Tag Archives: Kickstarter

Review: Barbara

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BarbaraBarbara
Written and Illustrated by Osamu Tezuka
Genre: Geikiga/Seinen
Publisher: Digital Manga Publishing
440 pages | $19.99 US
ISBN-13: 978-1569702826

I’m giving away a copy of this book as part of a series of holiday giveaways (check out the details here!)

Barbara has a very unique story as far as manga published in the West. The simple recap is that is it is the first volume of manga to be successfully published using Digital Manga Publishing‘s Kickstarter initiative. This has included 4 seperate Osamu Tezuka titles, with Barbara being the first, and UNICO, Astrocat, and Triton of the Sea being the others. DMP has also used Kickstarter to reprint Tezuka’s Swallowing the Earth.

Barbara is the story of Yosuke Mikura, an up-and-coming writer who, while in the tunnels of the Shinjuku station, finds a drunkard who can recite French poetry. He takes her home, and the rest of the volume are tales of the two together (and apart).

In some ways, Barbara shows the progression of Tezuka’s craft. In this comic, the beginning is rather segmented. The first five chapters might as well be short stories played with the two actors Barbara and Yosuke. Chapter six is where things start to get interesting. An old friend of Yosuke’s, an African writer, reveals to him that Barbara is a Muse who takes a suitable form to inspire artists and writers. Yosuke is originally incredulous, but things become more and more strange – and as the book progresses, the writing improves. Instead of being segmented, the story becomes continuous, and you don’t feel like you can read one or two chapters and set the book down.

While there are definite colors of “The Tales of Hoffmann” here (a muse visits and inspires an artist and has him fall in love with her), I can’t help but feel that Tezuka was also pulled into writing about an ongoing occult craze. The beginning of the book is much more classically oriented, and as it progresses, we see voodoo dolls and sacred witchcraft ceremonies. The two halves are disjointed. This doesn’t make it bad – the last section of the book is a real page-turner. But people looking for a straightforward story are likely to be disappointed.

This manga certainly falls in line with some of Tezuka’s crazier work (Swallowing the Earth being the prime example here) but isn’t quite as unrestrained, and while it is heavy handed with its discussion of art, the spirit of production, etc. it doesn’t seem to push the themes of moral decay and humanity the way that some of his other adult works have (Ayako, MW, Ode to Kirihito). Yosuke is presented as a sexual deviant in the first chapters of the book, and that theme of deviance could have been critiqued or used as theme in a fuller way, but it seems to have been abandoned for voodoo dolls and a black mass.

Overall, Barbara is fascinating and bizarre. While it isn’t as structurally sound or thematically deep as some of his other adult works, it certainly stands up as a piece of fiction. Tezuka lovers will find this an indispensable part of their collection, and casual readers can find a lot to love, provided you are ready for the crazy.

For Fans Of: Swallowing the Earth, Osamu Tezuka, The Venus of Willendorf
Final Verdict: Recommended

More Thoughts on Kickstarter

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Earlier this week, Digital Manga Publishing (@digitalmanga)’s UNICO Kickstarter fund hit its $20,500 publishing goal. This means, without snags or any unforeseen problems along the way, DMP will be publishing UNICO at the end of 2012, and will likely be publishing Tezuka’s A•TOMCAT in March of 2013 if the project meets its $26,000 funding goal.

As it was last time, voices have come out from the blogging community (Chris Butcher, Comics212, Johanna DC, Comics Worth Reading) questioning the use of the crowdsourcing platform Kickstarter. Last time we discussed the use of the Kickstarter platform, it was about the use of Kickstarter and its emotional heft, the use of guilt and marketing, my thoughts on the fan’s ability to commission work, and it eventually led to a fantastic discussion on Manga Out Loud with Digital Manga’s own Ben Applegate.

Christopher Butcher made some very pointed remarks in regards to the use of the platform for publishing that Johanna echoed:

- The basic acts of publishing are printing and promotion. If you are a publisher but you can’t print or promote, are you still a publisher? Some very smart people say yes, and I’m honestly not sure, because you’re unable to fulfill your basic roles and are counting on others to do that, and that’s where my conflict is.

