There are two kinds of people in the world, my father used to say: People who divide all the people in the world into two types and people who don’t.
Comics readers tend to be the former: They look at the world as made of up of the initiated, people who read their particular type of comic (be it superheroes, shoujo manga, or introspective graphic novels) and those who are outside the walled kingdom.
There is some validity to that, because most comics genres, like most other genres, require a certain initiation. In the case of superheroes, you almost have to be born into it; one could spend a lifetime learning all the backstories, interrelationships, and alternate universes. Manga readers have to learn a code of visual cues such as sweatdrops and cultural clues such as honorifics and holidays, not to mention how to read right to left.
People who don’t normally read comics, on the other hand, don’t usually define themselves as “people who don’t read comics.” Most, in fact, will pick up a graphic novel if the subject matter interests them. They might not be able to enjoy something very genre-bound like Blackest Night or Battle Angel Alita, but they might read Fun Home, Mom’s Cancer, or The Photographer, because those books tap into more universal experiences and interests. A lot of people read those books not because they are comics (although the medium may make the story more compelling) but because they are books.
A lot of literary manga deals in topics that adult readers are interested in: Oishinbo (gourmet food), Ooku (historical drama and switched gender roles), Suppli (workplace comedy and romantic angst). These are good stories about things people care about, and you don’t have to understand the intricacies of samurai life or the Japanese school system to enjoy them.
But before you can read them, you have to find them.
Noah asked us a simple question: How do you market art manga to readers? The answer is equally simple: Don’t market it as manga. Market it as books.
Some specifics:
Don’t shelve it in the graphic novel section: The first step in reaching that broader audience is not to confine the manga to comics stores or even to the graphic-novel section of the bookstore. Ideally, booksellers should keep a couple of copies around, some in the graphic novel section and some elsewhere: Put Oishinbo near the food section, Barefoot Gen near the World War II books, Suppli by the chick-lit, Naoki Urasawa’s Pluto next to the science fiction. Scatter a few literary fiction titles (Tokyo Is My Garden, Red Snow) among the “staff picks” novels in the center tables.
Flip it: The purists hate this, but for older readers, reading “backwards” is a deal-breaker. Furthermore, it marks the comics as manga, and for those who aren’t famliar with the medium, that starts a whole chain of associations: porn, big eyes, teenage girls, boobs-n-battles. A lot of readers, wrongly, think of manga as a genre; manga for grownups must be marketed separately from the shonen and shoujo teen fare. Titles with broad crossover appeal should be made accessible to all readers, not just the cognoscenti. You can always publish an unflipped deluxe edition for the hardcore otaku.
Hire Chip Kidd to do the cover: Or someone like him. Make it arty and attractive. Do not fill it with slashing shonen battle action or an upskirt shot of a schoolgirl. (If those things appear in your manga, you probably shouldn’t be marketing it to adults anyway.) This should be a book you are proud to be seen reading on the subway, not something that would embarrass you if your boss saw it in your briefcase.
Send it out to “mainstream” reviewers: There are plenty of graphic novel-friendly reviewers at big newspapers and magazines, and they have a lot of pull. I first heard about Fun Home on NPR, and not because they were having “comics day” or anything; it just was a compelling story. As a journalist, I can tell you that a new and interesting topic is always welcome. A manga about a family with an autistic child? Bring it on! A manga about bluesman Robert Johnson teaming up with bank robber Clyde Barrow? Sign me up! These are topics that are interesting just by themselves, and the fact that someone in Japan has chosen to make a comic about them makes them even more interesting.
Also, you know what can really sell a title? Online previews at hip websites. There’s something inherently cool about manga, so the occasional free sample would most likely be welcome. Smith Magazine, for instance, hosted the webcomic AD: New Orleans After the Deluge, and Words Without Borders has a whole graphic lit section. These websites already cater to readers with a literary and artistic bent, so they are likely to be a receptive audience for art manga.
