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

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.)

The purple-suited Ali of Del Rey Manga just slapped some Fairy Tail slap-bracelets onto VIZ reps, which makes me giggle. (As do the bracelets. Transported back to my childhood!)

Dallas Middaugh and I just bonded over our locational names (full name is Georgia, if you didn’t know). Moving on, now we’re throwing slap bracelets around…one of the reasons they went with slap bracelets is so that when Ali would throw them around, no one would get hurt, as nearly happened with their last freebie– pins.

The panel consists of Dallas, editor Tricia Narwani, director of acquisitions Mutsumi, and Ali Kokmen. And some very squeaky microphones. ANN just saved the day by turning off the microphones.

First up, Hiro Mashima’s Fairy Tail 1 and 2. Mashima, of course, is well-known for Rave Master but he has, we’re told, matured greatly with Fairy Tail (though Dallas says he’s probably not yet at his peak). The series debuted at #8 on the graphic novel sales list, so good stuff there.

Next up is Natsumi Ando and Miyuki Kobayashi’s Kitchen Princess. The fifth volume also broke into the top 10 bookscan list, a slowly growing “sleeper hit” for Del Rey. Note to self: check it out. Dallas also admitted to having only just started it himself (and to not reading everything Del Rey puts out– only so many hours in the day).

Moving into the new title announcements, due in Spring 2009…Gakuen Prince by Jun Yuzuki, a bishie romantic comedy, apparently it’s doing very well in Japan (PR manager April Flores just made an appearance, hi April!). A prestigious girls-only school starts allowing boys in, but only a very select few…and the “girls are just starving for men. It’s a harem turned into hell.” Sounds fun to me. Right up my alley, even.

Next up is Samurai 7, the manga by Mizutaka Zuhou, due out in April 2009. Based, of course, on Akira Kurosawa’s The Seven Samurai (and the anime of which

SAYONARA ZETSUBOU SENSEI! MARCH 2009! I’M THERE! YARRR! *flails* On the title, they’ve decided to go ahead and keep the Japanese title, which caused them a battle with the original Japanese publisher (Kodansha), but there is a subtitle: The Power of Negative Thinking. Good stuff!

A final new license, a novel: The Case of the Dragon Slayer, by Boogiepop author Kadano Kouhei, due out in February.

Talk of the upcoming Wolverine manga, which will be shounen and which has some pretty nice character designs– not too manga-ish, but definitely not classic American style either.

Then there’s the X-Men shoujo manga, character designs for Kitty Pryde, and it’s much more classic manga style and very shoujo…actually it reminds me of shoujo manhwa a bit. Apparently Kitty is going to be the first female student at Xavier’s academy. Ice Man is her love interest, and I really like the designs for Night Crawler, Kitty’s first friend (why can’t HE be the love interest? Night Crawler FTW!). And finally, Beast looks like Totoro.

…I’m not even kidding. I can’t take any photos (don’t have my memory card for my real camera and my cam phone *sucks*), but I’m sure they’ll be around soon…but yeah, he looks like a fanged, slightly mean Totoro. With a tie. Maybe Totoro and Ali combined, actually? Hm.

We’re moving into the Q&A: licensing novels is a bit harder than manga because it’s still a bit early in that market. Zetsubou will be coming out about every four months.

An interesting note about Faust: it includes a manga by Yun Kouga that is ONLY available in Faust and nowhere else in English. The title wasn’t mentioned so I’l have to look into it later.

And we’re wrapping up here…so stay tuned for Yen Press, who supposedly has something big for us.

While I was waiting around for Bandai Entertainment’s big news, MangaBlog’s Brigid was chatting up VIZ folks– and learned that VIZ is going to be taking submissions for original graphic novels.

So, on today’s schedule: VIZ is having their regular panel at 11, Del Rey at 12, and Yen Press (I’ve been teased that there’ll be some more big news there) at 1. 3pm will be Digital Manga Publishing’s panel, which will feature lots of Speed Racer and some 801 Media as well. Then at 6pm Dark Horse is having a panel that I’m told is mostly comics news, but that there IS a significant manga announcement there as well. (I checked because Dark Horse is at the same time as The Girl Who Leapt Through Time’s showing…)

And after Dark Horse comes CMX.

