In response to the news about Whispered Words, being licensed, a fan expressed a wish that One Peace Books also rescue Poor Poor Lips.  This gives me a good opening to discuss something I’ve been meaning to talk about for a while here. There is one very important component to licensing manga that most fans don’t understand.

Sasamekikoto, as I explain in my NYCC report, is owned by Media Factory (who also owns Strawberry Panic!). Poor Poor Lips is owned by Takeshobo. One Peace Books has a relationship with Media Factory, which is how they got this title. Unless they have a relationship with Takeshobo, it is not likely they can get Poor Poor Lips.

All Japanese manga licensing is done based on prior relationship. (This goes for almost every other kind of licensing, as well, but we’ll confine ourselves to discussing manga.) Companies cannot just email Japanese publishers and ask for what individual series they want. It takes time and effort to build personal relationships with the publishers. So do not be surprised if One Peace Books never, ever gets Poor Poor Lips no matter how often you ask them. Seven Seas cannot license a Kodansha title, and Viz gets first dibs on Hakusensha titles (and can block other publishers from getting them, even if they don’t want to publish it themselves.)

This is why, even though Strawberry Panic! might have been popular, it had exactly zero impact on whether we’d ever see Maria-sama ga Miteru in English. In fans’ minds, the titles are similar. In reality, the Media Factory title has no connection at all to the Shueisha title.

In the same way that the demographic target of a book may appear irrelevant to you as a reader, but it informs the way the book was written; it may not seem important to you to understand that one story you read was published by Hobunsha and another by Futabasha. Indeed, to you the “publisher” may be Lililicious or Dynasty Scans. But in the actual business of manga, these distinctions have real meaning. You do not need to know who publishes what book, but be aware that when you send a letter to a western publisher and they reply, “We won’t be getting that book” that is, really, the final word on the matter. Bags of mail can’t change that.

Arguing that you have lack of expertise (or, perhaps, disinterest) in the nitty-gritty of manga genre and publishing is not a strong defense. There is nothing wrong at all with wishing for a thing, of course, but letting fan delusion get in the way of understanding reality, makes it harder to comprehend the why things are the way they are. ^_^

The 600-lb. gorilla in the room is the fundamental fact that western fans often ignore – Japanese manga is published for a Japanese audience. They buy far more of it than we do, by orders of zeroes. Japanese publishers don’t much care if we aren’t happy with panty shots, or can’t tell the difference between a shounen or a seinen title. And it really doesn’t affect them if we ask random publishers to get books they have no access to. But it does, honestly, effect the western publishers. Imagine being the poor schlub who answers emails at Viz, if we all sent them emails begging them to license Collectors. (Which they have first dibs on, since it is a Hakusensha title.) You’d have feel bad for them, wouldn’t you? ^_^; And how much worse, when a publisher gets a license request for something they can’t even ask for, because they don’t speak to that publisher. There’s only so many times they can answer a question like that before it becomes soul-crushing.

It’s perfectly fine to hope that you’ll get to see your favorite manga licensed. It is less fine to respond to news of one license with misguided, randomly targeted desire for something else. Imagine, if you gave your best friend a gift and their response was, “Cool! I really hope I’ll also get this other thing I want, too.”

I encourage Yuri fans to rise above the general level of cluelessness of fandom. The more we know, the better we, as fans, can leverage our buying power and focus it intelligently.

From time to time here on Okazu I post opinion and perspective about publishing manga. If you are an aspiring artist or writer, please read this first: Top 7 Things Every Young Artist or Writer Needs To Know.

When you write to a publisher or agent with a proposal, hoping that it will get you published, what you are sending is called a “Query Letter.” Recently, I am once again reminded that the concept of the Query Letter is vague and ill-defined for aspiring manga artists.

There are a lot of reasons why most aspiring manga artists are confused when it comes to Query Letters. Let’s start with a few reasons why this is:

You are not a Japanese manga artist – Take a look at your collection. Do you see many non-Japanese names in your manga collection? You may well have some indie comic artists, and a few OEL from when Tokyopop was publishing them, perhaps a few bandee dessinee, but realistically, when manga fans are looking for manga, they mean stuff drawn and published in Japan. Because of this simple reality…

Few American manga publishers are accepting submissions for…anything. Most manga publishers license Japanese properties, and aren’t looking for anything outside that. Because of this…

There is no established path from amateur to professional manga-style artist in the West. We have no manga magazines, no apprentice path, no companies hiring artists. Because there is no formal path, there is no reason for artists to learn to write Query Letters.

