November 12, 2015
Make 'em laugh, make 'em cry
Tracing the provenance of an anime title can get tricky at times. Anime titles often originate in manga and light novels, though sometimes the anime comes first and the manga follows. A third important source is the visual novel.
In the U.S., the visual—or interactive—novel is the medium of the future, and always will be. But it's been well-established in Japan for twenty years (there's a lot of cultural information in that fact that deserved a Ph.D. dissertation). One of the big players in visual novels is Key VisualArts.
Co-founder and scenario writer Jun Maeda is largely responsible for Key's first three titles, Kanon, Air, and Clannad, which established Key's own sub-genre of magical realism fused with operatic melodrama.
Kanon and Clannad (that's the two-part anime series, not the New Age Irish band, though they're not bad either) are two of my all-time favorite tear-jerkers in any medium. Hope Chapman does a good job analyzing how Jun Maeda pulls it off in "Why Clannad Made You Cry."
The paradoxical reason, Chapman points out, is not because "life sucks and then you die." Even done well, that approach is only depressing and ultimately silly and self-indulgent.
Rather, the exact opposite. "Make 'Em Laugh," as Donald O'Connor argued. And so, "For every five minutes of weepiness in Clannad, there's at least twenty minutes of comedy (and that's a conservative estimate)."
This joy—far more than suffering (Tolstoy was largely wrong on this point)—draws us into the lives of the characters and builds the expectation that more good things can and ought to keep on happening.
Just as importantly, though, when the good things stop happening, they can't stop happening forever or we're right back to nihilism. As Chapman puts it, with Maeda, "Karma Always Comes Through." The scales of justice balance, even if it takes a bit of magical realism to make it work.
C.S. Lewis noted the ("educated") human propensity to infuse more "authenticity" in the negative than the positive, even when the one is no more factually substantive than the other. And when it is that essential faith in the "happy ending" that accounts for the human will to exist in the first place.
Tolkien's word for this was eucatastrophe, "the sudden turn of events at the end of a story which ensures that the protagonist does not meet some terrible, impending, and very plausible doom." Like Lewis, Tolkien applied it not only to fiction but to theology.
The universality of the eucatastrophe has fashioned it into a framework on which solid storytelling can be constructed. It shows up across the spectrum of style and genre, from thoroughly westernized fairy tales like Disney's excellent Tangled to anime like Scrapped Princess and Madoka Magica.
The pervasiveness of the form and the formula is easily criticized as "convention." But the key word in the "same only different" is the "same." That sameness exists for a reason: ignoring convention is a good way to create uniquely bad art.
His respect for, and mastery of, the formula is what makes Jun Maeda a storyteller whose work always deserves a second look.
In the U.S., the visual—or interactive—novel is the medium of the future, and always will be. But it's been well-established in Japan for twenty years (there's a lot of cultural information in that fact that deserved a Ph.D. dissertation). One of the big players in visual novels is Key VisualArts.
Co-founder and scenario writer Jun Maeda is largely responsible for Key's first three titles, Kanon, Air, and Clannad, which established Key's own sub-genre of magical realism fused with operatic melodrama.
Kanon and Clannad (that's the two-part anime series, not the New Age Irish band, though they're not bad either) are two of my all-time favorite tear-jerkers in any medium. Hope Chapman does a good job analyzing how Jun Maeda pulls it off in "Why Clannad Made You Cry."
The paradoxical reason, Chapman points out, is not because "life sucks and then you die." Even done well, that approach is only depressing and ultimately silly and self-indulgent.
If a likable character dies in a story, that's sad. If a likable character dies and their loved ones suffer for it, that's sadder. If a likable character dies, their loved ones suffer for it, and then they get killed in a freak accident right after a messenger runs up to tell them that their family dog has also kicked the bucket, you've started spinning a bad comedy routine.
Rather, the exact opposite. "Make 'Em Laugh," as Donald O'Connor argued. And so, "For every five minutes of weepiness in Clannad, there's at least twenty minutes of comedy (and that's a conservative estimate)."
This joy—far more than suffering (Tolstoy was largely wrong on this point)—draws us into the lives of the characters and builds the expectation that more good things can and ought to keep on happening.
Just as importantly, though, when the good things stop happening, they can't stop happening forever or we're right back to nihilism. As Chapman puts it, with Maeda, "Karma Always Comes Through." The scales of justice balance, even if it takes a bit of magical realism to make it work.
