• This post is part of a on-going series called “Being a Professional Manga Artist in the West“. The first post is here.
• The discount period is over, and the price has returned to normal. Buy my short story collection from Bento Comic’s Smashwords storefront @ US$4.99.

Part 4c: Manga Bit-Parts of Media Empires

The Yen Press story is significant. When I first did ‘Odd Thomas’ with Dean, it was one of the first times something like this has been done. By ‘something like this,’ I mean a best-selling author taking one of their best-selling series and doing a manga/graphic novel version of the work. The ‘Odd Thomas’ books I did were prequels, not adaptations, but it didn’t matter – the point was that ‘Odd Thomas’ was a brand, just like Dean Koontz is a brand-name author, and brands have customers that are eager to buy more of that brand.

After the success of the first ‘Odd Thomas’ book, however, it seemed that publishers realised that there was money in making manga adaptations of best-selling prose stories. The prose fiction market was far larger than the manga market, far more established, and with far deeper pockets. What better way was there to make money, than to make manga versions of prose best-sellers and sell them to a pre-existing fan base? It was safe, risk free money – much like how movie studios make movies out of books or comic book superheros. These were ready-made audiences with money, and much easier than developing a new property from scratch.

Again, I was aware this was going on, but perhaps I didn’t realise it would become common. With the GFC and piracy, getting original manga published was becoming harder and harder, as publishing houses could not take new risks on an author when there were better, safer money to be made elsewhere.

I had originally started off illustrating for Dean Koontz in the hope that it would also help my career, but due to the economic crisis, it hasn’t been the case. It seems the GFC has permanently changed the way publishing houses did business, but there are two other reasons too, as I discovered in 2010.

Next Monday, I’ll be back to talk about changing the way I did comics. After my stint illustrating for Dean Koontz, I would be working for another best-selling author – but this time, I wasn’t doing “comics”, but something slightly different: “comics-prose”.