BL Publishers, Please Wake Up.
Wake up to the fact that once you saturate the market with angsty non-con disguised as smut, and gay-schoolboy-of-the-week manga; that it’s ok to start bringing over BL that’s not guaranteed to sell, to EVERY YAOI FAN, ALL AT ONCE.
Poster Ms. Wylie, over at the AMLA list, opened the discussion about how currently BL licensor’s are only interested in licensing to 1. Young fans, 2. Fans of porn with no plot, and 3. Delivering cheaply produced copies that, when compared to the originals, put the American releases to shame. [What did I tell you about BL Fen and the collector-mindset?] This prompted some interesting comments [I stayed out of it—in all honestly, I’ve not read licensed BL in quite a long time, nor do I plan to start up again.] but I think she, and those posting, have a legitimate gripe.
Some Highlights for those of you who aren’t in the group…
Production Values:
Why are the american editions such pale copies of the manga published
in Japan?
Every one of the Japanese editions make you beg to buy them, fondle
them, look at them. They are so seductively beautiful, no matter
what the subject matter. (I have some shounen, and shoujo titlese as
well as BL). -Wylie
On hardcore content:
[about Kodaka] Yet which stuff of hers gets translated? Midare Somenishi? Did we *really*
need to know what they were saying in that one?? [...]
Then I thought maybe the industry’s been listening too much to the
smutlovers — the people who periodically pop up on this list begging for
more naked butts and unobscured dicks and whatnot. I’ve got no problem with
that; sometimes I want it too (though usually after a lengthy, hot buildup
of sexual tension). But we don’t see a corresponding amount of people
begging for better plots and characterization, so I think the industry may
be getting a false impression that *all* fans want is smex. -Nora
On What’s being Licensed:
There has been a slew of low quality, less well-known BL manga
published. The publishers do seem to avoid a series - since it commits
them to many books. This is unfortunate, because many of the most
popular works in Japan are a series - because they’re the ones that
have been allowed to run for a long time. And from what I’ve seen, the
decision on what to bring over rests only with a handful of people in
a handful of companies that is publishing BL.
[...]
Currently, US publishers seem to believe that anything will sell
because it’s a rapidly expanding market. I think it will eventually
reach a saturation point - as it did with general manga several years
ago. Then, maybe, they will start focusing more on quality…. -Emi
Hope springs eternal Emi…
Waitaminute–since when have the big general manga publishers rediscovered quality over quantity? Seems to TOKYOPOP is still licensing garbageloads of junk and tossing it to the wall in the hopes that it will stick. (And when it doesn’t, remaindering the leftovers as quickly as six months…
On the T-Pop tip: I wish they’d put more thought into their ‘global’ talent searching, without this silly ‘give us 3 volumes and the rights to all other forms or else’ style of negotiations. 0_0. I’d love to work TP making BL, but when they don’t even bother to hold their Japanese BL licenses to the same ridiculous standard, why make global creators of BL do it? [/personal issue]
I also dislike the fact that June is loading the shelves with volumes of crap that’s cheaply printed and quickly produced, taking up space that other publishers have to fight for. I think one of the comments at AMLA pointed out that, companies like June just keep bringing over mindless drivel [exception being you know who...] at an alarming rate because little goes into producing it– while companies that strive to produce more mature, quality fare–are forced to struggle with production and distro issues.
Thing is, that “mindless drivel” does better in Japan than a lot of the more interesting stuff since it’s mindless 14-year-olds doing the buying. It’s probably a safe strategy if you operate on the assumption that what goes over big in Japan goes over big here more often than not. It’s why VIZ and Del Rey won’t touch the enormous back catalog of their respective Japanese counterparts with a 12-foot pole.
What annoys me about bookstores is, the need to shelf GN’s in the ‘Japanese format’, all together in one place. Sure age rating helps, but the mature titles are lumped in there next to the Naruto’s and the Fruits Baskets, each of which has about 8 different volumes on the shelf at any given time– when booksellers need to make purchases, and are forced to limit future purchases on X-amount of shelf space, then many mature [not porn!] titles with modest readerships, aren’t going to be put in the store. Publishers will then follow this trend by licensing what they know will get the shelf-space, guaranteed.
