Forum - View topicNEWS: Shogakukan, Shueisha to Directly Publish in Europe
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Moomintroll
 Posts: 1600 Location: Nottingham (UK) |
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That's fair enough. I wasn't wanting to start an argument - I was just vouching for the robust good health of the mother tongue. 
Incidentally, do the Japanese and Chinese specify that teachers should teach American English or is it just more common because of the larger number of American teachers / greater American cultural influence in those countries? I've known a few British people who went to teach (Standard) English in both China and Japan but I have no idea whether their employers didn't recognise the differences or just weren't much bothered by them. |
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Tiamats Reviews
 Posts: 12 |
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If you wanted to get technicle american english is just a basrardised uk english. There's really very little difference between them. The only major difference is the use of the s and z in certain words. Both are still based on the same gramar rules. Also american english isnt the only language used for teaching in asia. The UK has 6 schools who specialise in training people to teach english abroad. Anyway, back on topic. To me this is a good thing. Viz have been ignoring the european market for ages. They make token and pathetic atempts every few years, then blame the fans when they don't work. Hopefully this will give them a kick in the rump and make them take notice. Also, UK libraries do not carry much in the way of manga. In truth most councils have told libraries not to carry manga to head of any trouble over the content. Most of the stuff they carry is predominantly superman, batman etc etc. The main branch libraries, such as in london etc etc do cary a small selection, but they're not on the replace list.
Waterstones has an agreement with several american distributors, so titles that arent officialy available in the UK can and are shipped in from the US. Looking at my Holic titles only 2 of them are Tanoshimi, the rest are all Del Rey.
I doubt it'll have much impact on the US market, since none of the US publishers really care about the UK/european market. To date only Yen PRess is doing dual releases. On the UK side of things though it will, hopefully, have a huge impact as manga becomes more readily available, atleast manga that would come from those companies. What i can see happening is more titles that have been overlooked being released, and a lot more niche manga and novels as well. However i don't really see it having an impact on the price. Manga in the UK especially, is rediculasly cheap. xxxHolic vol 12 cost me £3.99, and the most expensive was i've bought was Enchanter, which was £5.99. Even the likes of Apple ($34.99) and Robot ($24.95) can be bought fro less than a tenner. If anything i can see the prices rising, and becoming more regulated, which wouldn't be a bad thing. |
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Moomintroll
Posts: 1600 Location: Nottingham (UK) |
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They carry less than libraries in the US but the quantity is growing - it's vastly increased over what was on offer a decade ago.
Do you have a source for that? It sounds like fanboy paranoia. None of the library services I have experience working for has any such policy. And even if they had, it would be the library service's policy, not a council policy handed down from on high. One of the chief aims of UK libraries is retention of teenagers. We generally have no problems getting children excited about libraries but once they hit 14 or so, we rarely see them again until they're bringing in children of their own. Manga is seen as being a good tool for retaining teens (albeit one that's not being wielded all that effectively right now) and library services generally take quite a positive view of manga for that reason.
The mixture of graphic novels stocked is changing gradually (basically as a result of demographic preferences and an increasing awareness of those trends by librarians) but even as things stand, in terms of volumes, we stock more manga than superhero books. Fact of the matter is, the collected volumes of the Simpsons comic do far better than either in terms of frequency of withdrawal.
Manga's already available in all the major retail book outlets (highstreet and online), comic shops and public libraries (plus many school libraries). How much more available can it be? Besides which, the existing UK publishers are mostly already owned by enormous multinational publishing houses (Gollancz Manga is owned by Orion which is part of Hachette Livre which in turn is part of an enormous corporation called The Lagardère Group; Tanoshimi is owned by Random House which is a subsidiary of Bertelsmann AG - the largest publisher in the world). I have absolutely no problem with Japanese companies directly entering the UK market but I can't really see them achieving much more in terms of market penetration than is already being achieved by the aforementioned corporate behemoths.
Again, what's going to change? Everything that's released in the US, niche or otherwise, is readily available in the UK and they are highly unlikely to release titles for the UK that they don't release in the US - the US market's about 10 times the size.