As I, and many other more eloquent people of mentioned, the act of publishing a Japanese comic is not merely printing and promotion. the act of licensing the book, translating the original language into English, lettering and cleaning the art, quality control, and project management are all a large part of what a publisher does with a manga project: this is just the stuff that is apparent to me, someone who is not a part of the industry.

The question again comes back to what was originally posed in our original debates – if the “publisher” does not accept any of the risk associated with the printing of material, are they actually a publisher? To get to my answer, we need some background information.

Kickstarter plays by a completely different set of economic rules that the regular capital market. In the “old” publishing world, a publisher takes a risk on a property and decides to publishing it. Depending on the format, the author might get an advance on royalties and the publisher has to print the book; in the case of manga, there is an upfront licensing fee, all the costs to adapt the work for an English-speaking audience, and a printing fee. The publisher fronts the risk on this property and hopes/expects to get their money back from sales on that property.

Kickstarter changes the math significantly by changing the initiating question. In business, we ask the question, “Will this sell?” Kickstarter has no qualms about selling or not selling. Kickstarter’s question is, “Do enough people want this to happen?” This difference impacts the entire process of publishing. The change in question manipulates the model in such a way that we are moving from a supply and demand style economic system to a commission-based system.

I think that any person who is focused on “what a publisher is” or “publisher’s responsibility” or who has said anything like, “I don’t think DMP should be using Kickstarter because they are an actual publisher,” misunderstands the basis from which Kickstarter is working from and the fundamental change in monetary need. If you are working on Kickstarter, you are no longer working in the direct market model.  You can pull books back into that model later, but once you are in a Kickstarter, you are operating outside of  that model for as long as you have pledges to fulfill.

I’ve had my words about commission-based systems before, but for publishing, I will put it simply – while the Kickstarter system isn’t the most ideal (there is a lack of consumer protections, for example) it is a form of commerce that has existed for thousands of years. Consumers are still purchasing books; the publisher is still printing books. The format of how money exchanges hands changes, and how risk is applied changes, but that direct relationship, where the publisher creates a bound book, and I buy it, does not change. As long as that relationship is intact, and with the other duties that a publisher must perform (as previously mentioned) I feel it is downright silly to say that a publisher isn’t “real” because they are using Kickstarter.

TL;DR – a publisher using Kickstarter as its funding source? Still a publisher.

This is not even mentioning Kickstarter’s other potential uses for a large company, such as potential for publicity/marketing, research, community outreach, etc., which I don’t have the space to get into today.
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However, this isn’t the only content bouncing around the web right now.

To complicate things, some publishers have also voiced their opinions about the Kickstarter platform:

While Manga University’s opinion originally seemed to be just a bunch of sour grapes, after a bit of thinking, the line of thought is very valid. Twitter right now is a veritable tweet-storm of content regarding DMP’s efforts to get UNICO published and all the fans ticking down the dollar count. Certainly there is no storm of attention surrounding the release of one of Manga University’s “How to Draw Manga” books.

I think that the reason for this is the way fans currently interact with properties and artists that they love. Fans of a specific manga (say Negima! for example) have the ability to interact with other readers via chat boards or forums online, interact with the writer in some cases by sending letters or fan mail; they can manipulate the content by writing or drawing fan fiction; they can meet up with other fans at conventions to discuss the series. They can buy merchandise, buy the manga, buy anime spin-offs, and even buy a second manga spin off if they so choose. They can try to interact with the publisher by sending letters or meeting them at big comic conventions.

Something that is missing from this list that Kickstarter allows fans access to? The ability to impact the publication of the final manga. This allows fans to get into a whole new level. They have the ability now to pledge to help their favorite (or even not so favorite publisher) get a book they want from concept to the printer. They have the ability to get cool backers-only rewards. There is a feeling of direct involvement in the project even without having a say in the production values or images or anything of that nature.

