A few months ago, I wrote a little essay detailing some, but not all, of the many problems faced by publishers and fans when it comes to the process of publishing, selling and distributing manga. One of the themes that came up in the comments was that readers felt that if only companies promoted their manga more, sales would be better. I felt that the misunderstandings driving this issue were worth a whole separate essay.

Let me begin by once again apologizing for being confusing when I mean to clarify and for oversimplifying complex and multipartite issues. Also, this is once again kind of long….

One of the least actionable suggestions on the previous essay about distribution was that companies should not even start to do anything unless they have “enough” money. This is not only very childish, it’s simply not doable. I’m fairly certain that very few fans have the vaguest idea of what it costs to license, translate, edit, retouch, letter, layout, publish and distribute a book. I’m equally certain that very, very few fans have the slightest idea of what would be “enough” money for a comprehensive advertising campaign. With multitrillion dollar companies failing every day, I think it’s safe to say that no one ever has “enough” money.

The core of advertising is saturation. One of the tenets of advertising is that repetition is the key. The ad for XYZ car may annoy the heck out of you, when you see it on TV, hear it on radio, see it in a magazine and on billboards, but chances are, you’d recognize the car if I showed you a picture. Buying *one* ad won’t make a difference. A company has to buy many, many ads to establish in our thick brains that a series is out. :-)

For the moment, let’s set aside the issue of selling manga to a non-comics reading audience. It’s a whole different can of beans.

Let’s just go over the most common forms of promotion in the anime and manga world:

1) Press Releases (which go to news sites and bloggers)
2) Company Forums/Website
3) Social networking
4) Reviews
5) Articles on and off-line
6) Ads on websites
7) Ads in print

As soon as they license a title and can officially announce it, most companies send out a press release. These go to on- and off-line media sources and will likely to be posted on the company’s website. A company might send this to several dozen media outlets, maybe even hundreds. Not all of those will publish the press release. Online sources are usually pretty good about that, and something like ANN will have forum space to comment. Of course, most companies have forums as well, and will gladly encourage discussion about the upcoming title.

People who read those press releases or visit those forums will know about the series. Perhaps a magazine or blogger who aggregates news will mention that the series has been licensed. All of those will expand the news out to a wider audience. There’s also word of mouth and other consumer-generated media such as mailing lists, groups on social networking sites, twitters, etc. Anyone mentioning a license in those spaces will spread the word that much more.

All of this goes for when a series is released, as well – at which time it also has the added advantage of being listed in Previews and books catalogs, which might raise awareness another notch.

And then there’s articles, and reviews. Companies send out review copies as early as possible. Magazines and online sites review their books. Perhaps someone will write an article about the company, the artist, the genre. There’s no guarantee that the review will be positive, however.

The problem with this is that you, a potential reader of this series, have to *be* in one of these spaces. You have to read a newsite, a magazine, a forum, a mailing list, a group, a blog, to hear that news. Which is why most manga companies rely heavily on fan advocates. One blogger with a larger or more targeted following might spread the news faster than a press release to ANN or a review on AoDVD.

My wife makes a good point here – she said, “Up until now, there’s no outlay of money.” She’s wrong, but the fact that she didn’t know that means you might not, as well. The press release is written by and distributed by a person who is being paid for doing that job. And, if the company has hired a professional marketing firm, they may in fact be paying to get the press release out there. Not all PR sites are free. So it’s not a direct buy, but it isn’t free, either. And while the cost of sending out a review copy isn’t back-breaking, you’re still paying per cost of book and the shipping, so it’s not free, either.

Then there’s advertising. There is an entire career one could make doing nothing but buying media space for advertising. It’s not a simple task.

It’s been proven over and over that most people who are at least vaguely familiar with the Internet simply tune ads out when looking at a page. I’m not making it up, trust me. And, like real estate, in advertising everything is location, location, location. If my ad is above the cut, in the reading space, you *might* notice it. Chances are, not unless you see it a dozen times though. If you have an adblocker, are a member of a site which gives you an ad-free view or, like myself, steadfastly refuse to look at ads on a webpage, the money for that impression just went {poof}.

When was the last time an ad popped up on a webpage and you went “Oooh! I wanted that!” and clicked through and bought it? How many times are you paging through a magazine or newspaper, see something for sale and run right out and buy it? You see my point.

Big ads on websites are expensive. Ads in magazines are prohibitively expensive, even though anime/manga magazines are super cheap compared to national print media. (For example, I could very seriously spend more to buy *one* smallish ad in The Advocate than I actually make on a book in a year.)

Little ads placed on the lower portion of websites might never be seen. Cheap, yes. But how *many* impressions do you think XYZ store needs to serve to make one sale? Thousands.

And advertising *still* is predicated upon the simple fact that you read the magazine or website and actually look at the ads there.

Now, given the fact that most companies promote and advertise at least their major, likely-to-sell-alot new series on heavily trafficked spaces online and in print, can you think of any other reasons why you might not have heard of a series before?

I can.

Because you are not *on* those spaces. You hang out at ABC forum, where the ads are either adult to pay the bills, or semi-related, like games or, also likely, has no ads because the space you’re on is private, subsidized, lives by donation and/or talks about illegal activities like warez, scans and subs. Perhaps you hang in irc, or on a private mailing list or group.

Companies have limited dollars and are likely to advertise on, not only the most seen spaces, but the spaces where the readers are most likely to convert their passion for a series into sales. ANN is more popular, but AoDVD readers tend to buy more. If you’re company Z, which site are you throwing your money at? 4chan is undoubtedly a massively popular site. And in some ways, culturally significant. But not in terms of sales. Channers are not an audience likely to buy a series. So, even though an ad buy there might be seen by many people, its another {poof} of money. It’s far better to sink money into a print magazine (already a higher likelihood of buying, because they *buy* the magazine) or a blog or website where the readers are likeliest to convert into buyers.

Now, all that having been said, when I read “companies don’t promote enough” what I actually hear is “companies don’t beam relevant information directly to my brain.” Because it’s not that hard to bookmark the maybe half dozen companies that release material that interest you, or one or two news sources that track relevant information. You can’t expect a company to send press releases to the irc channels you’re in, but you can expect them on the company website – and many companies offer informative forums, lists, and email newsletters with *news* that get beamed directly to your email box, that you will, sadly, still have to read in order to know.

In the comments of my last essay, Seven Seas detailed the multiple ways in which they had promoted a book and the response was, “well I never heard about it.” There is no fix for that. If you are not reading reviews, looking at ads, checking forums or news, following on Twitter, or somehow actully collecting information in some way, there is *no* way the company can reach you. It is next to impossible to inform you about a new series you *might* like, unless you’re paying attention to places where things you like are promoted.

Do companies promote enough? No. There is never *enough* promotion. There will always be some person who just walked in from the rain, who looks around and says, “I never heard of this before,” even after the largest freaking media blitz on the planet.