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Hentai Publisher Fakku Looks Into Sales at Brick-and-Mortar Stores


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zrnzle500



Joined: 04 Oct 2014
Posts: 3767
PostPosted: Tue Feb 28, 2017 1:00 pm Reply with quote
I'm not sure what retailers they are looking into. General retailers I imagine shy away from porn, but it seems a bit niche to sell well at a porn shop, especially when competing against video. I'm not sure if anime stores would want them either, and I can't see general comic stores going for it either. Online retailers seem best for this sort of product giving both the maximum reach for such a niche product and maximum discretion for customer and seller alike.
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CatSword



Joined: 01 Jul 2014
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PostPosted: Tue Feb 28, 2017 1:09 pm Reply with quote
I'd buy Urotsukidoji at Barnes and Noble...in a stack of other manga, so they'd forget to card me. Laughing
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Nyren



Joined: 07 Oct 2014
Posts: 702
PostPosted: Tue Feb 28, 2017 1:14 pm Reply with quote
zrnzle500 wrote:
I'm not sure what retailers they are looking into. General retailers I imagine shy away from porn, but it seems a bit niche to sell well at a porn shop, especially when competing against video. I'm not sure if anime stores would want them either, and I can't see general comic stores going for it either. Online retailers seem best for this sort of product giving both the maximum reach for such a niche product and maximum discretion for customer and seller alike.
Not to mention that, to a normal brick and mortar retailer as well as the average American consumer that might walk in there and browse, hentai could potentially come off as child pornography due to the fact that it primarily features high school students below the age of 18. It's my understanding that hentai kind of sits in a gray area because it's hand drawn, or in the case of the animated variation, it's, well, animated and the characters aren't based on real people, but that doesn't negate the fact that it could cause problems just by the nature of its content. I just find hentai to be a hard sell to brick and mortar stores.
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Parsifal24





PostPosted: Tue Feb 28, 2017 1:17 pm Reply with quote
I could see them selling to independent bookstores or comic shops but I can't really imagine an Barnes And Noble deciding to stock and carry Hentai unless they kept it behind the counter for people who specifically asked for it. Or kept it on the highest shelf out of the reach of children in the Graphic Novel section. I mean Barnes and Noble does carry "traditional" Pornography in the form of magazines.
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leafy sea dragon



Joined: 27 Oct 2009
Posts: 7163
Location: Another Kingdom
PostPosted: Tue Feb 28, 2017 1:23 pm Reply with quote
I was looking at the title of this article and read it--I initially thought they meant Barnes & Noble and such, but yeah, I'm not sure where they intend to sell to. Unless they aim to publish and sell cleaner, more ordinary stuff too.

Nyren wrote:
Not to mention that, to a normal brick and mortar retailer as well as the average American consumer that might walk in there and browse, hentai could potentially come off as child pornography due to the fact that it primarily features high school students below the age of 18. It's my understanding that hentai kind of sits in a gray area because it's hand drawn, or in the case of the animated variation, it's, well, animated and the characters aren't based on real people, but that doesn't negate the fact that it could cause problems just by the nature of its content. I just find hentai to be a hard sell to brick and mortar stores.


Well, there have been some attempts in the past with re-writes so they don't fall afoul of child pornography laws (such as renaming a high school as a college). Though not pornography outright, the Senran Kagura games are extremely sexually suggestive and have underage characters, and the approach was to omit their ages completely, not mention the ninja academy is the equivalent of high school, and say they're "first-year," "second-year," or "third-year," and they ARE sold at brick-and-mortar stores.

Actually, I think I know of at least one place where they could be sold: Fry's Electronics. Though it's strictly video, Fry's does have an "Adults Only" section, the racks blocked off from public view by black sheets. Some locations still have such a sub-section in their anime section with those same black sheets. Fry's is the only brick-and-mortar retailer I know of that publicly sells hentai. Fry's geographical reach is pretty limited though, and even a company as small as Fakku cannot survive selling simply to Fry's.
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Cerceaux



Joined: 02 Oct 2011
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Location: Earth
PostPosted: Tue Feb 28, 2017 1:25 pm Reply with quote
Well back during the early 00s manga boom you could buy explicit yaoi off the shelf at normal stores. Somehow it flew under the radar of everyone except its target audience. Though yaoi typically has innocent looking flowery covers so it's less conspicuous than something with a naked girl splashed across the cover.
I don't see them having great sales at brick and mortar stores though even if they manage to get the books in stock. Not many people have the confidence to walk up to a cashier proudly holding a copy of "Peachy Butt Girls". Laughing Some things are better left on the Internet.
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zrnzle500



Joined: 04 Oct 2014
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PostPosted: Tue Feb 28, 2017 1:30 pm Reply with quote
leafy sea dragon wrote:
Well, there have been some attempts in the past with re-writes so they don't fall afoul of child pornography laws (such as renaming a high school as a college). Though not pornography outright, the Senran Kagura games are extremely sexually suggestive and have underage characters, and the approach was to omit their ages completely, not mention the ninja academy is the equivalent of high school, and say they're "first-year," "second-year," or "third-year," and they ARE sold at brick-and-mortar stores.