Maeda uses magic to express his own feelings about the unfairness of reality, by "breaking" it just enough to give his characters what they've earned. If tragedy is usually absurdly unfair, why can't triumph come from equally absurd fairness?
C.S. Lewis noted the ("educated") human propensity to infuse more "authenticity" in the negative than the positive, even when the one is no more factually substantive than the other. And when it is that essential faith in the "happy ending" that accounts for the human will to exist in the first place.
The joy of the happy ending, or more correctly of the "good catastrophe," the sudden joyous turn (for there is no true end to any fairy tale)—this joy, which is one of the things that fairy stories can produce supremely well, is not essentially "escapist." It does not deny the existence of sorrow and failure, but it denies universal final defeat, and thus is evangelium, giving a fleeting glimpse of Joy.
Tolkien's word for this was eucatastrophe, "the sudden turn of events at the end of a story which ensures that the protagonist does not meet some terrible, impending, and very plausible doom." Like Lewis, Tolkien applied it not only to fiction but to theology.
The universality of the eucatastrophe has fashioned it into a framework on which solid storytelling can be constructed. It shows up across the spectrum of style and genre, from thoroughly westernized fairy tales like Disney's excellent Tangled to anime like Scrapped Princess and Madoka Magica.
The pervasiveness of the form and the formula is easily criticized as "convention." But the key word in the "same only different" is the "same." That sameness exists for a reason: ignoring convention is a good way to create uniquely bad art.
His respect for, and mastery of, the formula is what makes Jun Maeda a storyteller whose work always deserves a second look.
Related posts
Angel Beats!
Clannad
Kanon
Labels: anime, jun maeda, light novel, movies, personal favs, pop culture, religion, social studies, television, thinking about writing, writing
January 10, 2012
YA in Japan
Most anime and manga start out as, or eventually become, "light novels," the publishing format favored by most young adult narrative fiction in Japan. Here's an in-depth exploration of Japan's vibrant and eclectic YA publishing world (in five parts) by Matthew Reeves.
I find the unapologetic commercialism of Japan's YA industry reassuring. It means in bottom-dollar terms that publishers pay close attention to their customers, delivering titles that are cheap, illustrated, and often quite "edgy," but without falling into the "Dreadlit" trap.
It's an approach that works on every level. One result is that, rather than avoiding YA, "boys have gravitated to it." And despite having the world most complex orthography, "a person would be hard pressed to find a country more in love with the written word than Japan."
I find the unapologetic commercialism of Japan's YA industry reassuring. It means in bottom-dollar terms that publishers pay close attention to their customers, delivering titles that are cheap, illustrated, and often quite "edgy," but without falling into the "Dreadlit" trap.
It's an approach that works on every level. One result is that, rather than avoiding YA, "boys have gravitated to it." And despite having the world most complex orthography, "a person would be hard pressed to find a country more in love with the written word than Japan."
Labels: japanese culture, light novel, publishing
June 02, 2011
Demon City Shinjuku
Demon City Shinjuku is an omnibus volume. The second novel features as its villain: King Nebuchadnezzar II! And his awful wife, Semiramis (a prototype for Princess). Has anybody cast them in that role lately?
First published in 1982, Demon City Shinjuku was Hideyuki Kikuchi's debut novel. The bulk of his work since has been based in the Demon City Shinjuku universe. The massive Yashakiden series (I'm working on the final volume now) revises and extends the themes he introduces here.
Kikuchi writes near-future fantasy and urban horror (Yashakiden moves from YA into hard-core, Joe Konrath/Stephen King territory), always risky in the prediction department. He generally sticks to monsters and magic, but in a few places the anachronisms start to show up.
I still remember a passage in an Isaac Asimov novel I read as a kid that describes "miniaturized vacuum tubes," even though the field-effect transistor was first prototyped in the 1920s. The most informed science writers can fail to anticipate how some technologies will take off (and others won't).
On the other hand, I don't know if Kikuchi picked the year out of a hat, but there is this paragraph:
Since 2010, the entire world had been gripped in a dark curse. In the face of economic recession, growing regional conflicts, and rising crime rates, President Rama was as resolute in his actions as he was charitable in his words. And changed the world as a result.
To pick nits, crime rates have fallen in developed nations (if anything, the correlation between economic recession and crime seems consistently negative). Places like Mexico and the Middle East, though, are a very different story. And Kikuchi nailed the world recession business exactly.