What does this mean to you? It means that if you want your manga to be published you have incredibly limited options right now.

When people ask me about which company they should approach, I always say the same thing – forget waiting to be discovered.

Do it yourself – (The Advantages and Disadvantages of Self-Publishing Your Manga) You have unprecedented options in terms of self-publishing right now. Webcomics, Print on Demand, Pixiv and DeviantArt give you access and ability to create, promote and publish in ways that never existed before. Use them. Work on your art and build your audience.

If you’re looking to a publisher to be your springboard, you have pretty limited options for getting your work seen:

Portfolio Reviews – Some publishers do what is called “portfolio reviews” at events. Check out major comic and anime/manga events to see if a manga publisher is sending editors to do this. At the Overseas Festival portion of this past Comitia, the “Kaigai Festa“, several Japanese publishers were doing portfolio review for overseas artists. Portfolio reviews are your absolute best chance to get a manga editor to look at your work and tell you the truth about it. It might, potentially, be very painful. This pain can be life-changing. Don’t run from it. Learn from it, grow from it.

Japanese Magazines Looking For Overseas Work – Morning Magazine does a International Comic Contest every year. The caveat here is that they aren’t actually looking for manga-style art. They are quite specifically looking for your own unique style. Kochi Indies Magazine also did a contest soliciting overseas work. This kind of thing is still pretty rare, so you should take the opportunities where you can find them.

Which brings me to the Query Letter. When you are taking the initiative and writing a publisher with a pitch for a story, you are writing what is known as a Query Letter.

I have written an article about rejection. Why Your Story Was Rejected – The Query Letter Conundrum that discusses some of the main failures in query letters. In a nutshell, here is the major problem in most query letters I receive:

You have to sell yourself to me. The idea of a Query Letter is to make your work sound relevant and appealing to that publisher and profitable for them. It is, in effect your job interview with that publisher and your goal is to convince them that your story is good for their business.

(The other, unwritten, rule of Query Letters is that there is no magic formula. What will appeal to one person will put another off. The best you can do is to try and avoid being too clever. Just say what you have to say as compellingly and unpretentiously as you can.)

Here are some tips to writing a decent Query Letter – this is my perspective and may not work for other people at all. I invite other publishers, agents, editors to weigh in with your own preferences here!

Read and understand the publisher’s submission guidelines before you write your letter. Don’t write the publisher asking if you can be the exception to the rule.

Be polite, even (especially) if you are rejected – Nothing good will come of you writing in anger. Ever. Chances are I won’t read it anyway, because remember, you are trying to sell your story to me.

Be concise – Find the simplest, clearest, most compelling way to describe your story. Don’t give me hints, imply twists, or rest on cliched vagueness.

Be Complete – State plainly how many pages your story is, whether it is complete or in process, how often you are currently releasing it online, if that is applicable.

Be Valuable – Let the publisher know why you would be a great match for their business. You have a popular webcomic and will be bringing an established market to their publication, or you have great promotional efforts you’ve used in the past. A previous book sold well, you have a name in the industry, any awards, citations or achievements.

Now that we’ve covered some general tips, let’s take a look at the final piece of a Query Letter – the descriptive copy.

Today I came across an item online that had the most pretentious description I’ve ever read. I would never buy the item because by the time I was done reading the description, I still had no idea what it was – and because that kind of pretentious writing annoys the hell out of me.

Writing descriptive copy is not at all easy. If you love your story, it’s actually incredibly difficult. You know what happens, you know why. And now you need to tell me – and I don’t care. Until you make me care. You need to convince me that your story is worth reading and is worth publishing. Your description must include the following:

What is the story about? Ad copy usually ends with a question or an ellipsis, but the publisher needs to know what actually happens. “…chaos ensues” is not an adequate description. “…the rats take over the shop, but as they drive away from their past, the girl gets the girl” is better.