Prices are cheap here because most manga is imported from the US (or, if produced locally, is competing with manga imported from the US) and the dollar is weak. If the dollar bounces back, expect manga to become more expensive in a hurry. The only way UK prices could be divorced from US prices would be if the US distributors were prevented from exporting to the UK (thus eliminating the competition). Even if that were to happen - and I doubt it will - ordering direct from retailers in the US would still be a viable option. |
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BleuVII
 Posts: 672 Location: Tokorozawa, Japan |
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Oh, there are plenty of people from the UK, Australia, and New Zealand here. It's not discriminatory in Japan (Korea is a different story; they require a phone interview before hiring, and have been known to reject candidates based on their dialect of English). It's just that, because of Hollywood, the "standard" American English (doesn't include strong dialects like the southern drawl, inner city, or east coast) has become very familiar with people. So, in textbooks, you are more likely to see words like "hood" and "trunk" rather than "bonnet" and "boot", or "elevator" instead of "lift."
To call one bastardized and the other pure is to make the claim that UK English is exactly the same as it was in the 1700's, which is when the two started to drift from one another. But, it isn't. Language always evolves over time, especially when the language has an open system for creating new words, like English. [this means that it's perfectly acceptable to create new words for new things. Some languages, like Korean, don't have this option; their only option is to import words from other languages] Anyway, to be technical, American English and UK English have a common linguistic ancestor, but they evolved in different ways. In older times, the two would eventually drift into two different languages that are still mutually understandable, like Norwegian and Swedish or Portuguese and Spanish [in both examples, speakers from the one can understand the other, but they are nonetheless separate]. However, in this Global Age, who knows what will happen? Anyway, I'd like to try to get this back on topic, but I can't think of how to. Go Sueisha and Shogakukan! I wonder if last week's posting of Bakuman in four languages is related to this. |
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Tiamats Reviews
Posts: 12 |
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I have a colleague who works for the libraries in somerset. She was telling me that manga is a low priority because of the costsof replacing (manga has a high theft count) as well as the potential dificulties from over protective parenting (much like what's happening in the US). While it is true they're carrying more, it's only titles such as Bleach and Naruto. However they have very limited budget for manga/graphic novels, and have been told to cater for the home grown stuff such as batman, simpsons etc etc. It's the same accross the board apparently, or thats what she tells me. And given she's been a librarian all her life, has worked in both London, Brimingham and now somerset, i think she'd be in the know 
True, in the cities. However it's only in the bigger cities you'll find more manga. Once you get further away from the cities the number starts to decline. Last time i checked there was a total of 10 manga volumes across all of somersets libraries, and they're all naruto. Libraries just don't want the cost, or the hassel involved with it. And i can't say i blame them.
Quite a bit actually. The manga avialbility today is through the illegal grey market. over 80% of the titles we buy in the UK aren't legally allowed for sale in the UK. 90% of Viz's titles aren't licensed for the UK, but they;re readily available. Why is that? It's the grey market. Imported by the the likes of Waterstones, Amazon and Book Depository from the states. Rather that having mto wait for them to order it, and have it shipped from the US, having it published in europe would reduce the waiting time, as well as give a true picture of just how strong manga sales are within the UK. At the moment it's pretty much all guess work.
But those publishers are slow to release in the UK. Del Rey/Tanoshimi is one of the better ones, but mostly there's a gap of anywhere upto 6 years for and official UK release of a series. And on many occasions no official UK release period. By the japanese publishers doing it themselves they can do what the american companies have refused to do for decades, cater to the european market. Look at Viz's latest feeble attempt to have an official release in the UK. Buso Renkin, a series that 99% of the people already own. What was the point of releasing a series that most people already have? Simple. They can point to the sales and say the UK demand is low. they've done it several times in the past, and will probably do it again in the future.
How many manga titles do you think are still unlicensed? There's an entire slew of titles that would never be licensed because of cost, or them being to niche for western publishers to take a risk on. Removing the western publishers means that they don't have to worry about absorbing licensing fees, which means they can focus on getting more of the lesser known titles out.