I think horror titles, quality BL, and women’s manga, suffer from this vicious circle. I’m not saying put every ‘genre’ “of manga” in places where manga is not shelved– but I think certain genres would benefit from being removed from the shelf-space competition: horror would get more consideration in the horror fiction section - BL would fare better, and get more mature consideration and readership, if sold in the Gay/Lesbian area - and so on…
Once bookstores stop feeding the progression of youth-oriented retailing, then publishers might take channces on more mature genres, and lessor known quality licenses.
I’m not convinced that manga has evolved out of the niche audience here yet, wherein readers like the medium first and the genre second. As of right now, it simply wouldn’t pay for bookstores to do that. Hell, even Japanese bookstores keep their manga separate…
And not to gripe or anything, but BL doesn’t belong in the gay/lesbian lit section…you really want Borders to sic another horde self-righteous gay men on you? I’ve seen lots of teens shopping in that section, anyway; not sure what that will accomplish.
I don’t need Borders to piss off self-righteous gay men, I do that without even trying! ^_- I honestly do think that more story-oriented BL will fare better in gay/lesbian area; and if by some miraculous chance, someone decides to license Bara [popcorn for gay male fans of BL] or those titles that are obviously gay and not written for women, then there’s shelf space that’s ready for their target audience. Of course my biggest dream is to just have Alyson, Cleis, et al., invest in domestic gay comics…hire sequential artists to create comic versions of their Gay anthology fictions–and stop with the high-priced artbook collection of ‘gay illustrators’.
–And Japanese comics are kept separate, but then they’re separated by by genre [which is defined by gender.] Another issue for another day! ^^
Manga in Japanese bookstores is separated by gender, publisher, and then imprint, in that order. Doing something like that in the US would make for a fascinating layout…but I don’t see it happening.
I just can’t see the pastels that BL is usually drawn in in the Borders gay/lesbian section. >_
Besides the fact that it’s not the same target audience (oops, broken record time).
I thought publishers did flirt with gay comics in the past. What was that series called? Meatmen? ^^;; The fact that it’s not around anymore seems to speak for itself. *sighs* The fact that InsightOutBooks is shortly to be out also speaks for itself…
Yep…those gay menz loves their fictions. ^_- Target audience means nothing America, don’t you know that?! post-modern boycott, you homophobe you! Just kidding…
I think if gay pubs stopped focusing on ‘comics porn’ and started dedicating more mature stories [or hell, even immature stories] to gay characters in ‘comic style’ situations [horror, action, etc], then they might not go out of business so quickly. Yet they say, sex sells. So again, I might be wrong.
They say that men as a whole don’t buy much fiction in the United States. I would assume that would also include gay men as well. Romance or genre fiction targeted at gay men is NEVER going to sell as well as that targeted at women. There’s the reason why manga never did well until it entered big box bookstores in a big way: Women don’t go to comic book stores. (All this statistically speaking of course.)
They say that men as a whole don’t buy much fiction in the United States. I would assume that would also include gay men as well.
I don’t know about that. :/ Those fiction anthologies seem to do real well for Cleis and Alyson, not to mention the following that many of the authors frequently featured in them, tend to have. It’s niche, sure, but it’s obviously one that pays for itself since producing ‘one-handed read’ collections, is so prolific.
Romance or genre fiction targeted at gay men is NEVER going to sell as well as that targeted at women.
Maybe because targeting something at women is much more socially acceptable than targeting something at ‘gay men’. Look at ALC for example. All the press that comes out in regard to ALC is this positive take on Lesbian theme comics and ‘yuri’; whereas the average article about ‘gay comics or BL’ is normally of the “backlash” or “what’s this weirdness” variety.
I think if it were possible to promote and target gay readership outside of ‘porn’, in a way that wouldn’t be tainted by moral-backlash, then it would take off with some modest success. Unfortunately, small minds never seem to grow. =_=;