What makes the story unique? I’ve written 2300+ posts here, so you gotta assume I’ve watched and read a lot of anime and manga. And that’s not including stuff I read and don’t review here. I’ve pretty much seen every possible story ending, so what about your story makes it stand out from everyone else’s? Romeo and Juliet, coming out, Crime and Punishment; what’s your take on your story?

What are the most important elements of your story? Finish this sentence, “The most amazing thing about my story is….”   That’s what will sell a publisher, if anything. Nail that…or don’t send that letter.

Sorry to start the week off with such heavy-duty overthinking, but something’s on my mind and I want to get it down before I lose it.

Ever since ALC announced that we’re partnering with JManga to get some Yuri titles out in English, I keep seeing the same (so *much* the same, that I have to think it’s one or two people over and over) accusations against me and the folks at ALC. A handful of people angry that they can’t get free scanlations of a title that is now legitimately available for sale isn’t something I need to address, really. I know that. But I wanted to have a response to point to in case this comes up again in the future.

Here are the key points of these repeated accusations, as I understand them:

Making fans pay for Yuri is “selling out”
Translating and editing for money is “selling out” 
I, personally, am rolling in your $ as a result of this deal

Because fandom at large is used to Yuri being a underserved audience, they are also used to turning almost exclusively to scanlations. As a result, a rather large portion of Yuri fandom expects that Yuri remain free forever and that by wanting people to pay for it, Yuri is being betrayed.

In reality, it’s the other way around. I and many other people love Yuri so very much, that our goal is to bring more of it over in a way that provides jobs and livelihood to more people, so it can sustain itself as a genre. To be blunt – if a person relies on scanlations when a legitimate version is available to them, then they are the one selling out Yuri. It’s really quite simple. Your purchase of an item goes to pay for the work that has already been done by compensating the company that paid for it, supports the current work and provides royalties to the creator. Ideally, it also creates money for investment into new projects in the form of profit.

In effect, these fans say that, if Yuri were to ever become a financially viable genre, it can only ever have done so by “selling out.” Just as any band or artist that becomes successful must, by the nature of entertainment, have “sold out.”

There’s something terribly sad to me, that some of the people who read Yuri find it impossible to cough up a few $ to support it. JManga is charging $5/volume of manga for most of what they are selling. It’s not really asking a lot for you to pay $5, is it? If it is, then I’m sorry, because when you don’t have the money, then it is hard, but for some fans, I think entitlement has attained the point that homophobia has attained in the anti-gay movement…it’s become so deeply ingrained and so inflexible a position that the only thing left to do is keep defending the position with increasing desperation. If someone out there is that unreasonably angry at being charged $5 for a few hours worth of entertainment, then I really only feel sympathy for them. It’s hard to justify that kind of position to someone who isn’t already a believer. In that sense, I guess the forums where I’m seeing this anger have become the echo chamber of this refrain.

In effect, these “fans” have decided that Yuri being financially successful is a crime against fans of Yuri and against Yuri itself.

I will not tell you what our contract with JManga says, even if I could. I can tell you this – most of the money goes to the translator on a project.  I wonder, truly, how much some of these people think we make from translating and editing a book? Whatever that amount is that those people think, I’d like half of it. ^_^;  If I offered them the ability to read a book for free, would these people still find something to be angry about? I honestly believe they would. For some fans, being dissatisfied seems to be the real entertainment value. (Don’t believe me? Read a few forum threads about how *angry* these people are at various scanlation circles for not being fast enough or for stopping work on a series that is now for sale, or for some other thing.)

I know that this post is unlikely to change any minds out there. People who are convinced that their right to free scanlations is inviolable are not going to suddenly stop and think, “What am I saying? Of COURSE the people who work on this stuff have a right to make a living!” Nonetheless, on the off chance that one person does think that, I’m saying this plainly: The people who work on Yuri have a right to make a living doing so. “Selling” Yuri is not “selling out” at all. There is nothing at all immoral in a person getting paid to draw, write, translate, edit, letter, proofread or sell Yuri to an audience willing to buy it.

