INSIDE YEN PRESS

[MattBrady]

by Chris Arrant

It was announced earlier this year that one of the largest book publishers in the world, Hachette, was founding a new imprint for the publishing of graphic novels. Titled Yen Press, it is the newest entrant in the burgeoning publishing landscape that has grown up since the upswing in graphic novels sales worldwide.

Yen Press announced five titles at New York Comic Con that would serve as its launch titles, consisting of primarily of imported manga. Four of the titles are from manga publisher Square Enix: Zombie-Loan, Alice on Deadlines, Black God and Spiral: Suiri no Kizuna. Yen Press will also be publishing Nightschool, a new series from Svetlana Chmakova, creator of the popular OEL manga Dramacon.

Yen Press is headed up by two individuals with a lot of experience in the America comic book landscape. Rich Johnson is a veteran of the comics industry, having spent many years with DC Comics, most recently as the Vice President of Book Trade Sales. Joining him is Kurt Hassler, the former Borders Group buyer who was named the most powerful person in the American manga publishing industry in a survey by ICv2's Retailers Guide to Anime/Manga.

While new to the field, Yen Press has built up considerable buzz with the titles announced and the people involved with the publisher. Talk of a monthly anthology magazine, similar to Shonen Jump, has already been confirmed as well. Newsarama sat down with Hassler, the Co-Publishing Director of Yen Press, to find out what the new publisher is all about.

Newsarama: The launch titles that have been announced all fall squarely in the field of manga and OEL manga. With your inaugural press release stating that Yen will expand to do "Licensed manga, original manga, American comics and graphic novels, webcomics, licensed adaptations and children's works", why do you feel manga was the exclusive focus of the initial push?

Kurt Hassler: There are a few reasons. One of them is strictly practical when you're dealing with licensing manga from Japan, you're largely dealing with material that has already been available. So you can launch with something like that more quickly than if you were doing an original American project. Also if you look at just the relative sales, which drive a lot of growth in the industry in the North American market, it's manga. It's clearly the largest growth consumer base and we want to make sure we're tapping into that market.

And on a more personal level, I'm very well acquainted with manga; it's sort of my personal area of expertise, so that was just going to a comfort zone for me.

NRAMA: Do you think your launch titles are a good representation of the overall future of Yen Press, or part of a broader equation?

KH: I think they are part of the whole equation. We couldn't be happier with the titles we're launching. You'd be hard-pressed to find better licenses to launch with. Certainly in terms of working with Square Enix it's been nothing but a pleasure; it's been nothing but a pleasure working with Svetlana. We're looking forward to building both of those relationships over time.

But in terms of the list as a whole, I think you're going to see much more diverse things coming down the road. We're not adverse to kids comic, American comics, different types of manga… really we want to explore all of the opportunities out there. We're really not limiting ourselves to a particular genre or type of book.

NRAMA: The U.S. publishing of manga from overseas has been going over for over 10 years, and has grown by leaps and bounds with the sales success of manga. With Yen Press coming in relatively late compared to others such as TOKYOPOP, DelRey and Viz, is there any concern that the landscape of available titles from Asia has already been gone over by those before you and made it harder to find good titles?

KH: I think if you look at the enthusiasm for our launch titles announcement, there's absolutely material out there that is ready to be brought over. There are new licenses releasing everyday in Japan, and if you build relationships with the publishers there, I think there's very much an opportunity for a new publisher to get in on the ground floor and build significant amount of market share in the U.S. market. That's particularly what we're hoping and intend to do.

NRAMA: How would you describe your relationship with Square Enix, since they are the company through which all of your manga launch titles are coming from?

KH: We love Square Enix. [laughs]

It's been nothing but a positive relationship so far, and we're hoping to build on it over time.

NRAMA: With four of the titles being imported from overseas, you mention how since they were previously published they're easier to launch with due to there already being completed work. How often do you plan to release subsequent volumes?

KH: You know it depends on the license in particular. We're not setting a set schedule across the board. Most of these will be tri-annual or quarterly releases depending on the title.

If there's a license that warrants publishing more frequently, we'll certainly do that. The big determining factor is what the market will bear. There's been instances in the past where publishers have tried monthly publications of titles – it tends to have a negative impact on sales, which is obviously not something we want to do to the books we're releasing. There tends to be a significant negative impact on sales.

If you talk to the really hardcore fans, they understandably want to get the material as quickly as possible and they'd like to see monthly release schedules. But a wider, potentially less vocal portion of the demographic, doesn't respond to release schedules that are that quick and sales suffer as a result. So you have to balance those things when you're deciding on a publication schedule.

NRAMA: One of the things that has been a concern with the OEL manga is that the release schedule of it is considerably slower than the previously published titles from overseas, with most taking a year or more between volumes. Talking about the Yen Press title Nightschool which debuts in the fall of 2008, would you attribute that prolonged release date to the intent to build up a backlog of material to allow faster subsequent volumes release after the debuting volume?