I've come across pornographic games with anime style visuals where their approach to the age question is just to plaster something to the effect of "All the characters depicted are 18" even in cases where few would believe that. Don't know how that holds up in court but that's how that company does it.
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Vaisaga



Joined: 07 Oct 2011
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PostPosted: Tue Feb 28, 2017 1:38 pm Reply with quote
Chapters/Indigo/Coles here in Canada offer all of Project H's works (no physical copies in store though, have to order through the kiosk) and I'd certainly like it if they started offering Fakku's releases as well. There are some I want to buy but I don't want to risk going through customs due to how some of the girls are drawn so if I could pick it up through a Canadian business then I know it would be safe.
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Chrno2



Joined: 28 May 2004
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Location: USA
PostPosted: Tue Feb 28, 2017 2:03 pm Reply with quote
This is interesting news. I mean considering that many brick and morter outlets keep shutting down. I mean we had Borders, and a few Barnes n' Nobles moved or shut down leaving the largest of stores. But if that can work I support this.

I'm wondering when they're going to get the 2nd half of 'Urotsukidoji' released. I tried contacting them but they gave as little info as I could get. And the site didn't really provide me with anything. Hell, they never returned my call for business. At least Facebook and Twitter help tremendously.
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TheAAA



Joined: 03 Feb 2016
Posts: 59
PostPosted: Tue Feb 28, 2017 2:45 pm Reply with quote
The urotsukidoji kickstarter didn't get enough money to redraw some stuff, so while it's still explicit and still obviously porn, it's not really more explicit than say A Girl On The Shore, which I bought at a brick and mortar Barnes and Noble. Seeing as its an extremely important piece of manga history, I can see urotsukidoji alone out of all of fakku's books being sold at Barnes and Noble. The rest will have to chance it at porn shops and specialty comic stores.
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yomanffgg



Joined: 21 Jul 2011
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PostPosted: Tue Feb 28, 2017 3:05 pm Reply with quote
I hope their books will be available on bookdepository
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GATSU



Joined: 03 Jan 2002
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PostPosted: Tue Feb 28, 2017 3:21 pm Reply with quote
They still got some porn bookstores left. And back in the day, you could put hentai in the 'underground' section of your comics store. But, yeah, I'm not sure how they expect to make headway in a market which barely accepts regular manga in physical locations. Maybe those Hustler stores will take 'em? But other than that, the only realistic thing to do is for Fakku to invest its own dirty bookstore. Preferably in a non-Bible Belt location, of course.
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leafy sea dragon



Joined: 27 Oct 2009
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PostPosted: Tue Feb 28, 2017 3:34 pm Reply with quote
Chrno2 wrote:
This is interesting news. I mean considering that many brick and morter outlets keep shutting down. I mean we had Borders, and a few Barnes n' Nobles moved or shut down leaving the largest of stores. But if that can work I support this.


Barnes & Nobles is stable right now thanks to their early adoption of the Nook, but they're facing heavy competition from smaller bookstore chains in the areas east of the Mississippi River. (And here in the upper San Fernando Valley, no Barnes & Nobles have closed the past 15 years or so.) Amazon also recently started opening up brick-and-mortar stores, mostly in the Pacific Northwest, which leads me to believe brick-and-mortar bookstores still have a lot of appeal. The reason Borders is gone is due to mismanagement after being bought up by Kmart. Kmart has a dismal track record of running companies they buy. If you look into Kmart's acquisitions history, you'll see that every one of them has gone out of business, most recently with Sports Chalet in 2016, and Kmart itself has gone into bankruptcy at least twice.
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Akcoll99



Joined: 28 Feb 2011
Posts: 221
PostPosted: Tue Feb 28, 2017 8:43 pm Reply with quote
I remember back in the mid-2000's going into a Borders in Fairfax, VA and finding several Manga 18 titles on the shelf. Urotsukidoji, Midnight Panther, La Blue Girl, etc. I read later that they had bought up a bunch of overstock titles from CPM when they declared bankruptcy...it always made me wonder if they knew exactly what they were buying when they did it!
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residentgrigo



Joined: 23 Dec 2007
Posts: 2404
Location: Germany
PostPosted: Wed Mar 01, 2017 12:18 am Reply with quote
Yaoi and hentai manga are openly sold in bigger books shops over here BUT these are being publisher by actual... publishers who just sell whatever they can. Not by an internet porn site that needs Kickstarter to even get some of these into translation! The sheer hybris at display is staggering. Just wow.
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