Yuri is not yet sustaining itself in the west. Not in the way BL or shounen is. Shoujo and josei are largely in a similar bind – everyone wants it, but when it’s made available just not enough people actually pay for it. I know that the Okazu/Yuricon audience is the exception – I know you pay for what you want, I know you “support” Yuri in every way possible.

On behalf of the creators, translators, editors, letterers, publishers, printers, marketers, graphic designers and project managers in the industry, I want to thank you all from the bottom of my heart. When the Yuri audience as a whole understands that what you do and what we do is not a crime against the genre, when “selling” is not synonymous with “selling out,” then – and only then – will Yuri be successful. I await that day with anticipation. ^_^

This is a real conversation I had with someone recently:

Them: Why do we need publishers? We can publish without them!

Me: Who will license the book?

Them: Well, of course someone has to do that.

Me: And who will translate it?

Them: We have a translator.

Me: And don’t forget, you need a letterer and editor and layout person.

Them: Right, we can do that, too.

Me: And someone to manage the project so it makes deadlines and has quality control.

Them: Of course!

Me: And don’t forget someone to line up distribution, and you’ll need someone to do marketing.

Them: Right, yes.

Me: And, when you get all that together, you know what they call that?

Them: ….

Me: Congrats on recreating the concept of the publishing company from scratch. ^_^

***

To their credit, they got the point and were very gracious about it.

I often refer to the fact that I very often mention “steps that were skipped” or “things readers don’t see” in reference to manga publishing. I’m asked about that quite often – what are those steps? What is it that readers don’t see?

I’ve been meaning to address some of this for ages and today seemed like a good chance to mention some, but probably not all, of the things that readers probably don’t know about (and frequently don’t care about.)

Let’s start with licensing. I imagine very few readers really have any grasp of what this entails, and to be honest there’s no one formula for licensing manga. Different companies have different requirements, some have agencies that represent them, some hire individuals, others have in-house groups that handle that. American manga companies may also hire an agent or representative, but they are more likely to do licensing in-house. In book publishing, this stage is handled by an “acquiring editor” who interfaces between legal and the author or agent. There are no acquiring editors in manga right now, because relationships are so often personal before they are professional and many of the Japanese companies, once they create a relationship, still prefer to go for exclusive agreements. That’s changing a bit. And some manga artists, especially independent ones, are starting to use an agent, but most still rely on their publisher to represent their interests.

Licensing involves more levels of negotiation than you can possibly imagine if you’ve never done it. This stage might takes months or years, while every single detail is hammered out – even down to the way the title looks, the way the credits are handled, distribution for first and successive printings, payment, milestones, formats the files will be sent in…Every. Single. Detail. Obviously, scanlation groups skip all this – they can hit the ‘net faster, because there’s no pesky lawyers, company wanting to know how the books will be distributed or how it will look, making sure that previous contracts are not infringed upon or creators wanting to be paid and make sure the spellings are the way they want them.

After the licensing is done, then the folks who are doing the localizing can get to it. The translator gets a script from what would, in the book publishing world be called a “managing editor.” Managing editors manage the project from this point on until it actually goes to the print. Ideally, these days the manuscript are the pages of the raw manga in digital form. This is where scanlators start the process, having skippped all the tediousness of licensing negotiation. Manga companies do not typically have a “managing editor” and the editor in chief of the company may act as project manager if it’s a really small company.

Translation is not a science. It’s an art. I’ll keep saying that until people get it. ^_^ There is no “right” way to translate, there are a number of ways to translate any given thing.

At this point, there’s a couple of ways a company can go. Some translators send the script as a text file to the adapter. Maybe that person has a bit of understanding of Japanese and has the manga to hand, so they can compare, but that’s pretty rare, honestly. Most companies now require translators to do their own adaptation. Some are better than others at it. Usually this takes some fluency as a writer in the language being translated to. That’s an entirely different thing than just speaking your own language fluidly. The most important thing removing the adapter does is 1) removes a fresh new pair of eyes looking over the script, and so losing an opportunity for some input on things like Voice. 2) It saves money and time, as well.