Go digital: You knew I was going to say that, right? Everyone is doing it! The Kindle, the iPad, and the plain ol’ internet are places your potential audience can discover your manga and instantly read it. Here’s the thing, though: Go ahead and put your manga into comiXology and Longbox and those other … things… but let them stand alone as well. Recently, Longbox developer Rantz Hoseley talked about the possibility of having a link directly from a story on, say, the NPR blog, to their digital edition of a comic. That’s a great convenience, but the occasional comics reader just wants to read the book, not sign up for some complicated digital storefront that they will never visit again.
Harness serendipity: All these factors boil down to the same thing: Make it easy for potential readers to stumble upon a book, and once you catch their interest, make it easy for readers to buy it. Go back to the dichotomy I started with: Serious comics readers know where to find comics and how to buy them, but it’s a system that is invisible to most people and forbidding to those who do know about it. Superhero fans may be willing to go out of their way to a special store and pre-order their comics sight unseen, but the rest of the world doesn’t operate that way. Even the graphic novel section of a chain bookstores is terra incognita to most customers. The key to expanding the comics market, for art manga or any other type of graphic novel, is to step outside the closed circle of the comics world and find the readers where they already are. After that, the books should sell themselves.
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The entire Komikusu roundtable is here.
Chip Kidd….aaaagh! Say it ain’t so!
I have to admit, though, it’s probably a good idea strategically. That Bat-Manga thing he did got a ton of press.
“Online previews at hip websites.”
Or online previews at the publishers websites. I can’t understand why more publishers don’t do that.
Meta-commentary: I would remember that captcha thing a lot more often if it were between the place I type my comments and the button to submit them.
Your argument for “flipping” manga is a pretty solid one. Along with preconcieved notions of manga as genre; reading right to left is probably the biggest barrier for non-manga literate readers. However, I’m still saddened that this has to be the case.
I suppose it all depends on how the companies deal with the process. I would hate to see high quality releases which have been flipped/mirrored so that characters that should be right handed become left handed etc. This used to happen all the time and it can seriously devalue both the art and storyline. If companies handle this process in a more sensitive manner, such as Drawn and Quarterly do, then I guess it’s acceptable (From what I can gather, D&Q painstakingly rearrange the pages so that the artwork is unaltered but can be read left to right). Still, I can’t help but feel it is a redundant process and, as stated above, leaves me feeling a little sad…
Maybe, with the launch of Fantagraphics manga line, which will not be flipped, prejudices against right to left reading material will disolve.
Actually, the shrewd publisher would combine Derik and Jim’s suggestions and make an unflipped version available, for a fee, at their websites. They already have the art, translation, and lettering, so it seems like the added cost would be relatively low, and it could extend the audience even more.
It seems to me that the question of flipping or not is more often a matter of pride with otaku than anything else. I realize that I can’t assume every manga fan is Just Like Me (and perhaps I’m the odd one out on this), but despite a purist’s instinct against flipping, I find that when I’m actually reading a flipped manga (like Ode to Kirihito, for instance) it doesn’t actually hamper my enjoyment or comprehension of the manga at all. In fact, I barely notice.
I can understand why mangaka might not be thrilled with flipping. To them, it must look like a foreign, inverse adaptation of their vision. But they are much, much more intimately involved with their original work than any reader ever could be. From a reader’s perspective, my feeling is, if it helps sell manga, flip it!
I flipped the Japanese stories in Yuri Monogatari exactly for that reason. I can explain an honorific easily enough, but for a non-comics reading audience, the right to left was harder than you’d expect. Especially, with an adult audience, you have to expect that the idea of learning a whole new method of reading will present some barriers.
Great, common sense stuff, Brigid!
Cheers,
Erica
There can be problems with flipping. Parasyte, still one of my favorite series, was based around the idea that a parasitic creature lodged in the main characters right hand. Flipping it obviously moved the hand from right to left…which caused plot confusions throughout the entire run of the book.