DMP has actually stepped it up by allowing a select number of people to be on the UNICO and  A•TOMCAT Steering Committees, which, for all intents and purposes, allow fans to become even more entrenched in the workings of the publisher. This is hands-on in a way that most fans can only dream of, and it stands to reason why some people are very excited about these Kickstarter projects.

Ed Chavez, from Vertical, pointed out that his issue stemmed not from the Kickstarter platform itself, but rather from the content:

One could easily argue here that DMP has essentially been exploiting the hard work that Vertical has done for the past 7+ years bringing quality Tezuka products to an English speaking audience. Indeed, Tezuka’s works are generally thought to be good enough sellers that they could be sold using the regular publishing model.

But this brings up the differences between two publishers, and an area of speculation I don’t really care to walk into; the way that Vertical does business compared to the way DMP does business is fascinating, but ultimately, the decisions they make are theirs.

Ed seems to be making the point that Kickstarter is a fine platform for works that are tenuous, risky, or have the potential to fail, but Tezuka is none of those things. I tend to agree, although DMP may differ based on their financials or printing estimates. That being said, Tezuka is a powerful brand. His work commands an amount of attention only held by three or four other mangaka in English-speaking countries right now. It seems to me that any book published with the Tezuka name would sell a decent number of copies. What is less clear is whether most companies would take a “traditional risk” on a majority of these titles. Ed has gone on record saying Vertical would only like to publish another “half-a-dozen Tezuka titles,” meaning that something like a Kickstarter campaign from DMP might be the only way to get a Tezuka fix in the near future.

I think that what DMP is doing with Tezuka titles here is great. But, as some have mentioned, DMP runs the risk of killing the goose that lays the golden eggs if they continue to run Kickstarter campaigns focused only on Tezuka material. I would love to see DMP utilize Kickstarter for josei and seinen projects outside the scope of Tezuka, and hope to see that in the next Kickstarter campaign.
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Kickstarter is a fantastic tool; but as a tool for publishers, it is one that if not used properly, could fall by the wayside. I think that the newness of Kickstarter campaigning and the strength of the Tezuka brand have a lot to do with the recent successes of current Kickstarter programs. It is certainly not something that will fix all the ills of the manga publishing industry, nor will it be the tool that revives all of the long lost licenses still stuck in limbo. It may offer a solution to some publishers in order to print a select number of products, and it hopefully will allow publishers to explore less traditional content. I am looking forward to a less well known manga series being presented in a Kickstarter campaign before I make any longer-term prognostications about its use long term in the industry.

A Discussion on Crowd-Sourcing and Digital Manga’s Barbara Kickstarter Campaign

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This weekend, I learned that Digital Manga Publishing had started a new Kickstarter project to publish a previously unlicensed unpublished manga in English. The work is Barbara, one of Osamu Tezuka’s adult-oriented works that have been the source of much of Vertical Inc.’s manga success. While the project has funded itself very quickly, there have been some skeptical voices, including Lissa Patillo at Kuriosity.ca.

I respect Lissa quite a bit for her work in manga blogging, and we’ve had the opportunity to talk about manga on Ed Sizemore’s Manga Out Loud podcast. The business of publishing is something Lissa and I both have a lot of interest in, and Lissa has essentially revealed herself as an “old soul” of publishing mentality in our podcast, while I consider myself more progressive, at least in matters of digital publishing. Lissa has been an excellent community member, and has done me a great service in multiple occasions by helping me get copies of comics from Canada that I would not otherwise have access to in the United States.

Why do I preface my entire article with all of this? Because while I think that Lissa is a great person and a wonderful member of the manga blogging community, I absolutely and vehemently disagree with her entire argument against Kickstarter campaigns, and I want to present the opposite argument without offering any personal insult.

What I want to argue in this article is that there is a stark difference between what the use of Kickstarter actually means for manga fans and the perceived attacks on fandom that have been presented by Lissa’s article. I feel that the bulk of Lissa’s argument is predicated on the idea that the traditions of analogue publishing are the only correct way to publish content, or that the publisher has an obligation to the traditional methods of licensing and publishing content in English. I disagree.