Related posts
A Google Maps moment
Demon City libertarianism
Indispensable
Labels: demon city, dmp, light novel, magic, translations, yashakiden
May 17, 2010
I Want to Bite (You)
Between Yashakiden volumes, I just finished translating I Want to Bite, a yaoi light novel for Digital Manga.It's a vampire story with a "western" urban setting (meaning a mix and match of European names). The geographically nondescript city is sort of a kindlier, gentler version of Demon City Shinjuku, with the existence of vampires (and ghouls and werewolves) presumed as part of social fabric.
The protagonist, Isaac, works for the "Helsing Group" as a "hunter." His job is to track down misbehaving vamps. The uke is Tristan, a boyish-looking vampire with a bunch of ulterior motives. It's derivative, to be sure, but is sufficiently well plotted to qualify as "the same only different."
Of course, it takes place in that wacky yaoi universe where men think like women and a straight guy can turn gay if he meets a cute enough uke. Seriously, I'd recommend the last chapter as a guide to how girls think about sex (because no two actual guys would converse like this).
Alas, my usual reaction in this case (as to pretty much the entire genre) is to imagine how much better it'd be hetero (or for that matter, yuri). Also true of Better than a Dream, that I translated a while back.
Better than a Dream is such a well-structured romance that I had to take care to write "he" instead of "she." It'd be easy to convert it into one of those bittersweet Hallmark movies. You'd only have to switch the pronouns around and maybe finish it off with an "accidental" pregnancy.
Better than a Dream is also a near-perfect implementation of the McKee narrative structure (confirming that like Campbell, McKee is describing the most popular style of universal storytelling, not prescribing it).
With a bit of role reassignment, I Want to Bite would make a great Angel arc, except with Cordelia as the vampire. A touch of this creative role reversal can be found in the inventive (and somewhat controversial) new vampire series, Dance in the Vampire Bund.
Again, like Demon City Shinjuku, it stipulates vampires coming out of the casket (so to speak). In exchange for settling Japan's Greek-like national debt, vampire princess Mina (together with her loyal werewolf guard, Akira) creates a sovereign vampire city-state off the coast of Japan.
The cause of the hand wringing for its importers (anime: Funimation; manga: Seven Seas) is that Mina usually presents herself as prepubescent girl (for logical reasons, as it turns out), and at times runs around without much on. This understandably set off the lolicon alarms in some quarters.
Funimation balked a bit (and is still CYA prevaricating), but Seven Seas has pressed on, again illustrating the perverse formula that words are more "moral" than drawings, which are more "moral" than moving pictures. (A case in point: Treasure Box by Orson Scott Card.)
Labels: demon city, dmp, funimation, light novel, translations, yaoi
April 08, 2009
"Yashakiden" publication date
Digital Manga has announced a publication date for the first volume of Yashakiden: "The Demon Princess," by SF/horror maven Hideyuki Kikuchi.Alas, it won't be out until December 2009. But if you're a fan of Kikuchi's other novels and anime adaptations, such as Vampire Hunter D, Wicked City and Demon City Shinjuku, or if your tastes slant towards epic-length supernatural actioners, then it will be well worth the wait.
Imagine Angel with an irredeemably nasty and perverse Darla.
Thanks to the fascinating world creation, creepily creative horror gore, and a couple of explicit sex scenes, I'm seriously enjoying translating it. Like other popular authors in the genre, Hideyuki Kikuchi possesses a natural sense of pacing that keeps the narrative zipping along and the cliff hangers hanging.
I'll be posting more updates as the publication date draws closer. In the meantime, you can read more about Yashakiden here, here and see a sneak preview here.
Labels: demon city, dmp, light novel, translations, yashakiden
January 19, 2009
I'm number one in something!
Over the weekend at Amazon, volume one of Ai no Kusabi bobbed back to #1 in Books > Comics & Graphic Novels > Yaoi > Novels. And briefly this morning, it ranked as high as #55,138 in Books. I've never broken the top 100,000 for my own novels.
Granted, if there was a category for Books > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction > Horror > Mormon Vampires Novels > Featuring Actual Mormons, I'd be number one in that too! (like those self-esteem courses that are supposed to make kids feel so special about being their unique little selves).