That’s got to be the exception rather than the rule, though.
Superhero fans may be willing to go out of their way to a special store and pre-order their comics sight unseen, but the rest of the world doesn’t operate that way.
Something I’d add to this too, Brigid, is that while I understand (sort of) why manga with “explicit content” (I have to laugh a bit at how broadly that label is often applied) is delivered shrink-wrapped by publishers, when we’re talking about the kinds of titles being discussed here–titles that are truly created for adult readers, like Ooku, for instance, I have to imagine that it’s pretty difficult to sell to non-manga fans when people can’t even look at a single page in the book store.
It would be really helpful, I think, if bookstores were willing to remove the shrink-wrap, especially if they choose to shelve a copy or two outside of the main graphic novel section, which I do think would be a great move. I think bookstores could be a prime venue for introducing non-otaku to manga series that might interest them, but if shoppers can’t even take a look inside, it’s really no better than not carrying the titles at all. If bookstore shoppers were truly willing to buy sight-unseen, they’d be buying online.
Speaking as someone who sometimes writes mainstream reviews, I can say that one of the problems with getting manga reviewed in those outlets is that there aren’t author events. The Chicago Reader pegs a lot of their books coverage to local author readings. If you don’t have a reading, you don’t get coverage.
This is difficult to overcome, what with distance and language barriers. I wonder if it might be worthwhile to think about (a) putting some effort into raising the profile of translators, and (b) having the translators do some events.
Maybe that’s just not possible, but it would sure be helpful if it were.
Great point re: Author Events, Noah– I was just thinking that myself! We had a friend who published his debut novel with one of the major fiction publishers, and the book tour and interview /marketing machine was a key part of the process.
One general weakness across the board with manga “marketing” in general, and especially for the literary manga titles that DO have a big cross-over appeal at bookshops and among the market of literary readers in the US is just what you’ve noted: the author/creator is completely invisible in the process. He/she is invisible to everyone except the manga fan who follows titles by a certain artist, etc. It leaves the US publisher/marketing folks with the responsibility of telling that story, when in most cases (even international fiction from asia, india, europe if the author will be willing to travel) it usually falls on the author to advocate their work.
Great post, Brigid! The one thing that seems to not have been touched (perhaps because it’s so fundamental?) is around licensing titles that actually have a potential audience in the first place?
Aargh… another comment lost to the captcha…
As a cartoonist, I have a really clear preference for either mirror-flipping or right to left, and I find the Drawn and Quarterly recut method (popularized by Blade of the Immortal) really abhorrent. It’s a very basic compositional “rule” that if you want an action to flow faster in a panel, you make that action read the direction the reader’s eye also travels panel to panel. So if I have a panel of someone running and I have no other restrictions, I’ll make that person run from the left to the right, where presumably the next panel is. Conversely, you can slow up the action some by having the action move in opposition to the eye.
When you chop up and reorganize a page, you’re inverting this relationship. Any concessions to page flow that the cartoonist has made are completely reversed. That decision is basically saying that the page composition itself has no meaning at all, or at least is completely subservient to the panel composition. A page isn’t just a collection of panels. It should have it’s own compositional completeness, and when you see Tatsumi’s stuff in Japanese, it does. And it still would if it were mirror-flipped as well. And, to me, that’s well worth the tradeoff of living in left-handed land.
You know, flipping doesn’t *have* to mean mirror-world. I flip panels within flipped pages, so right hands stay right, logos and signs aren’t backwards and other weirdnesses return to normal.
It’s not that hard. I can do it, so it must be pretty easy. So far, none of the Japanese artists have complained about that. It takes a few more minutes a page and once in a while, there’s a really challenging page structure. Mostly, it solves all the flipped-pages issues.
Damn it. I’m sorry about the captcha, Sean. If that happens, you can email me; I think it’s just in the spam cue usually.