The Barbara Kickstarter campaign offers manga fanatics and Tezuka appreciators the ability to commission the translation and print of a volume of manga currently not published in English. I use the word commission because this is really what is happening with the Kickstarter campaign system. DMP is essentially saying “If you give us X dollars, we will do this project, and we can give you access to our process and input into the final product.”

Commissions are a vital part of the art industry, and comic publishing to a very large extent is a system of commercial art that does not run on this system.  There have been recent Kickstarter campaigns, such as Womanthology, Ashes, the Transmetropolitan Art Book, and The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath and Other Stories, to name a few, that have challenged the idea of comic publishing as an industry with traditional methods of content delivery.

With the Barbara Kickstarter campaign, DMP is essentially asking for a commission for a book. This is unorthodox considering what the traditional publishing model is (the publisher licenses material, translates, edits, typesets, and prints it, then sells it to bookstores and hopes to recoup its costs and make a profit). Just because this system is unorthodox does not make it bad. In fact, being able to have input in the way that the industry works and makes decisions offers fans the direct ability to be involved and get something that they want.

As publishers of Japanese content continue to dwindle in the United States, DMP is making a small move from the traditional publishing model to a commission model because commissions are what work for microniche consumer materials. We are at a place in the anime and manga industry that is stressful for publishers, because one flop, like Bandai’s overproduction of the Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya product, could lead to the failure of that company. DMP is readjusting its game plan to determine what markets will bear prior to taking the intial risk by asking consumers – something that no manga publisher has truly done before. This is a smart business move.

The idea of crowd sourcing risk has been a standard practice in the wider business community for a long time. The crowd-sourced model that DMP has adopted is a much more open and malleable process than the standard operating procedures of the banking, credit, and private equity industries. Also, unlike those systems, where you take on the risk without being explicitly made aware of it, you are being made aware of that risk when using Kickstarter.

Lissa makes some strong arguments about the role of publishers in the market. She states that Kickstarter is a program for individuals without corporate backing, and that traditional publishers should continue to publish manga traditionally. I have two issues with this statement. The first is that this argument denies the publisher the ability to experiment and change the relationship between producer and consumer. Experimentation, trying new business models is one way that microniche publishers like DMP can stay ahead of a recession economy, and continue to publish.

Second of all, as a rule, companies do generally take risks and hope that these risks lead to sales and a positive income. Just because that is what happens now, does not mean that is what DMP has to do. They do not NEED to bear the risks of a new title because they are a traditional publisher. They are under no obligation to do so. If DMP has a program that allows consumers to decide whether they want to pay for a possible license, it is perfectly fine for them to do so. This tradition of “risk to profits” in business only exists because it was the only way business could be done until the past 2-3 decades. If you as a consumer do not like the model that the publisher uses, then you do not need to purchase their products. But it is not an obligation for a company to take risk.

In fact, many other small businesses are using Kickstarter to produce content. Small Box Games is a great example of a small board-game publishing company that is using Kickstarter to fund games like Omen of War – and other companies are doing projects like this more and more frequently as time passes.

Lissa takes crowd-based risk a little personally, I think – she states that because the impetus to publish Barbara is left to the fan, the fan is accountable for the failure of it to meet its goals.

“There is definitely excitement and enthusiasm from fans fueling this drive, but it also feels like driving the pledging frenzy is the underlying sense of guilt and worry. After all, if you don’t pledge, you may never see the book. If you don’t pledge, it means you don’t want the manga at all. If you don’t promote this book you’ve likely never read and this initiative you only have on a promise will deliver, there will be no book. If Digital Manga Publishing isn’t able to create and print this book it is your fault.”

I think this is a gross overstatement of the relationship between the publisher and its customers. Never in a million years would DMP blame customers for not supporting a Kickstarter campaign. That’s the easiest way to go out of business that I can currently think of.

You have no obligation as a manga reader, consumer, or even as a Tezuka fan to purchase or fund Kickstarter campaigns. If you have doubts about the system, that is your chance to not purchase, not make that jump. If you decide not to buy from Kickstarter, you have made your choice as a consumer. That’s your right.