So, to sum up: if you have questions for VIZ, Del Rey, Yen, DMP, Dark Horse, and/or CMX, go ahead and leave ‘em here and I’ll see what I can do about getting them answered. (I’m also going to go back to Bandai if I can to get some of those questions answered.)

Since I like some historical fiction, I always have friends recommending Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series to me (I’ve never gotten around to it, though). And somehow I missed word from ICv2 that Del Rey is publishing a manga set in the same universe. The manga will be written by Gabaldon, who has apparently written some comic scripts for Disney in the past, and illustrated by Hoang Nguyen, and naturally feature the characters and setting of the Outlander series (a.k.a. both 18th and 20th century Scotland– yes, we’re talking time travel).

Original source: ICv2.
Secondary source: Dear Author.

KuronoK owns my soul by attending the Del Rey/Marvel announcement panel while I’m here in Bandai Entertainment, and he says Del Rey will be making both an X-men and a Wolverine manga for ‘09. The X-men artist is Anzu, and both are written by Americans, and….X-men will be a shoujo?

…Yeah, I’m texting him back.

He says yes, and Wolverine will be more shounen-ish and written by “the wasteland guy.” Uh, T.S. Eliot? No, probably not. Maybe one of the guys who made the computer game? Hmmm.

Nope, D.C. graphic novel– it’s Anthony Johnston. Raina Telemeier and Dave Roman are writing the X-men manga. Each manga will be two volumes long.

Looks like that’s about it for the news there. Thanks Kuro!

Edited to add: here is the official description of the X-Men manga:

It’s the X-Men as you’ve never seen them before, with the storyline fashioned as a private school shôjo comedy. (Shôjo manga is aimed at girls and often covers popular subjects such as comedy, romance, and drama.) As the only girl in the all-boys School for Gifted Youngsters, Kitty Pryde, a mutant with phasing abilities, is torn between the popular Hellfire Club, led by flame-throwing mutant Pyro–and the school misfits, whom she eventually bands together as the X-Men.

Del Rey (see liveblog thread) opened with their new announcements (after some stalling while they got Power Point working), their favorite being Fairy Tail, by Rave Master’s Hiro Mashima.

More exciting to me is Hell Girl (a.k.a. Jigoku Shoujo), whose very attractive but decidedly episodic anime has been licensed by FUNimation. i’m hoping the manga is a little cooler, though the art style looks a bit less to my liking.

More exciting to many of YOU is probably Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, the manga based on the very popular DS game. (They’re hoping to have the first volume out around the same time as the next game.)

And finally, Me and the Devil Blues, a manga about the blues singer Robert Johnson, who allegedly sold his soul to the devil to get his blues skills. (In this version, of course, that really did happen).

They also announced a couple of novels: Dark Wars, a continuation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula by Vampire Hunter D author Hideyuki Kikuchi; and Psycho Busters, a novel by GetBackers author Yuya Aoki, which they also have the manga for.

Aaaand an OEL manga announcement…Yokaiden, a manga by Nina Matsumoto, who you may remember as “spacecoyote” - the artist behind the amaizngly popular “manga Simpsons” fanart.

You want more? How about a manga adaptation of Terry Brooks’ Dark Wraith of Shannara, with art by Edwin David and adaptation by Robert Napton.

I dunno about you, but I’m exhausted just typing all that.

Sorry for the lack of posting yesterday, folks, but I am now in San Diego for Comic Con. There’ll be panels for TOKYOPOP - whose booth is HUGE, I swear to god they’re housing their staff in that thing - VIZ, FUNimation, ADV, Seven Seas, Broccoli, Del Rey Manga, and Dark Horse (though I expect they’ll be focusing more on their non-manga offerings). Yen Press will also be giving a launch panel, which should be fun even though it overlaps with the Kevin Smith panel slightly.

As of just now when I re-checked the schedule, the only big panel today is VIZ (though a TOKYOPOP rep will be at the GoComics mobile phone comics panel so I may pop in there too).

Tomorrow’s the big day, though: TOKYOPOP, Dark Horse, Broccoli, Seven Seas, and Yen Press and Kevin Smith. Saturday’ll be FUNimation, Del Rey Manga, and ADV, and Sunday is poor l’il CMX, all alone. It *looks* like I’ll be able to make it to all of these panels, so expect full coverage! Depending on how the Internets are at the convention center, I may also live-blog them on the forums.

I’ll get to the news as fast as I can, after a few more thoughts/predictions… Continue Reading »