Some companies have an editor look over the script at this point. A few do, and you usually can tell, because those companies have unusually good translation. Copy editors do not just proofread. They are looking for consistent language use, widows and orphans in the text, grammatical and syntactical errors and other larger issues. Of course, they also find typos. Most manga companies have a translator and an “editor” who does the copy editing and project management. Because of this – and because the quality of editors are so variable, you sometimes get rougher “translation” to your language than you might like.

Then the script goes to lettering. Oh, but wait, there’s no way to letter a page with lettering already on it, so first the page is cleaned up and touched up in places and then it is lettered. Scanlation circles typically use a DPI of about 200 or 300 for their distribution. I can tell you from personal experience that that is absolutely nothing like cleaning up a page at 1200 dpi and retouching it, so that 1-pixel specks don’t show up as black dots in a print version.

Then lettering begins. Companies make hard choices about things like sound effects, which are so often drawn into the manga panels. Do they just translate them, or do they go to the considerable time and effort of replacing them? In almost all cases, I replace them at ALC, because it looks so much nicer. But it definitely takes way longer. And in a few cases, there’s just no way around it and a sound in English has to be set next to the art.

Here’s where it all gets very messy. In book publishing, the managing editor then gets a “galley” copy – a rough copy of the printed volume. This is sent back out to the editor and more importantly, another missing layer here – a proofreader. Some manga companies send lettered manuscripts to the copy editor at this point. It’s a little harder to make changes, but it’s pretty key because…

Okay, so when I reviewed JManga.com this week, I told you that there are almost always errors in manga. Well here’s why….because there are no galleys. Manga publishers do not get rough copies back. In offset printing the most expensive book is the first one and every time the plates are set, it costs. Even big manga publishers here in the US don’t have in-house printing and can’t afford this step. So there are no galleys to send back to the editors and proofreaders who can then spot the mistakes the letterer made. THIS is why one has to presume there are typos in every manga.

And, in some cases, where the letterer has already done their work, there still is only one layer of editing, so after the copy editor makes changes, *no one checks the finished manuscript.* This drives me absolutely crazy. Every manuscript needs more than one editor looking at it once.

True story – when we finished the very first Rica ‘tte Kanji!? volume, we had a total of 5 editors and proofreaders – and there were still two typos that escaped. You can never have too many eyes check a manuscript.

So, in book publishing, the galley goes back to the copy editor and then a proofreader…and then if the managing editor is not a moron, they take a look at it and THEN it goes to print.

In manga, the letterer gets a script that’s been edited once and no one checks the lettered manuscript for errors. Or, if the editor gets the manuscript after lettering, no one checks it a second time after those have been fixed. There can never be too many eyes. And manga companies almost always skimp on eyes.

So, why do they do that? Well, remember, manga companies have been constrained by comic book and bookstore distribution until recently. That means that they had to determine a release date way back at the beginning of the process. Readers expect the book to be ready by then, and are very demanding about things going as fast as possible, which means the company has to get that thing out the door to the printer asap to be ready. (Printers are never fast.) So they send books to print after one read rather than holding the thing up while they wait for a second round of reading/changes – and forget a third round. I have friends in book publishing who will be hired to copy edit/proofread books going to second and third printings and even with all those added layers, they still find errors.

About half the time when you see an editor-in-chief’s name on the book, they never actually edited it. Again, at ALC I always re-read a book after the editors have sent in their changes and then I hand it off to proofreaders to catch the things I still missed (and we still miss some. It’s just the way life is.)

True story – when I was a child I had a book I loved. (This was back in the day when publishing books was a respectable job.) At the very climax of the book there is a critical typo that changes the entire story. At 11 years old, I crossed out the wrong word and wrote in the right one. It just bothered me that much. ^_^

Then we head into issues of distribution and marketing which I have talked about previously, so I won’t belabor the points here. But they also take time, one of the many things fans are always so dissatisfied about.

I hope this gives you a little glimpse into some of the layers that readers never see – and hopefully explain to you why you see errors, and wonder why the company never caught it or what’s holding the book up or other questions and concerns readers have, but have no answers for.

Perhaps this new world of digital distribution will make it simpler for readers to catch an error and companies to fix it. Here’s hoping. ^_^