With a number of light novels being published at the moment, do you think LNs will see success in the U.S, or is it an overly-ambitious venture at the moment since they have failed here before?
Well let me start off by saying.... Volume, or in this case number of books released at once, is not always a good thing. If anything in the US anime and manga business, the industry has repeatedly shown that rapid growth in this manner often leads to trouble.
When ADV Manga promised to release 1000 units in X number of years...they collapsed. And this was before the DVD side fell apart.
DC's CMX had ambition also opening with a list the size of what established current pubs like Seven Seas and DMP crank out. They folded too.
Or how about Fantagraphics stating they would do around 6-8 series a year.
The DVD side almost feel apart when market pressures and bad investing created a very unhealthy bubble. Tokyopop's struggles became very obvious to the public when they hit peak licensing also (even before the econ bubble began to take their legs out one by one). And let's not forget TP's light novel line and how while relatively modest might have been a little bit of an over-reach when they tried it, killed it, and kept it as a zombie line.
Now... It's 2015, almost a decade from when the market was in it's last big bubble, and the mange market is healthy again. While Yen has acquired a number of titles, we haven't seen many other pubs follow that path aggressively yet. Vertical is doing some. Viz still has HaiKasoru (a mix of J-Lit and J-Light prose) and that has done kinda how Vertical expected it to do. But that's pretty much it.
The landscape for LNs has changed a bit. More anime are based off them now. And some are hits instead of mid-tier works. No one can deny Sword Art's popularity. And that has done well for Yen. Accel World though... Not as big. Not by a long shot. A Certain Magical (ToAru)... A little better than Accel. Vertical's Before the Fall a little better than ToAru.
Then for books like Log Horizon (so-so to meh) and DanMachi (very nice) it's kinda early days. But DanMachi did get a recent boost (anime related? Breast Ribbon related??).
Could there be a push back? Maybe. Is overly ambitious I'd say it is to an extent. But let's not forget Yen is a part of Hachette and they know how to sell novels (maybe more than manga; don't forget they released Haruhi, Spice & Wolf and Kieli for years now). So these are risks they can take with better knowledge than most. If Seven Seas or DMP or DH were going all in, I'd be worried. With Yen I think they have a plan and we'll see if it works together over the next few years.
Vertical will take their usual path...small but somewhat nimble; conservative but also challenging.
When ADV Manga promised to release 1000 units in X number of years...they collapsed. And this was before the DVD side fell apart.
DC's CMX had ambition also opening with a list the size of what established current pubs like Seven Seas and DMP crank out. They folded too.
Or how about Fantagraphics stating they would do around 6-8 series a year.
The DVD side almost feel apart when market pressures and bad investing created a very unhealthy bubble. Tokyopop's struggles became very obvious to the public when they hit peak licensing also (even before the econ bubble began to take their legs out one by one). And let's not forget TP's light novel line and how while relatively modest might have been a little bit of an over-reach when they tried it, killed it, and kept it as a zombie line.
Now... It's 2015, almost a decade from when the market was in it's last big bubble, and the mange market is healthy again. While Yen has acquired a number of titles, we haven't seen many other pubs follow that path aggressively yet. Vertical is doing some. Viz still has HaiKasoru (a mix of J-Lit and J-Light prose) and that has done kinda how Vertical expected it to do. But that's pretty much it.
The landscape for LNs has changed a bit. More anime are based off them now. And some are hits instead of mid-tier works. No one can deny Sword Art's popularity. And that has done well for Yen. Accel World though... Not as big. Not by a long shot. A Certain Magical (ToAru)... A little better than Accel. Vertical's Before the Fall a little better than ToAru.
Then for books like Log Horizon (so-so to meh) and DanMachi (very nice) it's kinda early days. But DanMachi did get a recent boost (anime related? Breast Ribbon related??).
Could there be a push back? Maybe. Is overly ambitious I'd say it is to an extent. But let's not forget Yen is a part of Hachette and they know how to sell novels (maybe more than manga; don't forget they released Haruhi, Spice & Wolf and Kieli for years now). So these are risks they can take with better knowledge than most. If Seven Seas or DMP or DH were going all in, I'd be worried. With Yen I think they have a plan and we'll see if it works together over the next few years.
Vertical will take their usual path...small but somewhat nimble; conservative but also challenging.
