So as you may remember, I had a few follow-up questions to my interview with Yaoi Generation president Thuy Duong. Here are the answers!

Gia Manry: When you say that you want to focus on finishing breath before tackling other projects, does that mean that we won’t see any other licenses until the fifth volume of breath comes out– i.e. the company will generally focus on one title at a time?

Thuy Duong: The company will generally focus on one title at a time as far as production is concerned. As far as licensing, we’re constantly looking for new, interesting titles to license so that there won’t be a long lag time between one project and the next. However, what you won’t see from us is a long list of licenses which won’t get published until a year or more to come.

GM: You mentioned that you’ll be publishing ebooks as well as print books; will this be through a service (such as NETCOMICS or Lulu), or will it be through Yaoi Generation directly?

TD: For now, if we have any title available as ebooks, it’ll be through us directly.

GM: What sort of production values can we expect to see for the books? Dust jackets, color pages, “omake” materials, etc? And what can we expect in terms of pricing?

TD: For the most part, we will not have dust jackets for our books, but we will have color inserts. Price points will be revealed once our online shop is opened next month.

Speaking of which, to celebrate our grand opening, we’ll be having amazing discounts on pre-orders, so keep an eye out for our opening announcement! We currently have a sign up form for our newsletter on our website at www.yaoigeneration.com. We’ll send out an e-mail everyone who signed up the minute our online store is open.

So I think we’ve covered just about everything that we can for the moment– who’s looking forward to Yaoi Generation’s new releases (besides me)?

So when Yaoi Generation announced its first license, I shipped off some questions to the company president, Thuy Duong. We talked about their first title, Chifumi Ochi’s breath and what kind of production values it will have, as well as the company’s plans for the future.

So hit the jump for all the answers! Read more…

Okay, I said I wasn’t going to cover the yaoi roundtable panel, but I just have to mention this: at the panel, they raffled off about a dozen items. About…two of them were won by women, and about ten buy guys. That’s my serious guestimate– maybe it was 3/9ish, but it was really honestly mostly guys. These volunteers pictured above were among them.

Moving right along: as I left I was handed a little tiny slip of paper by a young lady who is apparently involved in an attempt to start a yaoi convention here on the east coast: Project Yaoi and/or “WaiCon,” wohose forums and stuff are here. They’re not looking to even start until 2010…which doesn’t really tell me how serious because it’s too early to ask if they’ve got a space, guests, etc. but on the other hand at least they’re not trying to pull something together fast for ‘09. So, if anyone out there reading this knows more, do tell!

And I’m going to let this BL-fest culminate in something I got a press release about: Yaoi Generation. Do you guys remember that buzz from back in June when their website was spotted by the greater blogiverse?

Well, the company has announced their debut title: breath by Chifumi Ochi (published by Kaiosha in Japan). It’s a five-volume love story with some pretty nice art; they’re hoping to get the first book out in December with preorders up in November.

They didn’t mention much about production values or anything, but I’ve got an e-mail out requesting an interview, so here’s hoping. (And any of you AT Yaoi-Con, feel free to go to their booth and ask for me!)

Over the evening I just got word on this from the Boys Next Door girls, and then Brigid mentioned it today over at MangaBlog: apparently a new yaoi publisher called Yaoi Generation, who will be at Yaoi-Con (and, according to BND’s Cynbaby, possibly at Otakon as well).

GloBL comic writer Tina Anderson and blogger/writer/editor Kethylia trade speculation, including the possibility that Yaoi Generation is being established by Yaoi Press (the company is based in Fremont, CA, where Iris Print’s Kellie Lynch lives and now works for Yaoi Press) or DrMaster (also based in Fremont).

I’m a bit skeptical on the YPress idea– I didn’t get the sense that Lynch was especially interested in doing the licensed manga thing, and I’m not sure why Yamila Abraham would launch a whole new company for that when Yaoi Press has an established reputation and sales. As for DrMaster, I suppose it’s entirely plausible.

A whois on the domain shows that the registrant as a “Thuy Duong.” I can find plenty of Thuy Duongs online, even ones in Fremont and ones who are into manga, but I can’t find any that seem particularly affiliated or connected with the industry, so I guess that’s mostly a dead end.

I suppose only time will tell. I’m shipping out an e-mail, though I don’t know if I expect a response. But if I bump into them at Otakon I’ll certainly get the details!

EDIT: Oh, I forgot to mention– do look around their site. They talk a bit about what they’ll be up to, including publishing “Yaoi mangas, English edition” and a bi-monthly magazine, plus merchandise. It looks like they’ll be going for Internet sales only, with no mention of trying to get books into brick-and-mortar shops (though the online versions of real shops like Barnes and Noble and Borders’ websites are mentioned).