Big ideas, big plans, not a lot of follow through and many of them failed, leaving behind a lot of unsold product and hurt feelings.

So, if not for this guy, anyone else considering getting into the business really needs to take their time, ask questions, get quotes on printing and learn from others’ mistakes.

A great idea isn’t enough. It takes time, patience, and endurance to create anything worthwhile.

Here’s another quote from the interview:
“We have not taken the economic climate and health of the print magazine industry into account, primarily because this project does not have to be self sustaining initially.”

Seems to me “business plan” doesn’t necessarily even enter into the equation. That comment essentially says “it’s a fanzine sort of project but it would be cool if it started paying for itself at some point.” Which he reiterates a bit later. This isn’t an uncommon sentiment in the world of photocopier/POD publishing in general.

Really, all of the answers are in his response to the first interview question.

But, again, I’m not tuned to that community so I’m probably speaking out of turn. But I wish the guy luck.

As someone who does a zine/vanity project with friends, it’s interesting (terrifying? hilarious?) to see the way other people approach their own pet projects.

Thanks Chris!

Simon, thanks a lot for your insight, I really appreciate it.

- Chris

Hmm… honestly, that’s hard to say. I tend to think industry-soiling actions come from the top down, not from the bottom up. But you’re right, that’s certainly always a possibility…

>Hell, doesn’t that make approaching a Japanese publisher who’s taken a chance and been burned by an American company before much more difficult?

I’m already assuming that Shojoberry won’t be able to land a commercial license directly from Japan, at least not for a whole book (Shojoberry certainly wouldn’t need it anyway), with the kinds of terms that trade publishers are used to. Unless they’re prepared for an exchange of monies beforehand.

Manga licensing has been around long enough that there’s a common set of expectations. There’s always an advance. The license is always limited to only a few years and must be renewed. Books have to be published within a specific time frame and print run targets must be met. I guess what I’m saying is that Japanese companies overall already protect themselves quite well, and even if they were burned, the next person just has to come along with enough cash in hand, and everything will be fine again. In this respect, poor licensing etiquette and commercial failure are not really the top concerns… it’s everything in the unpredictable “other” category. Such as doing something to a book that completely offends the artist, who may then swear never to allow another damn foreigner to handle his/her work again. Companies don’t take things personally, but artists/individuals do.

>I mean, just reading your blog, you’ve floated low five-figure numbers for advances to Japanese publishers just to get a couple licenses, that can’t be because every working relationship with The West went swimmingly.

Yeah, it’s pretty much standard by now. But, at least in the specific genre we work in, we were not burdened with past licensing disasters. In fact, the company we work with has *never* done any licensing to the US prior. Given their complete lack of expectations, we could have used a lot of colorful language and grandiose promises to get the licenses without money down. But research was done, math was crunched, a reasonable offer was made, and they accepted. There was no back-and-forth negotiating on the offer at all, because they could see it was fair, based on realistic estimates, and minimized their risk. We even send them a little extra along with the royalties every time; in turn, they always send manuscripts to us pre-scanned from the original art pieces. So I think as long as there are people who make every effort to be upfront, the industry needn’t worry too much about charlatanry from the fly-by-nights, or sincere miscalculations by the inexperienced.

Even for a fanzine.

Even when, when asked directly, Boast can’t come out and just say “Yeah we’re totally a fanzine” without equivocating about “intent” or whatever. My beef is about a complete lack of acumen mixed with both hubris and pretension.

- Chris

“The magazine will likely not be available via newsstands, within any reasonable amount of time that is.”

This states to me that a cover price which is 50% higher than the printing cost is possibly reasonable, since there is no store markeup.

But this certainyl looks like a fanzine:

“Yes, the price margin of offset printing decreases significantly with the number of copies printed, but we do not have a circulation of 10,000 yet. We don’t have a circulation of 1,000 yet. This is print on demand.

If we only get five people interested in our first issue, we can print five copies, and it will have cost us $10 in supplies. (Offset printing would cost $978 for a 25-copy run… apparently that’s the minimum qty they will do.)”

So I’m not really sure what your beef is with them. Contacting doujinshi artists probably makes sense, since those are folks who are, essentially, producing fanzines in japan:

“Our first path was to put feelers out to amateur manga-ka and/or doujinshi artists in an attempt to license them directly. We are still leaving this route open and are going to ramp up recruiting to see if any viable options come of it.”

So, I’m really not sure what your beef is with them. You seem to be assuming that they are presenting themselves as big powerful, publishing moguls to Japanese publishers, which strikes me as quite a stretch.

I mean, just reading your blog, you’ve floated low five-figure numbers for advances to Japanese publishers just to get a couple licenses, that can’t be because every working relationship with The West went swimmingly.

Oh, and? AND?! They’re looking to fill in the gap left by Shojo Beat, a magazine full of the (many of) best-selling shojo manga in Japan, with a series of doujin? A magazine with a great staff of professional writers and editors with… a dude whose demonstrated grasp of grammar in that interview is shaky at best?

I’m all for scanlators and fans paying their dues, working hard, and crossing over and becoming pro. But this doesn’t even have a whiff of that, so amateur is the intent.

Mr. Boast said he was part of a scanlation group in college, and I’d wager that’s probably the background of most of the contributors too. So I want to see this happen. The good side of me thinks scanlators who want to cross over to doing legitimate work is always a good thing. The bad side of me is grinning with devilish delight at the thought of a scanlator being confronted with the harsh realities of publishing for the first time. Doing things the hard way, doing things the right way… it makes people grow up real fast and changes world views, yeah?