“Jason has great instincts about the manga business and where it’s going,” said Kleckner, who was marketing and sales director at Tokyopop from 2000 to 2006, during the years of fastest growth and expansion of manga sales in the bookstore market.
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The series is aimed at girls ages 8-12 and has sold more than 900,000 copies in Japan. In addition the new imprint will publish a juvenile fantasy prose series called Kuro Majo-san ga Touru (unofficially and roughly translated as Here’s Comes the Black Witch). Inukami is also an anime and light novel series in Japan.
#TOR BOOKS LICENSE#
Tor/Seven Seas also announced several new license acqusitions: Inukami by Mamizu Arisawa with art by Mari Matsuzawa, a humorous manga series about a dog-like sacred being and its trainer.
“We want to build the home-grown manga market,” said DeAngelis. The new venture plans to create manga adaptations of the prose works of some of Tor’s top prose authors as well.
#TOR BOOKS TV#
The Afro Samurai manga is the basis for the popular Spike TV anime series featuring the voices of actors Samuel L. The imprint is expected to release more than 70 titles in 2008 beginning in March, adding high-profile manga properties, such as the first volume of Takashi Okazaki's popular Afro Samurai manga series, to its list in August 2008. And DeAngelis emphasized that light novels will be published in their original format and most will be based on manga licenses. And while the deal will bring a broad range of licensed and original manga publishing to the science fiction house, Kleckner and DeAngelis emphasized that the Tor/Seven Seas imprint will also publish illustrated children’s prose books in addition to introducing new formats, such as Japanese light novels, prose novel series in a smaller trim size that feature manga-style illustrations throughout. Tor will also take over and distribute Seven Seas’ backlist of about 20 titles. Tor will provide capital for acquiring new manga and prose licenses and take over Seven Seas distribution to the book trade. “But with Jason, we can do it.” In an interview held at the Tor offices in Manhattan about the new venture, Doherty and members of his editorial staff outlined their interest in manga and comics publishing and discussed the future of the new Tor/Seven Seas imprint.
“But I’m not a manga expert, and I never thought we had the skill,” Doherty said.
Tor Books publisher Tom Doherty said that the house has been considering the move to manga for a while. In early December, Steve Kleckner, Macmillan v-p of merchandise and sales, and Jason DeAngelis, founder and president of the Los Angeles-based Seven Seas Entertainment, announced plans to create a Tor/Seven Seas manga imprint at Tor Books.
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