Ryan — it’s worth noting that Fantagraphics has actually gotten Moto Hagio to come over in sync with the launching of their new manga line. I think that’s a huge deal, and will surely help get them press. It’s sort of special circumstances — there’s only one Matt Thorn, obviously. But it seems like it’s a model that other folks would do well to follow to the extent they can.
Totally– Moto Hagio x Matt Thorn having a presence at SDCC is a great example of Fantagraphics putting the right marketing in place.
Another example: Last Gasp will have Junko Mizuno (who is now a San Francisco resident) in attendance at Comic Con too!
Outside of those two, I know that Hideshi Hino was at comic-con once cuz I stumbled upon his booth accidentally and then was totally star-struck.
I know of a few other manga artists that I’ve spoken to in person at their house (hint*hint) who are interested in attending SDCC if the funding works out and the US publisher is willing make it happen.
so yeah, in summary– hats off to Fantagraphics and Last Gasp :)
+1 to Sean’s comment above; I really dislike the idea of flipping individual panels rather than complete pages; I think the page composition and flow is way more important than the visual integrity of a single panel– and flipping the entire page mirror-world style at least allows the panel-to-panel relationship as intended by the artist to stay intact…
As a left handed person, I don’t mind a comic world of left handed people.
Yeah, I’m a sort of lefty, and it never bothered me either :) (I draw/write with my left, throw with my right, kick with either, on an on with each task seemingly randomly distributed across my body…)
Haha! Would you believe I’m left handed, too! Seriously, though; I realise that as a fan who is willing to invest money in a product I enjoy I should be grateful for whatever I can get. Even if that means flipped/mirrored products.
Sean makes a great point about composition which I completely didn’t take into consideration(Seriously, I shouldn’t even be commenting what with being at work and all…)
I don’t want to come across sounding like some stuck in the mud angry otaku, so I’ll make my position clear that, although I’d rather have un-flipped manga, if this is not viable/profitable for companies then I would still support a flipped product. After all, my life is far better for having been able to read Phoenix vol 4 Karma, regardless of the fact that Gao’s left arm is missing rather than his right, y’know?
Reacting to what Noah pointed out about Fantagraphics having Moto Hagio and Matt Thorn promote the new book: I wonder if the key issue isn’t providing a sufficiently rich background about the book and the author and their respective (literary) value? Giving context and perspective can help people talk and write about a book — and ultimately, better sell it.
I wrote the foreword for the French edition of “Red-Colored Elegy”, and it was difficult to replace this book in context and explain its importance/impact within the history of manga in Japan. I took the time to do my research, I read Japanese and I already am familiar with the history of alternative manga, so I think I managed to put out something interesting there. But I don’t see a journalist or a librarian or a retailer doing the same if part of this background isn’t already provided.
Which is why, in my opinion, Fantagraphics or D+Q are better at it than other publishers: this need for contextualization and perspective is present for all of their books, not just the ones from Japan.
Hey Xavier. Nice to have you stop by!
I think you make a very good point. With genre, it’s genre — people who are interested in the genre know what it is and what they’re getting, and they don’t need much explanation (which is why yaoi titles are released with almost no fanfare; it would be wasted effort.)
For more artsy stuff, though, people want a story about why it’s important, why it matters, what they are supposed to get out of it, etc. Literary fiction is a genre with marketing tropes attached. I find that kind of unpleasant for various reasons which aren’t especially germane, but the fact remains that if you want to sell art manga, you need to fill in the requisite form.
Hi, Xavier. I feel guilty for not contributing to your blog these days, as you’d kindly invited me to…
Re flipping: I’m in favour, but obviously the ideal situation would be for the original artist to supervise this re-formatting. A bit too idealistic? I don’t know, I’ve been researching ‘Tintin’ authors Hergé and I was surprised at the extent to which he was willing thoroughly to redraw his stories to accommodate foreign publishers– for example Methuen in Britain (who seemed almost insane in the level of detail they wanted changed) or Simon & Schuster in the USA.