The idea that guilt is an emotion that should be considered in the use of Kickstarter projects is farfetched. In no other industry is there guilt associated with not buying an item because the manufacturer or project will fail if you don’t. This is antithetical to the idea of modern business – if the project/product does not succeed, it is not your failure as a consumer. It is a failure of the business to meet the wants/needs of the consumer.

Feeling guilt about not buying into Kickstarter because you think the project will fail is equivalent to the false guilt for allowing certain titles like Gintama die. Gintama didn’t succeed as a business venture and was cancelled. If you didn’t buy it, it was because you didn’t want it. Why should you feel guilty if the product is discontinued? Neither of these is a rational view on the relationship between a consumer and a producer.

I have discussed my thoughts on traditional publishing with Lissa and many of the manga blogging community, but as a restatement here, I feel that traditional publishing is becoming antiquated in this largely digital world. There are certainly products that can exist without direct consumer input, but in a microniche world, this is becoming less and less the case.

The way we license product from Japan is an antiquated system that is being threatened in a small but significant manner.  As we move forward in the next 10 years, it is my hope that licensing and publishing in the United States continues to grow out of the system created in the 90’s and in a more open, more consumer-oriented way. For this reason, I fully support the Kickstarter campaign that DMP is running and will continue to support these projects provided that the product they are offering is something I want to buy.

And if I don’t buy? Well, I won’t be feeling guilty about it.

A 2011 Manga Widget Retrospective and Thoughts for 2012

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2011 was a fantastic year for me. I effectively doubled the content on my blog, and managed to do so while earning my Doctor of Pharmacy degree, starting a post-graduate residency, getting married, and conducting a large scale research project focused on patient compliance. It has been a busy year. It has also been a great year for me in terms of my hobbies. I have read quite a few volumes of good manga, have expanded my beer brewing setup and have done all of this while blogging and doing other writing that I love. As we reach the end of the old year, and the beginning of the new, it seems customary for bloggers to wrap up their years with a “Best of 2011″ list, and I was going to write one of these yesterday.

As I worked over my list, I came upon a sort of realization: blogging in general has a sort of perverse relationship with top 10 lists. Blogging is by its nature very quick and unseasoned. It can be excellent journalism, but more often than not is an assortment of opinions and a few pictures. Top 10 lists do this excellently. There are plenty of pictures, plenty of opinions, and it all turns into one quick article very nicely. Badda bing, badda boom. But this seems to have generated a sort of “need to make a top 10 list” mentality that many people are so quick to mention or notice, and some people have broken down the general formula of the list post and displayed it for all to see in a sort of “dissected-frog” sort of way.

I appreciate the idea of a backwards glance at the year as much as the next person, but there are plenty of great Top 10 lists already on the internet. (Your local flavor may vary) So instead of a Top Ten list, I just want instead to talk about things that I thought were important in 2011, along with a few thoughts for 2012.

1. Digital manga becomes mainstream:

The biggest change to manga in 2011, in my opinion, is the push towards the digital medium. We have been seeing a bit of this for some time, but with the advent of the iPad and the B&N nook, Viz Media, Yen Press, and Kodansha have started releasing a quantity of their manga into the digital realm for download. Viz shuttered Shonen Jump magazine, and announced the start of Weekly Shonen Jump Alpha, a weekly digital anthology offering the weekly releases of the newest shonen manga in Japan. Yen Press also moved Yen Plus online in 2010 and has continued to publish the magazine with seeming success.

Gen Manga, an online anthology of seinen manga written by independent mangaka in Japan, has also jumped into the fray this year and has released an impressive lineup of seinen manga available monthly in a very accessible format. The content delivered by Gen Manga is easily accessible on most devices, and its relatively low price has made it a great investment as far as entertainment/dollars spent goes. I have been extremely impressed with the latest releases, and hope that great content continues to grow and increase. Gen Manga is one of the first digital hybrid models, where content is released first digitally and then can be printed on demand once the content has been collected.

