Rocket Bomber - article - business - publishing - Never ask advice from a blogger.

We tend to blog about it. From my inbox:

Matt,

Just trolling your site. I was wondering if you knew of any publicly traded manga, anime or standalone distribution companies like KDE, or Del Ray (but they are a subsidiary of Random House). Or, if you know of any companies that are venture capital, or angel funding? And if you don’t, could you point me in the right direction?

Thanks for the business analysis. Considering the vastness of the internet there doesn’t seem to be enough research done on this industry. Of course should I use your research, you would be properly sited.

Regards,
[redacted]

I’m not sure how much help I can provide, but here it goes anyway:

Right now, most manga and anime companies fall into one of two groups — a wholly owned subsidiary of a much larger conglomerate, or privately held firms most of which are so small they don’t even have to report earnings if they don’t want to.

To further cloud the issue, even the independent manga companies often have distribution (or co-publishing) agreements with one or another of the large publishers — for example Viz is co-owned by Japanese firms Shogakukan and Shueisha, but is incorporated as an stand-alone American company, and is distributed to bookstores by Simon & Schuster (which in turn is owned by CBS)

An incomplete list of Manga Co’s:

ADV Manga [defunct]
Aurora Publishing — including the LuvLuv and Deux imprints
Broccoli Books [defunct]
CMX (a division of DC’s Wildstorm imprint)
Dark Horse
Del Rey (as you know, an imprint of Random House)
Digital Manga — including the DMP, DMP Juné, 801, and DokiDoki imprints
Go! Comi
Graphic Sha
Japanime’s Manga University — which has also co-published a number of Graphic Sha titles
Media Blasters
Netcomics
Seven Seas (distributed now by Macmillan imprint Tor — it’s unclear if future releases will be co-branded with Tor or if 7seas will continue as a separate brand)
Udon
Vertical
Orbit/Yen Press (an imprint of Hachette)

[edit: oops. I forgot Central Park Media (defunct), DrMaster, and Yaoi Press — and possibly others: shout out in the comments, peeps!]

Tokyopop — which includes the Blu imprint; distributed by HarperCollins, and also co-publishing manga adaptations of Harper Teen titles under a joint HC/Tokyopop imprint

& Viz — which includes Shojo Beat, Shonen Jump & Shonen Jump Advanced, Viz Signature & Sig Ikki, the Ghibli Studio Library, and the Vizkids imprint.

I attempted to take each of these in turn but stalled after seven or so write-ups
http://www.google.com/searchhl=en&source=hp&q=site:rocketbomber.com+spotlight

And I also did some rudimentary research into publishing as an industry, in 2008 and revisiting the point more recently about 2 months ago:
http://www.rocketbomber.com/2008/05/29/2007-in-review#publ-index
http://www.rocketbomber.com/2009/09/10/business-is-booming-3-our-worlds-are-not-our-own

There are plenty of links in these articles, and of course while wikipedia has faults you can teach yourself quite a bit about the industry just by plugging in names and reading the wiki articles.

I’m not as familiar with the anime industry; I’m a bookseller.

##

To your second question: If you are trying to secure funding, the first and most important thing is to narrow your concept, and figure out what you can do best — what you will do differently. Back that up with a solid business plan: Write a plan just like you were going to walk into a small community bank and ask them for a loan to set up business in their home town — that is to say, don’t load it down with hypotheticals and market projections but plainly describe what your business is and how (in simple and concrete terms) you will make money.

And set the business plan to one side, for now.

Parallel to that, prepare a sales pitch. Here, you can go Blue Sky and Outside of the Box and New Paradigm all you want. This is how you will approach VC or other investors to get them interested in your business model.

Once you have their interest, you can then move to close the deal. After the initial burst of enthusiasm, when they begin to have second thoughts (or the lawyers and MBA’s start to talk them out of it) you can back up a stellar sales pitch with the boring, nuts-and-bolts business plan. “Angels” and VC are still businessmen — they’re still banks, after a fashion. They are willing to take greater risks (for greater returns) and can often be persuaded to back interesting ideas that might not, at first glance, make business sense — but realize that they are very much interested in the business, particularly in the post-dot-com era. The money isn’t going to be as ‘free’ as it used to be.

The only other advice I can give is to note that venture capital is still very much tied to the technology sector. You’d do yourself a favor to move to either Silicon Valley or Cambridge, Mass. even if your business has nothing to do with tech — most Angels made their money in the dot-com boom (the smart ones got out early) and it helps to go where the money is.

best of luck
—Matt.

[post script: I spent an hour responding, and thought I’d recoup the effort by also getting this post out of it.]