But having apparently offended the tender sensibilities of several readers with the "graphic sex" in The Path of Dreams and Angel Falling Softly (man, those are some really tender sensibilities), I have to say I'm amused (in a totally good way) by reader comments for Ai no Kusabi like:
In the eye of the beholder indeed! So if Angel Falling Softly tests your limits, run away! (I can assure Ai no Kusabi readers that there are way more explicit passages in subsequent volumes.)
Get past those "obstacles" and some narrative repetition (the story was serialized, published as a single volume, expanded into a light novel series, and now a second anime series), and Rieko Yoshihara has insightful things to say about Caligulan moral decay and the rotten fruits of political idealism.
Granted, the supercomputer-running-everything motif (e.g., Appleseed) is a bit dated, but then again, it's mostly there as backstory and not an active part of the narrative.
As the series progresses, I'd swear Yoshihara is poking Swiftian fun at child-poor but dog-crazy Japan (to quote The Independent: "One in five families has a dog in Japan and they are treated not like pets, but like part of the family") and the "Lolita" subculture (the most morally disturbing parts).
Perhaps I'm reading too much into it. I am wont to do that (but only because it's so much fun).
Granted, if there was a category for Books > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction > Horror > Mormon Vampires Novels > Featuring Actual Mormons, I'd be number one in that too! (like those self-esteem courses that are supposed to make kids feel so special about being their unique little selves).
But having apparently offended the tender sensibilities of several readers with the "graphic sex" in The Path of Dreams and Angel Falling Softly (man, those are some really tender sensibilities), I have to say I'm amused (in a totally good way) by reader comments for Ai no Kusabi like:
Those who are looking for graphic scenes are going to be fairly disappointed. Aside from a heated, however vague, piece in the first chapter, there is virtually nothing of note in this book.
In the eye of the beholder indeed! So if Angel Falling Softly tests your limits, run away! (I can assure Ai no Kusabi readers that there are way more explicit passages in subsequent volumes.)
Get past those "obstacles" and some narrative repetition (the story was serialized, published as a single volume, expanded into a light novel series, and now a second anime series), and Rieko Yoshihara has insightful things to say about Caligulan moral decay and the rotten fruits of political idealism.
Granted, the supercomputer-running-everything motif (e.g., Appleseed) is a bit dated, but then again, it's mostly there as backstory and not an active part of the narrative.
As the series progresses, I'd swear Yoshihara is poking Swiftian fun at child-poor but dog-crazy Japan (to quote The Independent: "One in five families has a dog in Japan and they are treated not like pets, but like part of the family") and the "Lolita" subculture (the most morally disturbing parts).
Perhaps I'm reading too much into it. I am wont to do that (but only because it's so much fun).
Labels: books, lds, light novel, moral outrage, sex, translations
January 01, 2009
Typesetting Japanese
Over at TeleRead, David Rothman mentions the cell phone ebook format popular in Japan. It's popular enough that novels are being "born digital" in that medium and then reformatted for the printed page, in some cases preserving the format's original constraints.
Rothman wonders about "this relationship between content and format," and the advisability of preserving the "look and feel" of the cell phone format.
Japanese writers have long employed a more "granular" approach to formatting text. For example, dialog gets its own paragraph, separated from the dialog tag. The Japanese "quotation mark" font often presumes the indent. Manga has probably been a recent influence as well.
And speaking of manga, unlike American comics, the text in speech balloons has long been typeset in a standard font, while sound effects and marginalia are hand-lettered (and consequently often well-nigh unreadable by semi-literate gaijin like myself).
Also in the unreadable department, because kana is a phonetic syllabary, Japanese writers regularly reproduce dialog that reflects actual vernacular usage, a practice that has markedly decreased in English letters over the past century (thank goodness).
Parentheses are used instead of italics. The em-dash becomes a double-em dash (kanji are by default fixed-width, so one "em" is one character wide). In fact, most "text decoration" is done with typographic symbols (which makes ebook conversion straightforward.)
Vertically-read text can be emphasized with a period (a "side dot") or vertical line to the right of each character.
The reasons for this become obvious if you think about traditional typesetting in Japanese. To typeset a line in italics, for example, would require having on hand a completely separate set of lead type for each of the approximately 2000 standard kanji (plus duplicates).
Computers have changed all this. Italics and bold and all the other permutations are now just a click away. It's probably only a matter of time before they show up in traditionally typeset text.
