Charming Monsters

Interesting article from Jason Thompson on io9 about the challenges facing the manga publishing industry, with an extensive focus on the complete lack of digital strategy by most Japanese manga publishers. (North American publishers are generally hamstrung on digital by a lack of rights, a question UDON gets asked on a regular basis.)

Nine good tips on how to get started marketing your book (for free!) from Bryan Thomas Schmidt.

The Beat provides a summary and discussion around a recent hot topic on Twitter: are cartoonists doomed to die poor (while pirates dance on their graves)?

In American Censorship news, Arizona’s ban on ethnic studies will keep a wide range of great books out of the classroom – including Shakespeare’s The Tempest.

Lindsay Doran in the New York Times on what makes a movie ending “happy” (some great writing craft advice here).

Since I’m hard at work writing and editing this week, with little time to blog, here’s some links to interesting articles about various recent happenings in the publishing arena:

The big one that has people talking: Amazon to begin publishing original books, starting with a fall slate of 122 titles. This move cuts out publishers entirely, but how can they respond when they’re so dependant on Amazon?

Also getting a lot of buzz: the National Book Award’s initial goof and subsequent bungling with Lauren Myracle’s SHINE. Vanity Fair has a fantastic interview with Lauren about the whole incident which is worth a read.

In the manga arena: Viz Media is taking their weekly Shonen Jump magazine to a purely digital format, a move that has some people celebrating (as a step towards getting an already-online audience into the habit of paying for their digital content) and others concerned. Chris Butcher has a pretty insightful commentary on why the Shonen Jump digital move is possibly bad, not just for comic shops but for the industry as a whole.

From Little Island Comics, a great list of five kid-friendly Halloween comic titles, just in time for the spooky season! Little Island Comics will be running some special events over the Halloween weekend (Oct 29-30), including how-to comic workshops with local creator Tory Woolcott and free comics for costumed kiddies. They’re also selling special packs of Halloween give-away comics – our house has been giving out comics along with candy for a few years now, and it makes us the most popular trick-or-treat stop on the block!

And for writers: some fabulous advice from Ali Luke about How to Finish What You Start. Personally, I am prone to #1 (starting new projects while others remain incomplete) and #5 (not setting enough milestones during a project to keep me on track) – what about you?

Belatedly passing along some recent Udon coverage from ICv2: Crunchyroll has started publishing online versions of Udon’s manga line, beginning with Onimusha: Night of Genesis. I’m really curious to see how this promotional effort affects sales on these titles during the 2009 con season (starting in February, thanks to New York Comic Con).

Even more exciting (for me, at least!) is the announcement of Udon’s Manga for Kids line! The first books will be hitting the shelves in April 2009, and the first stage of the MangaForKids.com website went live a few weeks ago. The manga market for teens and adults remains strong (if over-saturated in some areas), but no one’s really tapped into the fantastic younger reader material being published in Japan. It’s admittedly nerve-wracking to be starting up a new publishing line in the current economic climate, but between the quality of the books, the continued strength of children’s publishing, and Udon’s track record of managing the risk around their publishing ventures, I feel pretty confident the new line will be successful.