Frank Panonne and Kent Chang residing, iiiiit’s Media Blasters! They will also not have any new acquisition announcements, but we’ll find stuff to talk about anyway.

They’re starting off with Seirei no Moribito, which will be hitting Cartoon Network eventually. And then there’s Bludgeoning Angel Dokuro-chan (awesome official title!), due out in September. Voltron v6 is coming out in September as well. GaoGaiGar is being finalized as well, and Ikki Tousen is going to be on the back burner a bit while they work on Seirei no Moribito.

And now we’re talking about live-action, such as Maid Machinegirl, which is airing tonight at 9pm (I’d go, but I’m going to Hinano’s eroge panel), and coming up is Tokyo Gore Police, which stars Audition’s Ryo Ishibashi.

Moving on to Alteil, their online card game, which is currently being beta tested. The full release will probably be end of July, and it sounds like it’s been doing very well.

On the manga side, they’re definitely going to do more yaoi, and they also plan to expand into yuri with Maka Maka, a full-color magazine-size book that will come with a poster and full jacket, for $20. Also coming out, Akihabara@Deep, which they’re also doing the film of.

We’re kind of moving into q&a, and the first question is about Tweeny Witches, and whether they’re trying to get it on TV. They’re trying, and would love to, but nothing yet.

On the Genshiken 2 front, it’ll come sometime after Kujibiki Unbalance. I sounds like a lot of stuff is getting pushed back a bit in favor of Seirei no Moribito, a Geneon rescue. Someone else just asked if they’re looking at former Geneon licenses, *cough*. Panonne just hinted that Geneon may not quite be dead yet, cueing a number of Monty Python jokes.

Scott just asked how sub-only releases do compared to dubbed releases, and Panonne says they’ve been doing great. Scott asked if the fact that High School Girls has been out for a long time in fansubs has hurt the sales of it since it’s a sub-only release, but Panonne says that it doesn’t seem to really have mattered, and Chang says it’s a matter of it being a niche title, same as yaoi and yuri.

Someone asked if there’s a date for the second Go Lion set, which is apparently due out very shortly (like next week). Another person asked if they’re doing okay on shelfspace at major retailers, and Panonne says they’re actually making headway into retailers they hadn’t been in before, especially thanks to the live-action films.

I missed the last question, but Panonne says that because their catalogue is so diverse, they’re able to recover when one piece of it doesn’t do as well as others.

I’m asking about the website, and they’ve got someone currently working on that, huzzah! Panonne says we’ll see something “very significant, very soon.” Perhaps related to the hints at a major announcement coming up?

Next question: why does Media Blasters go back to older titles, while all the other companies focus on the newer things? Apparently the hardcore fans in the company push the boss for those titles, and sometimes they work out well, and other times they don’t.

How did you get the license to Invader Zim? Basically, it’s simply that they tried to get it and were able to nail it down pretty quick thanks to the boss making a couple of phone calls.

Someone just asked how they manage to keep prices so low compared to other companies, especially with their box sets. Panonne says it all depends on the license and how much they can afford to sell it for. They try to offer the most value to their customers, and especially with non-adult stuff it’s rare that they put out things at fewer than four episodes per disc.

No news on the digi-distro front though Scott mentions that Maid Machinegun is on iTunes already, and MB does have other stuff available on demand along those lines.

And it looks like that’s it!

Well, they’re $10/hr and slow, but I HAS INTERNETS.

So! We have Dallas Middaugh, associate publisher at Del Rey Manga. He mentions again that he doesn’t have any new announcements and will mostly be talking about getting published and the like, and he opens up for questions right away.

Someone asks whether her friend– who created an OEL manga that turned out to be similar to another OEL that just came out –should continue trying to get her work published or make something new. Middaugh says it all has to do with how well the project is executed. He also mentions that a lot of popular comics are similar to each other at their base, like Naruto takes a lot of its concept from Dragon Ball Z but in another setting.

Mihael of Anime News Network asks about their upcoming anthology project (Faust, due in August) and whether it will include any original works. It won’t in the first issue but they’re hoping to get a work by Fred Gallagher (of Megatokyo fame) to do a piece for the second issue.

On Phoenix Wright: currently the release date is October, and it’s already translated and laid out, but apparently projects based on video games have a lot more approval hurdles to go through. It’s on track now though.

Someone’s asking if Dallas has watched much of the anime based on the manga Del Rey publishes, and will they watch Alive when it gets made into an anime. Dallas doesn’t watch a lot of anime because he’s “a bit of a manga snob.” A favorite of his is Tezuka’s Phoenix manga, and he thinks the anime is beautiful but he forgot to keep watching it because he kept reading the manga.

Moving on to titles: Fairy Tale has been their biggest launch to date, and volume 3 is due out next week. Hiro Mashima will be at San Diego Comic Con, of course, which he’s really excited about. Also, Kitchen Princess is doing very well.

Moving on to spring ‘09 titles: Gakuen Prince, Samurai 7, Zetsubou-sensei (now stated as a March 2009 title, although the website says February 24, so I assume it was adjusted). Then The Case of the Dragon Slayer light novel in February, by Boogiepop creator Kouhei Kadano.

Someone asked if Del Rey is open for solicitations for Americans writing anime-themed novels, and apparently the answer is no– they’re not very aggressive when it comes to globally-created stuff and aren’t pushing for it (even though discussing breaking into OEL manga is supposed to be a significant part of this panel? Huh).

I asked about Zetsubou and apparently technically in-house a “February 24th” release counts as a March release, for accounting purposes…so it will be in bookstores on February 24th.

