more share in the North American profits, while trying to avoid a 4Kids/Pokemon debacle, imagine the positives:
-US companies pick and choose the titles we get based on their projected/potential popularity, and pay quite a bit to secure a license, thus many decent titles get overlooked simply because they may not make money. With a Kodansha arm in the US, there are no licensing bets. We are likely to see more niche titles that may otherwise be overlooked.
-Kodansha has a massive library of titles available to them, and with no license bartering, it means shorter domestication times.
-If we were to judge their pricing structure with what Bandai attempted with DVDs (comparatively the same as the Japanese release, which = EXPENSIVE!), if Kodansha does the same with manga, we could see much cheaper books. Manga in Japan is usually anywhere from $3 to $5 cheaper than in the US.
Just my 2 cents.
June 8th, 2008 at 2:18 pm
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July 1st, 2008 at 10:15 am
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