Surely many successful Manga artists, often with studios and assistants or apprentices, could do likewise?
I’m sure they would…if the pay were right. The market in the u.s. is pretty small comparatively at the moment, so it’s hard to know whether there’d be enough incentive to do major changes….
Two things worth mentioning regarding involving the original artists in localization-
1. Seeing your own artwork mirror-flipped can be truly distressing, because it causes you to really see it again, rather than seeing what you’ve grown accustomed to after a long bout of drawing it. Something about the reversal causes the brain to lose its connection to the process (and attendant expectations) and see it fresh again, and therefore make clear any deficiencies that were there to begin with that the artist had ceased to see at a certain point. It’s worth noting that this doesn’t mean that a person that’s never seen the artwork would be more likely to see those deficits when presented with a mirror-flipped image- just that it disrupts the perception of someone already familiar with the art, i.e. the cartoonist. Translation of the above- an artist might not be happy looking at their artwork flipped, at least initially, because all the displeasing things about their drawing will be in their face, and so someone not armed with this knowledge might not be too into mirror flipping.
2. The cartoonist in question probably doesn’t have any experience reading comics left-to-right, so they are unlikely to be able to accurately evaluate for themselves the consequences of localization decisions. I mean, you wouldn’t have the cartoonist check the accuracy of the translation itself either, unless they speak the language it’s being translated into.
I’m not so sure about your second point– when western comics are published in Japan, they keep the left-to-right format, and it doesn’t seem to puzzle anyone.
Your first point reminds me of an old trick artists use: look at your drawing in the mirror. Defects will jump out at you.
Another +1 to Sean. If someone were to publish a book of Kirby reprints with the panels rearranged on the pages, they would be pilloried in the comics blogosphere. But for some reason most people don’t care when it’s manga. Of course, so little “art” manga is published in the U.S. that I have to grit my teeth and support D & Q anyway.
Well, Kirby is regularly published in black and white, which is arguably even more of a desecration, and no one gets too uptight about it.
Which isn’t to say that they shouldn’t — just that marketing trumps aesthetics in a lot of different cases….
I’ll join Adam about the “panels rearranged on the pages”. That’s something I cannot understand, especially coming from D+Q who usually do a good job on their books. Not only it shows disrespect towards the original material, but it also muddles the original narrative flow — as some panels (with odd, slanted shapes) have to be flipped to fit on the page. So you have some elements that are flipped, others that are not. Cannot see the point of all this extra work for this kind of result.
@Alex– great point about flipping and technique, funny enough there is a manga tie-in directly with that approach on the artist’s side. In this interview with horror manga master Junji Ito, he shows how he actually DOES flip his drawings along the way, as a method of seeing if they are compositionally sound (as opposed to planning ahead for a Western release):
http://samehat.blogspot.com/2009/01/fantastic-interview-with-junji-ito.html
For that Junji Ito video, the discussion about using a mirror starts at the 17’30” mark :)
I don’t know that publishing Kirby in black and white is more of a desecration. That takes away something that’s supposed to be there, but doesn’t add anything that’s not supposed to be there. Rearranging panels does add something that shouldn’t be there: the false relations between the rearranged panels.
Besides, there’s a clear reason for publishing Kirby in black and white — it’s a lot cheaper than color. Kirby fans can accept it as the price to pay for cheaper reprints. Whereas D & Q is spending extra time and effort — which presumably translates into money — to make its reprints worse.
To give D & Q its due, I don’t think it’s a case of “marketing trumping aesthetics.” I think they really think that rearranging the panels without flipping them is better than simply flipping the whole thing. Just like Xavier, I don’t understand why they think that.
I think the black and white Kirby really loses a lot. Much worse than the black and white on Jim Aparo’s art, for example. But maybe it’s just me, I dunno.
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