Friday, April 27, 2007
A Tale of Two Publishers
It looks as though Akira Club has been cancelled by Dark Horse. Yesterday I received a notice from BN.com that the book still wasn't ready to ship, so they needed my approval for another 30-day extension on the order. Thinking that the book was due to come out 5/2 based on previous Comic List updates, I went ahead and approved the extension, but then decided to see if it was still scheduled to come out next week. According to both Diamond and Comic List, Akira Club was no longer listed for 5/2, and there were no other updates noted. Uh oh. Dark Horse's site still showed the book as having come out on 3/28, but eagle-eyed Althalus noticed that the book appeared to be dropped as it no longer appeared in search results for "Akira" or creator "Katsuhiro Otomo". I emailed Dark Horse for verification but haven't heard back yet. Has anyone else heard anything about Akira Club?
Meanwhile, it looks like those Eisner nominations have gone to Naoki Urasawa's Monster's head. Originally scheduled to come out last week, the eighth volume of this critically-acclaimed series has now been pushed back to 6/12. How do I know this? Simply from looking at Viz's site, which lists the updated release date. AMAZING! It's almost like companies can use this new-fangled Internet to communicate directly with their customers. Who would have guessed?
(And I still can't decide if Viz's plan to release TWELVE NEW VOLUMES of Naruto in four months is genius or insanity, but I'm certainly going to be interested to see how it plays out. My initial guess: The glut will lead to a noticeable cannibalization of sales, at least initially, and the new releases won't place as high on bestseller lists as other recent volumes, if they even manage to place at all.)
It looks as though Akira Club has been cancelled by Dark Horse. Yesterday I received a notice from BN.com that the book still wasn't ready to ship, so they needed my approval for another 30-day extension on the order. Thinking that the book was due to come out 5/2 based on previous Comic List updates, I went ahead and approved the extension, but then decided to see if it was still scheduled to come out next week. According to both Diamond and Comic List, Akira Club was no longer listed for 5/2, and there were no other updates noted. Uh oh. Dark Horse's site still showed the book as having come out on 3/28, but eagle-eyed Althalus noticed that the book appeared to be dropped as it no longer appeared in search results for "Akira" or creator "Katsuhiro Otomo". I emailed Dark Horse for verification but haven't heard back yet. Has anyone else heard anything about Akira Club?
Meanwhile, it looks like those Eisner nominations have gone to Naoki Urasawa's Monster's head. Originally scheduled to come out last week, the eighth volume of this critically-acclaimed series has now been pushed back to 6/12. How do I know this? Simply from looking at Viz's site, which lists the updated release date. AMAZING! It's almost like companies can use this new-fangled Internet to communicate directly with their customers. Who would have guessed?
(And I still can't decide if Viz's plan to release TWELVE NEW VOLUMES of Naruto in four months is genius or insanity, but I'm certainly going to be interested to see how it plays out. My initial guess: The glut will lead to a noticeable cannibalization of sales, at least initially, and the new releases won't place as high on bestseller lists as other recent volumes, if they even manage to place at all.)
Labels: Dark Horse, Delays, Manga, Viz
11:07 AM | |