OK, ok. Posting like an anime nut today but I need to say this. It is with great pleasure that I exited the columns of Neo this month. Last month I left them rather depressed. Jonathan Clements insulting the 100 greatest cartoons list on Channel 4 (which you may recall he contributed to) and Paul Gravett telling me that manga is one of the biggest selling types of book in France of all places. Well this week Jonathan was as uninspiring as ever but Paul was talking about the London Book Fair. For the uninitiated the London Book Fair is the biggest trade show for the UK book industry. Everyone from Random House to Waterstones sets up there, its the E3 of the book world. Now manga is viewed with something bordering on hostility by most major bookshops (so extra kudos to Ottakars, Blackwells and Borders) but this year the UK Reading Agency was out to change that. Yes you read that right the UK Reading Agency. The biggest authority on UK bookselling was there to change negative opinions on manga, those back to front comics from full time nutjobs the japanese. Their seminar title was to the point. 'How to Profit from Graphic Novels'. Most manga fans would see that as something negative but remember we're dealing with major corporations here. The only language they understand is profit so this is a natural way to explain manga (and how to milk it) to the suits. It seems this is a full blown mission for the Reading Agency, on their website (www.readingagency.org.uk) there's a resource pack available for schools and libraries. It's quite comprehensive and contains banners, posters, stickers, postcards, all the labelling a library would need for a manga section and most importantly a big book. This book contains everything a retailer or library would need to know about manga. A big annotated list of 150 major manga titles along with their related animes and games, a manga reading guide (I know how tricky reading right to left is), the history of manga, important websites and magazines and finally 10 tips for marketing manga. I see it as immensely important that something like that has been put out there (the closing date for orders was January 28th). Apparantly Waterstones has been seeing immense success with manga and as the UKs #1 I hope that will encourage everyone to sell it. Here's to the future of manga in the UK!
FYI
If you fancy getting some manga not released in the UK then check out my 2 favourite BitTorrent trackers at www.prutser.com and manga.bakaupdates.com
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