Spotlight: Aurora Publishing
It’s obvious to me that no one gives a flip about the great big honkin’ list because it is literally too big. One cannot take it in all at once, and to date my lame attempts to make it marginally more digestible, well, haven’t worked.
So let’s take one more stab at carving this beast into chunks that people can figure out at a glance:
I’m using my chart (numbers for the week ending 6 July posted yesterday) to look at the output of selected publishers, starting with
Aurora Publishing
Aurora is the American branch of Ohzora Publishing Co. and they are often pigeon-holed as a ‘ladies’ comic publisher, which may be unfair as I find their books have a lot of crossover appeal, though the label is accurate and is perhaps the best way for a first-time reader or casual industry observer to get a handle on the company.
From their first press release
Headquartered in Tokyo, Ohzora is a manga house widely known as a pioneer of comics for young women including: ladies comics, shojo manga, romance novel adaptations, and game-related anthology manga. In total, Ohzora’s publications are read by over 15.8 million people each year. … It is Aurora’s mission to introduce the highest quality Japanese manga titles to the wider population of North America, and develop the manga market here for a more mature audience. In order to provide North American readers with the best titles in a variety of genres, Aurora Publishing, Inc. has organized a consortium with several other manga publishers in Japan.
So there you go: Ohzora is planning to not only play to their strenghths, but is also looking toward the general market — and they’ve only been at it for about a year. Correction: they been publishing for a year but the company was actually started 2 years ago
Aurora has already released over 2 dozen books, with another dozen or so slated to come out before the end of the year. By far the largest number of releases are under their Deux imprint, for teh yaoi. Which only makes sense, as the genre is popular these days and they could use the all-but-guaranteed sales to help get the company started. There are also a mere handful of titles being released under the LuvLuv imprint (about 4 so far) aimed at an adult, romance market — if Aurora can get a line into the same demographic that snaps up Harlequin paperbacks then there is a lot of hope for the imprint, but so far there’s no indication that a crossover audience exists.
That’s enough with the information anyone could obtain by visiting Aurora’s web sites, let’s move on to the online rankings:
[as of 6 July, out of 1672 ranked volumes]
Main Imprint:
1545. ↓-125 (1420) : Flock of Angels 2 – Aurora, Feb 2008 [0.1] ::
1546. ↓-125 (1421) : Flock of Angels 3 – Aurora, Jun 2008 [0.1] ::
1614. ↑42 (1656) : Nightmares for Sale 2 – Aurora, Apr 2008 [0.1] ::
1640. ↑52 (1692) : Walkin’ Butterfly 3 – Aurora, May 2008 [0.1] ::
. (last ranked 29 Jun 08) : Nephilim 1 – Aurora, Apr 2008 [0] ::
. (last ranked 18 May 08) : Nephilim 2 – Aurora, Jul 2008 [0] ::
. (last ranked 13 Apr 08) : Nightmares for Sale 1 – Aurora, Nov 2007 [0] ::
. (last ranked 6 Apr 08) : Walkin’ Butterfly 1 – Aurora, Jul 2007 [0] ::
Deux:
285. ↓-53 (232) : Yakuza in Love 2 – Aurora Deux, May 2008 [111.8] ::
702. ↓-33 (669) : Tomcats – Aurora Deux, Jun 2008 [13.1] ::
802. ↓-147 (655) : I Shall Never Return 3 – Aurora Deux, Jun 2008 [8.6] ::
830. ↑23 (853) : Say Please – Aurora Deux, Apr 2008 [7.9] ::
944. ↑19 (963) : Lovers and Souls – Aurora Deux, Nov 2008 [5] ::
947. ↑21 (968) : Future Lovers – Aurora Deux, Sep 2008 [4.9] ::
1281. ↓-58 (1223) : Kiss All the Boys 1 – Aurora Deux, Mar 2008 [0.3] ::
1410. ↑new (last ranked 15 Jun 08) : Mister Mistress – Aurora Deux, Jul 2008 [0.2] ::
1613. ↑42 (1655) : Hate to Love You – Aurora Deux, Jul 2007 [0.1] ::
. (last ranked 29 Jun 08) : Oh My God! 1 – Aurora Deux, Jul 2008 [0] ::
. (last ranked 29 Jun 08) : Seduce Me After the Show – Aurora Deux, Apr 2008 [0] ::
. (last ranked 29 Jun 08) : Tough Love Baby – Aurora Deux, Feb 2008 [0] ::
. (last ranked 15 Jun 08) : Kiss All the Boys 2 – Aurora Deux, Jul 2008 [0] ::
. (last ranked 18 May 08) : Yakuza in Love 1 – Aurora Deux, Jan 2008 [0] ::
. (last ranked 30 Mar 08) : I Shall Never Return 2 – Aurora Deux, Feb 2008 [0] ::
LuvLuv:
829. ↓-275 (554) : Love for Dessert – Aurora LuvLuv, May 2008 [7.9] ::
. (last ranked 4 May 08) : Real Love – Aurora LuvLuv, Mar 2008 [0] ::
While low rankings may seem to be bad (and of course I’m sure every publisher is envious of Viz) the thing to remember is that ranking on the charts (no matter how far down) means books are being sold and in enough quantities to register with one of the online booksellers. How many copies does the last ranked book actually sell? That’s the big money question; my method doesn’t track sales that way — but I can tell you that it outsold at least 5,500 other manga that week on one, possibly more, sites.
Recent releases:
From this May: Love for Dessert, Walkin’ Butterfly 3, Yakuza in Love 2
June: I Shall Never Return 3, Tomcats, Flock of Angels 3
July (current new releases): Kiss All the Boys 2, Mister Mistress, Oh My God! 1, Nephilim 2
And preorders for: Future Lovers (September) and Lovers and Souls (November) — Both are Deux titles.
Excluding the two preorders, I’ve got 23 of the 29 books Aurora currently has in print in my database — that isn’t bad for a new publisher; it shows that some folks are finding the books, at least. And the Deux title Yakuza in Love is obviously their break-out title; it may lead readers to the rest of the catalog, given time.