The other big digital player this year was JManga, which opened its doors this summer. While I feel JManga had an okay starting platform, it is clear that there is a lot of work that needs to be done this year if they are going to survive as a digital content provider. Digital content has a price ceiling, and it seems as though JManga has realized that. Still, the major problem with the platform right now is a lack of continuation of content already on the service, and hopefully that will change in 2012. Additionally, JManga can only do itself good if it releases apps for the Apple and Android devices in 2012.

2. DMP utilizes Kickstarter to reprint Swallowing the Earth:

While this may not seem like much on the surface, I feel like microniche publishing has now found a unique and powerful tool to publish what would normally be considered unpublishable manga in the United States and all across the world. Microniche publishing through crowd-sourced funding can be the source of some really off-beat and fantastic comics, and I hope that DMP and other publishers try to use the Kickstarter model to their own advantage.

Think about Kickstarter as the method to get josei manga published in English. Just think about that for a second. Or, if you would prefer, how about obscure horror manga, classic shojo, or yuri? Kickstarter has proven to be a successful market for comics, and if Swallowing the Earth is any indication, DMP will be using the service again to fund future projects.

3. TOKYOPOP shuttered, Stu Levy sells TOKYOPOP brand to GeekChicDaily:

TOKYOPOP, the publisher I loved to hate, and sometimes loved, shut down after being one of the longest-lived companies in the business. While financial woes were certainly caused by the 2011 Borders closing, it also seemed as though Stu Levy was tired of publishing books. He is now off in Japan shooting a documentary of the hurricane disaster from this year.

I can understand not wanting to stick with something for your entire life. People’s interests change over time, and I can’t blame someone for wanting to stop doing what they have been doing. However, I do think that TOKYOPOP didn’t need Stu Levy at the helm to publish books, and I think shutting down the company instead of selling it or transitioning it to another CEO or publisher would have been more pleasant for the community.

The real nail in the coffin is the GeekChicDaily newsletter, which it appears Levy has sold the TOKYOPOP name to, utilizing what I am sure is the last ounce of public goodwill towards Levy for either a license or a lump sum payment for the name. Additionally, TOKYOPOP has promised to return to publishing comics, however nothing has really come of this except promises for more work and pleas for purchases of old content from current retailers. Hmmmmmmm.

4. Kodansha prints money with Sailor Moon:

This is a series that many people have been waiting on for quite some time, and Kodansha took advantage of its reverted TOKYOPOP rights to republish a new set of reprints of the books, which quickly sold out and went to second printing. It appears that a lot of people who liked the Sailor Moon anime as kids (me being one of those kids) wanted to read the manga and didn’t want to fiddle with the old versions that TOKYOPOP printed in the early 2000′s.

5. Less content was published in 2011:

This is mostly a function of a stagnant economy, the shuttering of TOKYOPOP, and the closure of Borders Booksellers, but it bears repeating that manga publishing is down from where it was in its peak days and even down from two years ago. As a function of this publishing environment, it seems as though more risky titles are not getting an opportunity in the USA, at least from larger publishers. New shonen releases have been fairly formulaic, which is fine, but some of the diversity of previous years is sorely lacking this year.

6. But even though less was published, there was still some fantastic new content published in 2011:

New series or one-shots include: A Bride’s Story, Drops of God, Onwards Towards Our Noble Deaths, A Zoo in Winter, Wandering Son

Continuing series of note include 20th Century Boys, Bunny Drop, Chi’s Sweet Home, Cross Game, and Twin Spica

7. And I am looking forward to some fantastic comics in 2012:

Books that have been announced that are sure to please: Heart of Thomas, Sakuran, 5 Centimeters Per Second, A Message to Adolf, Fallen Words, Cigarette Girl

Continuing Series I’ll be reading in in 2012 not already mentioned: Sailor Moon, Blue Exorcist, The Story Saiunkoku, Kimi ni Todoke, Itazura na Kiss

I hope that everyone has a fantastic new year, and that this year is a great year for manga. I am looking forward to reading more great comics in 2012!

