News
Stone Bridge Press Founder Reacquires Company
posted on by Crystalyn Hodgkins
Stone Bridge Press, the California-based publisher that specializes in Asian culture and media, has announced on Tuesday that the company's founder, Peter Goodman, has reacquired the company after selling it to the Japanese book distributor yohan, Inc. in 2005. Goodman bought the company from a former subsidiary of yohan, IBC Publishing of Tokyo, as yohan declared bankruptcy in 2008.
yohan had also bought Cody's Books of Berkeley and San Francisco during the time it owned Stone Bridge, and, according to Goodman, "money that had been planned for Stone Bridge operations instead got diverted to Cody's." Goodman explained this created a shortfall for Stone Bridge "just when it was expanding production to grow. Over time it became clear that IBC needed to concentrate on its own operations in Japan.”
Goodman also said that the company will be exploring new areas such as fiction and inspirational writing, and plans to branch out beyond Japanese and Asian subjects.
Stone Bridge published Henry Yoshitaka Kiyama's The Four Immigrants Manga about the lives of four Japanese men after their immigration to San Francisco in the early 1900s. The manga was translated by Frederik L. Schodt and released in 1999. Stone Bridge's line of titles on anime and manga also includes Schodt's Dreamland Japan: Writings on Modern Manga and his more recent Astro Boy Essays, Helen McCarthy's Hayao Miyazaki: Master of Japanese Animation, Jonathan Clements and McCarthy's Anime Encyclopedia, Gilles Poitras' The Anime Companion books, and Andrew Osmand's Satoshi Kon The Illusionist. The last book was announced in 2008 and released in December 2009.
Source: Stone Bridge Press via Publishers Weekly
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