There is considerable variation among writers, but it seems to me that Japanese writers can get away with a lot more paragraph breaks. On the other hand, written Japanese grammatically allows for paragraph-long sentences that have to be broken up to make sense in English.
Mass-market paperbacks use the "ebook-sized" A6, and the "light novel" maxes out at about 40,000 words. The manga "short story" is alive and well. I'm not the greatest short story fan, but I love the manga "one-off." Like haiku, brevity is not only studied but applied.
On a related note, I've noticed that Harlequin's minimum word length for submissions has dropped to 50,000 words, and that it's now buying novellas. Seriously, anybody interested in the publishing business should keep an eye on what's going on at Harlequin.
Rothman wonders about "this relationship between content and format," and the advisability of preserving the "look and feel" of the cell phone format.
Japanese writers have long employed a more "granular" approach to formatting text. For example, dialog gets its own paragraph, separated from the dialog tag. The Japanese "quotation mark" font often presumes the indent. Manga has probably been a recent influence as well.
And speaking of manga, unlike American comics, the text in speech balloons has long been typeset in a standard font, while sound effects and marginalia are hand-lettered (and consequently often well-nigh unreadable by semi-literate gaijin like myself).
Also in the unreadable department, because kana is a phonetic syllabary, Japanese writers regularly reproduce dialog that reflects actual vernacular usage, a practice that has markedly decreased in English letters over the past century (thank goodness).
Parentheses are used instead of italics. The em-dash becomes a double-em dash (kanji are by default fixed-width, so one "em" is one character wide). In fact, most "text decoration" is done with typographic symbols (which makes ebook conversion straightforward.)
Vertically-read text can be emphasized with a period (a "side dot") or vertical line to the right of each character.
The reasons for this become obvious if you think about traditional typesetting in Japanese. To typeset a line in italics, for example, would require having on hand a completely separate set of lead type for each of the approximately 2000 standard kanji (plus duplicates).
Computers have changed all this. Italics and bold and all the other permutations are now just a click away. It's probably only a matter of time before they show up in traditionally typeset text.
There is considerable variation among writers, but it seems to me that Japanese writers can get away with a lot more paragraph breaks. On the other hand, written Japanese grammatically allows for paragraph-long sentences that have to be broken up to make sense in English.
Mass-market paperbacks use the "ebook-sized" A6, and the "light novel" maxes out at about 40,000 words. The manga "short story" is alive and well. I'm not the greatest short story fan, but I love the manga "one-off." Like haiku, brevity is not only studied but applied.
On a related note, I've noticed that Harlequin's minimum word length for submissions has dropped to 50,000 words, and that it's now buying novellas. Seriously, anybody interested in the publishing business should keep an eye on what's going on at Harlequin.
Related posts
The cell phone novel
Labels: japanese, language, light novel, publishing, technology
October 06, 2008
The (local) MSM reviews AFS
A mixed but mostly positive review of Angel Falling Softly in the most recent Salt Lake Tribune entertainment supplement, In Utah This Week.
The reviewer's main criticism is that the "novel comes off feeling more like a novella" that left her "longing for more complexity, more depth, and a fuller picture of the characters' lives."
Point taken, though I'm reminded of Michael Blowhard's arguments here and here that perhaps the novella format is what fiction needs to stay alive. "What an odd taste [novel reading] is," he observes, "staring at oceans of text, dutifully trudging from one page to the next."
He's describing what in Japan is called the "light novel," basically an illustrated novella. Stephenie Meyer's Twilight books are being subdivided and published in Japan as light novels. (And for the record, I finished the first draft of Angel Falling Softly back in 2001.)
What is surprising is that Woodbury is also able to write convincingly from the point of view of a worldly vampire whose experiences are decidedly more carnal than that of any Latter-day Saint . . . . Woodbury did well to make [bishop's wife, Rachel] not too much of a stereotype . . . [and he] does a good job of letting us inside the minds of these two women.
The reviewer's main criticism is that the "novel comes off feeling more like a novella" that left her "longing for more complexity, more depth, and a fuller picture of the characters' lives."
Point taken, though I'm reminded of Michael Blowhard's arguments here and here that perhaps the novella format is what fiction needs to stay alive. "What an odd taste [novel reading] is," he observes, "staring at oceans of text, dutifully trudging from one page to the next."