Kickstarter: The New Model of the Micro-Niche?

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While I was busy preparing to host the Natsume Ono Moveable Manga Feast,  Digital Manga Publishing Inc. announced a Kickstarter project to bring about another print run of Osamu Tezuka’s Swallowing The Earth, a one-shot tome of early Tezuka work from 1968 that had received a very short print run due to publishing costs. The book has been praised by many in the blogosphere, and its short-printed status means that currently, a first print copy of Swallowing the Earth will run you somewhere in the neighborhood of $60 USD – that’s double-plus MSRP (originally $24.95 in 2009). This is actually cheaper than it was 6 months ago, before the Kickstarter was announced – a “new” copy of Swallowing the Earth in March was running more around the $75-80 mark. Which is frankly absurd. But Tezuka fans will be Tezuka fans, and I, being one of those fans, had been building up a small budget for the book, until the DMP announcement.

Other bloggers have talked about Kickstarter – Johanna Draper Carlson being the most prominent, having voiced her opinions about the platform multiple times. While I agree with some of her cautionary words, I also am interested in crowd-sourcing as an idea, and the idea brought onto the consumer’s stage by DMP is the idea of niche-publishing.

Ben Applegate of DMP has gone on the record in this Kickstarter video, saying:

So in order to get [Swallowing the Earth] back out there, to let people read this really important book, not only in the history of Osamu Tezuka, but in the history of manga as well, we’ve come to Kickstarter as a new way to fund manga publishing in the United States. If this Kickstarter is successful, and we’re able to get this book back out in to people’s hands, you’re going to see more, not only reprints of older titles, but also possibly even new titles coming over from Japan aimed at a niche audience in the United States that would never have been brought over by a publisher otherwise.

The emphasis here is my own, but I think it is safe to say that Digital Manga has high hopes for a Kickstarter-like crowd sourcing model. I have high hopes for it too, which is primarily why I backed the Kickstarter (as you may have noticed from the image of the site above.) Kickstarter is a unique tool that allows a publishing company with ties in the Japanese manga business to attempt to bring manga to the United States in a way that puts relatively little risk on the publishing company. I can understand why this is important – small companies like DMP that have small operating budgets need to invest in titles that can sustain a business. For Digital Manga, that means the niche audience of yaoi, and the occasional non-yaoi comic.

As a person who reads more independent and niche manga (Bunny Drop, A Bride’s Story, Velveteen and Mandala), I am interested in seeing more content from Japan that meets my tastes and expectations. I would love to see more josei manga printed in the United States, and am willing to put my money where my mouth is. Digital Manga if you publish josei manga on Kickstarter – you have a loyal customer in me. I understand that josei is a micro-niche of manga – but this is the type of content that can thrive in  a crowd-sourced publishing system, where those that want it can buy into it, and create that opportunity for publishing that so many josei titles have been missing.

Now, I think it’s a fair criticism to ask- if you aren’t going to publish a book using your own budget, do you really need to be a book publisher? The answer here is a resounding “not necessarily.” With the appropriate contacts and contracts, it is within the realm of possibility for me to license and sell manga through the platform of Kickstarter. The thing that Digital Manga brings to the table is an honesty and a reliability as a company that has and continues to publish quality manga.

Also safe to say here that DMP‘s views on crowd-sourcing are not necessarily the same as my own. They may use Kickstarter to fund reprints exclusively, or print more yaoi manga. But my hope is that the company lives up to Ben’s words and uses the success of this first Kickstarter project to fuel the licensure and publishing of underrepresented content.

Digital Manga Publishing is on the bleeding edge of publishing. The Kickstarter initiative, in addition to the Digital Manga Guild, are two projects that may not succeed in the long term – but this type of innovation is bringing content to readers in a way that no other publisher is trying, and it is this sort of innovation that may become the new and best model for the micro-niche in years to come. I am looking forward to the results.

Especially in February of 2012, when I get a brand new copy of Swallowing the Earth shipped to me because of this Kickstarter pledge.