Exactly my point though. Manga is imported!!! I'd rather pay an extra few quid and support a true british release. I'd rather support a compnay that's actively trying to gain a foothold in the british market place, than a company that see's the brits as an after thought.
Never said british was pure, what i said was that american is a bastardisation of british. Yes it's evolved, but due to the similarities between the culture and origins, it hasn't diverged that much (language speaking) |
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Moomintroll
Posts: 1600 Location: Nottingham (UK) |
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Well, it's inevitable that things are going to be a bit different in Somerset. Most decent size cities have a bigger population than your entire county.
If that's so, it's a local policy. That is not the way most library services across the country view things.
Naturally we primarily stock popular shonen and shojo titles - like I said, the aim is to keep 13 and 14 year olds using the service. Besides which, the adult graphic novel sections tend to be pretty dead - adult readers of graphic novels are primarily (a) fairly affluent and (b) collectors. They have the desire and the means to buy the books they want. It's the "young adult" sections that are seeing the major expansion (outside of the rural South-West, evidently...).
They have a very limited budget for everything. The (percieved) advantage of US/UK graphic novels was that they were often self-contained and thus didn't require the money or shelf space to try to retain multiple 20+ volume series in every library in the way that manga appeared to. However, the consensus now is that most kids don't seem to be much bothered by what order they read manga in or whether or not they get the whole series and those that do approach it a little more systematically are encouraged to reserve the volumes they want from other libraries in the service, thus spreading the load.
She may be right about small rural library services but on the national level she's flat out wrong. The fact that she's worked in Birmingham and London isn't relevant unless she's worked in those places within the past few years - this is a new and ongoing process.
City Council library services are generally tied to the corresponding County Council library services (often sharing the same distribution hub and usually co-operating on inter-library reservations). Somerset and a few other counties are exceptions because they have no large city with which to share resources. Here in Nottinghamshire, for example, even small outlying branch libraries have more manga than, going on what you've said, your entire County library service. Sorry mate but your experience is not typical.
It's not illegal. The license holder may not have the rights to actively market or direct sell their products outside North America but the distributors and retailers are not bound by any regional restriction in the licensing agreement. In other words, it would be a breach of contract if Viz sold books directly to my local comic shop. It is not a breach of contract for Viz to sell books to a US distributor and for that distributor to sell books to my local comic shop.
The release dates on Amazon.co.uk, Bookdepository.co.uk and any comics shop that orders via Diamond (i.e. all of them) are generally precisely the same as in the US and Canada. I don't know about Waterstones since I never buy manga there but if they're delaying their release dates it's incompetence, not a result of importation.
That would be true if most UK buyers were importing individually from US retailers but, for the most part, they aren't. The distributors know exactly what they're shipping here and in what numbers.
Yes. But only because the market's not been big enough up to this point to support more aggressive production.
Again, if the market were big enough the existing corporate publishers would already be pushing harder. The question is, can the Japanese do a better job of growing that market than the likes of Random House? They may know the product better but they're completely unfamiliar with the market so I have my doubts.
You can't release everything, even if you have no associated costs - market cannibalisation is what's landed Tokyopop in its current mess. In other words, there are only so many manga fans and they have only so much money - if you release too much they're simply buying one of your titles instead of another of your titles because they can't afford to buy both. We all have unlicensed Japanese titles we'd love to see in English but licensing too many of them too quickly is commercial suicide. Also, in the case of Viz, they're already owned outright by the Japanese publisher so any license fee paid is just the Japanese companies moving money from one account to another - it's still their money.
How is it that a Japanese comic put out by a Japanese publisher and printed in China is a "true British release" but a Japanese comic published by an American publisher and printed in Canada isn't? I don't really see the distinction - and as long as I get the comics I want at a price I'm comfortable paying, I'm not really bothered either way. BleuVII - Thanks for the info. |
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Rolando_jose
 Posts: 240 Location: Ahhhh it's vacation time again! |
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Yes, but the amount of Comics shop its incredible, I saw just in Madrid more manga shops than in Singapore, Finland and maybe more than in Paris or at least a very close number. Rolando |
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