Manga Industry Insights: Building a List

So you have a new manga imprint… now what?

That was the question my colleagues and I faced about six months ago when we were deciding which direction to go with this new manga imprint housed within a very large publishing company. There was a lot of advice bouncing around from a lot of experts in the industry. Advice like pick a single lane (i.e. josei) and focus entirely on that, establish yourself, and then branch out. Or the complete opposite—scattershot and see what sticks, then follow where the success is. And a lot of in-between—picking a couple lanes, leaning more commercial or literary, etc.

There’s not necessarily a wrong answer to picking an approach, but it’s not a decision to be made lightly, because once you do it, once you launch those first few series, you’re making a statement. You really only get one chance to launch a new line of manga, and to do it clearly and conclusively. To tell the world what you’re all about. That’s hard to do when you’re not really picking a lane (which was essentially our approach), but also not really.

What we’re focusing on is similar storytelling aspects—emotional depth with commercial hooks, art that would appeal to a wide audience while still taking risks, characters that pop for the complexities of their personality not because of… other factors. To oversimplify, our lane is good storytelling. Superior storytelling, if I may be so bold.

But the other challenge that arises from this is, since we’re driving on a 100 lane highway, we keep having to ensure we are covering as many lanes as possible with just a handful of titles. Titles that are all completely different, yet have some connective tissue between them that can all speak to the same brand on their spine.

On the one hand, operating without any real boundaries allows you to search far and wide and fill in the spots as you go. Which may seem easy, and in a lot of ways, I would actually say that this particular aspect was easy, but it was also a bit daunting knowing that you could lean anywhere so long as it told a good story. That’s like the difference between saying, “I like good movies” and “I like good movies with historical settings, anti-heroes and coming of age plots.” It’s a lot easier to pick a movie for that second person. Though no such movie comes to mind at the moment.

On the other hand, the necessity of making sure we publish titles that can cover all or most readerships is like putting together a puzzle when you only have so many pieces, and the rest of the pieces will come by mail slowly over the course of the next five or so years.

For instance, if I go grab a high fantasy manga and plug that in as one of the five titles we’re launching with, ideally, we won’t have another title that leans into fantasy too heavily, if at all. There’s only so much overlap before a title feels redundant with something else on the list.

Now, when you get to the size of a place like Viz or Kodansha or Yen, obviously that changes. They still go through the same processes of ensuring that all readerships are spoken for, but with such a massive backlist and a slew of resources to allow for hundreds of books a year, their task looks more like filling small windows here and there and weaving the tapestry of their brand even tighter.

But then you look at a new imprint like Takumigraphics, the new manga line from Fantagraphics, and they have gone squarely literary manga. So their highway has a few lanes, overlap is expected, brand recognition is clear and concise. Smaller tapestry, but no less clear.

In that sense, back to our humble new imprint, we’re asking each title to do more. So set the framework of a tapestry we’ll be weaving over time. Returning to that hypothetical high fantasy title—it would be amazing if it also had a mystery element and perhaps a romantic undercurrent. More bang for your buck, even though I hate that phrase.

And if the spooky horror we’re adding alongside also has a dystopian setting and some darker themes, then we’re just ticking so many little boxes all here at the same time. You’re covering more readerships. You’re spreading across more lanes. Weaving more threads. I’m juggling a lot of metaphors here. More puzzle pieces. Someone stop me.

We won’t have every lane covered when we launch in—let me check the calendar—less than a month. Those of you out there begging for a time-traveling supernatural romance with themes of classism and an atmospheric small town setting may have to bear with us while we fill the gaps over time, but we’ll do our best to touch on a least one or two of those aspects in other titles. I promise.