KH: Well, not at all. It's simply by the time Svetlana gets started on the project, that's the earliest practical publication date – it'll likely be a year between subsequent volumes like you're seeing on her current series. As far as the concern over the length between releases, I'm not sure how much of that is simple hyperbole since when you look at some titles where there have been a year between releases, Svetlana's Dramacon being a prime example, sales have not suffered for that. People are willing to wait for good material, and understand that it does take time to produce that material.

NRAMA: Seeing as how you're bringing in previous published manga to print in the United States, do you have plans to take original material like Nightschool overseas at some point?

KH: Absolutely.

NRAMA: Last week at MangaBlog, Kurt was quoted as saying that Yen Press plans a manga anthology magazine beginning in 2008. It was briefly mentioned at New York Comic Con, but not much is known about it. Can you give us a rundown at this point of what you intend for the anthology to be?

KH: The anthology will be, more than anything, a way to build awareness of licenses among the public. What you have in the market currently is a situation where you have literally hundreds of titles releasing a month, many of them are unfamiliar to their apparent audiences. If you look at the Japanese market, they build license awareness through these serialized anthology magazines. People get to know properties over time in advance of their release as trade paperbacks. That's a model that makes sense, and we would like to have a similar marketing pull, if you will, to help build awareness of the licenses and build enthusiasm for the licenses before they're dropped on shelves.

NRAMA: At this time, do you have any specific titles planned out to go with for the anthology?

KH: We have titles in mind, but nothing we can announce right now other than Svetlana's Nightschool.

NRAMA: How many pages will each story's installment be in anthology?

KH: You'll probably be seeing about 30 pages of Nightschool per volume of the anthology. That's not to say that will be consistent across everything anthologized; there may be cases where we'll put in, if we're licensing overseas material or already created, we might run 60 pages. We might have licenses running every other month, depending on the speed at which the creator can turn in material. There's any number of scenarios as to how material could be entered into the anthology.

NRAMA: Do you plan to release it on a monthly basis?
KH: Yes, the current plan is for a monthly publication.

NRAMA: When do you expect to begin publishing this anthology?

KH: The hope is for the second quarter of 2008, but it's very early in the conversation and any of this could change at any given moment. [laughs]

NRAMA: You've said that you're intending for the anthology to be a vehicle to build long-term awareness of your licenses, but can you talk more in-depth about that strategy?

KH: Well, the hope is that you build a fanbase prior to a title's release in book format, and you drive awareness to the release. Again, it's all about making sure there are customers out there for the material before it's ever collected as a book. You're in a much better situation when there's a pre-existing fanbase that is waiting for the book to release and will snatch it up on Day 1 versus releasing a book and hoping awareness of it spreads at a more granular level through word-of-mouth or internet buzz. From a marketing perspective, you want to build hype prior to the product being available. It's no different that movie companies putting out trailers in advance of films – months in advance before the release. They want to build the enthusiasm, build the awareness, so that when the movie debuts there's a flood of patrons running in to see the film.

The core concept of the anthology is no different. We want to make sure fans are aware of the product upfront, so that when the sales come in they're that much stronger as a consequence.

NRAMA: There was also mentioned a possibility of a webcomic in the scheme of things with Yen Press. Is that coming from the same school of thought as 'building the hype' for an eventual book publication?

KH: Absolutely. You have to make sure there is a customer for whatever product you're putting out. And if you can build that enthusiasm while the material is being produced, that's the best possible scenario for you.

To switch to the American comic book model, you have something like Civil War running in Marvel Comics. You build awareness and enthusiasm for that through the comic book and then there's that much more awareness and that much more enthusiasm when the trades are released at the back-end. It increases the sales overall, and makes it that much more profitable a venture. The concept is really no different

NRAMA: Kurt, you're coming into Yen Press with years of experience as a graphic novel buyer for the Borders Group. What made you decide to come over from the book buying field to publishing?

KH: I really love buying; it was a great job, honestly, and could have seen myself doing it for another 20-30 years very happily. But there seems to be an opportunity in the mark to really establish a sprawling new graphic novel imprint given how rapidly the market is growing and general market opportunities I saw not being exploited. It was a great chance to work with a colleague, Rich Johnson, whom I've been friends with for years. It was sort of the perfect storm of opportunity I would say. [laughs]

[render man]

Love the anthology idea, as long as it's different than Shonen Jump, which I find awful, I'll try it out.

[00scotty]

I looked up the titles and Black God sounds good, and there are two with the name Spiral so ??? Anyway when are the first volumes expected?

[Akcoll99]

Originally Posted by 00scotty

I looked up the titles and Black God sounds good, and there are two with the name Spiral so ??? Anyway when are the first volumes expected?

Are you thinking of Spiral and Mugen Spiral? Mugen Spiral is a short shoujo/girls comics from TOKYOPOP. The Spiral title being released by Yen Press is a mystery/adventure series that was turned into an anime that FUNimation released a couple years ago. The anime was good, but left off with almost none of the main mysteries solved. So alot of people like me have been waiting for the manga to get licensed so we can finally see how the story turns out past where the anime left off...