Now we’re seeing the character designs for the Wolverine shounen oel manga and the X-Men shoujo OEL manga, which we’ve seen before. Apparently the only similarity to the original Marvel hero is the name and the powers (claws and healing), and that’s it– so don’t expect a simple manga version of the original Wolverine story, so much as a brand new story using the same character concept. Hm. Also, Wolverine/Logan is 15 years old in the story.

Mihael asks if Del Rey is going to turn the tables and license these OEL manga to Japan, and Dallas says they’re going to try but it’ll be very tricky. I asked if Rogue will show up in either of the series, with Brad following up on Gambit. Rogue won’t be in the first couple of books of either, so who knows later on? Gambit’s a “good shot” since the X-Men series takes place at an all-boys school. The Wolverine manga is a complete departure from the X-Men mythology so it’s unlikely that we’ll see anyone else we know there. Kuro asks if any other Marvel universe characters will show up in either series and Dallas says for Wolverine, no, which leaves it open for the X-Men OEL.

Dallas says he specifically wanted to avoid having people flip through just for a “where’s Waldo” experience.

Someone asked if the series are going to have an ending, or if they’re going to continue indefinitely. Each series is contracted for two volumes but if they do well, Dallas says he’d love to be in a Naruto or DBZ situation of infinite length.

Now we get a story about Akira Toriyama, who was once behind on Dragon Ball Z. He was apparently placed by his editor in a hotel room specially arranged not to have any TV, radio, phone, etc. and literally locked him in and said he couldn’t come out until he had 20 pages finished. Not sure if it’s true, but wouldn’t it be great?

But moving on to other OEL, Terry Brooks’ manga of Dark Wraith of Shannara, which by the way– was adapted by Rob Napton of Bandai Entertainment. (I’d always assumed it was another Robert Napton until they mentioned the middle name. What do you know?)

Next week comes the Dean Koontz OEL In Odd We Trust, with art by The Dreaming’s Queenie Chan. And then other completely original books, like Kasumi by Surt Lim and Japanese artist Hirofumi Sugimoto.

We’re going to switch gears to what Del Rey is looking for in original manga, and general advice on submitting them. So, if you wanted to get a novel published by a major house, you’d have to get an agent. Period, end of story, required by the publisher. Del Rey probably only gets a couple of submissions a month, so they’re more than capable of going through them and don’t need to filter through agents. Some creators may want to self-publish, but then you lose all the marketing and printing support, of course.

Moving on to Del Rey’s submission guidelines: you must have at least 10-20 pages of complete artwork (the first chapter), a plot summary of 1-2 pages where you should give away the ending, a concise description of the concept (i.e. sum it up in a sentence or two, just the pitch), and descriptions of major characters. That first requirement is a bit more lax if the creator has a track record and previous works to show– but the more that’s done, the more seriously they can take it, especially if you’re new. You can get the full details here.

Dallas notes that he doesn’t reply to people who don’t bother to look at the submission guidelines and send in only a two-sentence grab or something along those lines.

Contracts! First piece of advice for first-timers: always get a lawyer. (Always!) Dallas says that they don’t do contracts that screw their authors at Random House, but he also noted on the blog that the company doesn’t make its contracts public.

On the pay front: in traditional New York publishing houses, there is an advance, payable in stages as the work is completed, and that’s an advance against royalties that has been negotiated. When the book comes out you get royalties that will hopefully cover the advance and then some (but if it doesn’t, you don’t owe it back– but you probably don’t get a second contract).

Now film and merchandising rights, which will vary from company to company. Random House doesn’t hold on to those rights generally, they don’t negotiate them into the contract– but some companies do. Dallas says it’s not always wrong to sign those rights away but that you need to be very careful about them and be sure you know what you’re signing away. Random House has a separate division for negotiating film rights.

Copyright participation: different companies handle this differently. If you sign up to do two volumes with Random House, the copyright to those books go to Random House indefinitely– but if the artist/writer can make a third book elsewhere.

And then there’s options on future work, such as the publisher’s right of refusal for a sequel or the next book by the creator, which can be good for a novelist (an instant in to get a publisher to at least look at your second book), but tough for someone working on multiple graphic novels, for example.

What Del Rey is looking for, at the end of the day, is a good book that they can sell, regardless of the following. But these are things they tend to keep an eye out for:
- Shoujo/Shounen (they just do better than josei and seinen)
- Stories with a “magical” element– broooadly “magical”/fantasy.
- Stories “immersed in fan culture” (Genshiken did very well, as did Dramacon and Megatokyo…)

On the seinen and josei front, they do publish it, and will continue to do so– like Mushishi and Nodame Cantabile. But OEL doesn’t sell as well as Japanese manga pretty much across the board. So, since seinen and josei don’t sell as well as shounen/shoujo manga, seinen or josei OEL would presumably sell even less.

Also, self-promotion is super-important! Whew, the end, now for more questions.

When Del Rey publishes Japanese books, do the authors come to them, or do the publishers? It’s 99.99% the publishers, of course.

Has Parasyte been a big success? It’s doing fine, but not majorly well– again, the seinen market is smaller.

Back on the publishers issue, do JP publishers ever push specific books or does Del Rey generally approach them? And of course, Del Rey has a deal with Kodansha, and it’s a back and forth process. It’s primarily driven by Del Rey, because the point is that they have a good idea of what will sell in the US market– but Kodansha specifically brought Parasyte to their attention. That’s relatively uncommon.

If you want to work for Del Rey, try getting an internship– but they haven’t hired outright in some time