Juné to start own fan driven funding for classic BL titles
Juné has announced today that it will be starting its own fan driven publishing to revitalize older BL titles. The campaigns will be hosted on our ecommerce site, junemanga.com, through Shopify.
The decision to move into a more fan driven practice was made by the president of DMI, Hikaru Sasahara, who has stated “We are one of the few small, indie manga publishers left. Our focus is on our readers who are so involved in this niche genre that we want to give them an opportunity to be an even bigger part of the picture. They can say ‘I helped create this!’”
The campaigns will go by the title “Juné Classic Revival” and aim to bring back titles that have been out of print anywhere from the last 2-10 years. In addition to the small print runs of older titles, Juné will also be offering new perks for the books such as new covers, dust jackets, and colour inserts.
The campaign has now begun and will be available to back for 30 days. Juné will be offering three titles for backers to support: the manga Secrecy of the Shivering Night by Muku Ogura, the manga Endless Comfort by Sakuya Sakura, and the novel A Promise of Romance by Kyoko Akitsu.
I want to get the positive stuff out of the way first, here.
I absolutely LOVE THIS PROGRAM!! I think it is an absolutely FABULOUS idea, and that it’s a great way to constantly be giving fans the opportunity to bring back popular old titles that are difficult to find and VERY expensive today. I just think it’s a wonderful approach to feature this on the website, and I absolutely love seeing the costs broken down in a pie-graph and just the work in general that has been put into this. I really hope you keep it around for a good, long, while.
Now, all of that said… and I want to be as gentle as possible, but I was extremely troubled by the titles you have selected this time around. Not because they are BAD titles per se, but because all of them (with the possible exception of Endless Comfort) are both REALLY easy to find and REALLY cheap to get.
If you take a quick look on Amazon, copies of Secrecy of the Shivering Night and A Promise of Romance can be had for $2 apiece – new and still shrink-wrapped, in the case of the former. You’d have to go up to $13 to get a Brand New copy of Secrecy, or $10 if you go to rightstuf where they seem to have plenty of copies.
As for Endless Comfort, it’s always been a bit more highly-lauded and popular by some, and so it goes for about $20 on Amazon, and about $15 plus on ebay. All these quoted promises are excluding shipping, generally speaking. And in all cases there are multiple sources across multiple sites for all 3 of these books..
So basically… That is my issue right now. I don’t believe the goal will be met, nor do I believe people will take it seriously, until you are offering something that really IS highly unavailable, and I really don’t understand these choices because there are so many hugely popular titles that you have, either in your digital library or consisting of printed books that had smaller runs and are now rare and coveted.
Just to throw out a few titles that I am almost positive would be very well-received…
Wolf Magic
Priceless Honey
Sensitive Pornograph
Honey*Smile
Wild Honey (still praying for a volume 2)
And those are just a tiny handful of one-shots off the top of my head. All of them are pretty darn great titles (though I’ve never managed to read or acquire Wolf Magic) that I am certain there would be a great deal of enthusiasm for… Pardon me if you no longer hold the license for any of the aforementioned titles, however – I may not be taking that entirely into consideration.
Anyway, there are certainly a good deal more titles than the ones I just threw out there off the top of my head.
Personally, I think it would be a much more interactive and fan-driven enterprise if we got to vote in some sort of where on which titles are due next month to be revived. Perhaps make one of the incentives for patronage to ability to have a vote in which books are coming next month; I have no doubt that would create far more excitement and draw.
But overall, I would just REALLY like to see you guys re-releasing the books that are not just out of print, but also nearly impossible and/or excessively expensive to own. Otherwise, what is the point?