He's describing what in Japan is called the "light novel," basically an illustrated novella. Stephenie Meyer's Twilight books are being subdivided and published in Japan as light novels. (And for the record, I finished the first draft of Angel Falling Softly back in 2001.)
Labels: angel falling softly, angel reviews, light novel, publishing
July 07, 2008
Selling "Twilight" in Japan
The Twilight books by Stephenie Meyer are marketed mainly as "light novels" in Japan. Each book is broken into a three volume set, but numbered sequentially as a unified series.This is common practice to make paperbacks more portable, to make them "read fast," and, yes, to maximize margins.
The light novel typically uses the A6 (4 x 6 inch) format, and has a glossy color cover. The content is genre fiction, with a dozen or so pen and ink illustrations. Furigana are included to help with the pronunciation of difficult kanji.
The large green characters across the cover of the first volume read: "Twilight 1" (Towairaito). The Japanese title translates as "The man I loved is a vampire." All the books follow this design and have individual titles (so far there are nine volumes).
What with the pining and the angst, the mysterious and/or supernatural boyfriend(s) who seem to live in a world of their own, and the "ne're the twain shall meet" theme, the Twilight series is a good fit for the Japanese young adult romance market.
UPDATE: Twilight was first published in two A6 volumes (4 x 6 inches), with the original cover art. The three-volume sets, illustrated by mangaka Ryuuji Gotsubo, are in JIS B6 (5 x 7.25 inches).
Labels: japan, light novel, meyer, publishing, twilight
April 01, 2008
The unbearable lightness of light novels
A recent blog conversation in a small corner of the publishing world I follow (and earn a nominal income from) is directly relevant to any niche, small or micro-publisher.
The discussion concern the "light novel," a popular novella format in Japan, basically an illustrated paperback of around 40,000 words. Several U.S. anime and manga publishers have been licensing light novels. Sales have not been encouraging.
In response, Erica Friedman (a small publisher in her own right) gets down to brass tacks, admonishing the licensors and licensees to "Rework your projections and admit that you’re all working in a teeny-tiny, grassroots industry."
Her essay encapsulates the aspirations of small publishers, and the pitfalls awaiting them. In the comments, she points to one fail-safe strategy: plumb the lowest common denominator. (Which is pretty much what yaoi does.)
One obviously approach is making first volumes available free, because "you can't expect people to buy stuff that they don’t know about!" Baen Books does precisely this. It offers many of its titles--especially first titles in a series--for free online.
As Eric Flint explains:
Niche and micro-publishers serious about expanding their markets should memorize this essay. Though perhaps Tim O'Reilly sums up the problem the best: "Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors and creative artists than piracy."
The Baen approach is a kind of serialization. Manga, after all, is a thriving expression of the serial novel, very much in a form Dickens would have been familiar with. English translations of Japanese light novels could benefit from a similar marketing strategy.
The discussion concern the "light novel," a popular novella format in Japan, basically an illustrated paperback of around 40,000 words. Several U.S. anime and manga publishers have been licensing light novels. Sales have not been encouraging.
In response, Erica Friedman (a small publisher in her own right) gets down to brass tacks, admonishing the licensors and licensees to "Rework your projections and admit that you’re all working in a teeny-tiny, grassroots industry."
Her essay encapsulates the aspirations of small publishers, and the pitfalls awaiting them. In the comments, she points to one fail-safe strategy: plumb the lowest common denominator. (Which is pretty much what yaoi does.)
One obviously approach is making first volumes available free, because "you can't expect people to buy stuff that they don’t know about!" Baen Books does precisely this. It offers many of its titles--especially first titles in a series--for free online.
Baen Books is now making available--for free--a number of its titles in electronic format. We're calling it the Baen Free Library. Anyone who wishes can read these titles online--no conditions, no strings attached.
As Eric Flint explains:
[P]erhaps most important of all, free books are the way an audience is built in the first place . . . . Most readers of science fiction and fantasy develop that interest as teenagers, mainly from libraries [and] . . . people lending books to their friends.
Niche and micro-publishers serious about expanding their markets should memorize this essay. Though perhaps Tim O'Reilly sums up the problem the best: "Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors and creative artists than piracy."
The Baen approach is a kind of serialization. Manga, after all, is a thriving expression of the serial novel, very much in a form Dickens would have been familiar with. English translations of Japanese light novels could benefit from a similar marketing strategy.
Related posts
Selling Twilight in Japan
Typesetting Japanese
Labels: light novel, publishing