Yen Press's Kurt Hassler and sr. editor Ju-young Lee

At the end October, Hachette announced that it would be joining two of its imprints—its sci-fi imprint, Orbit, and its manga imprint, Yen Press—into one division. With the restructuring and layoffs at manga publisher Tokyopop and more selective buying and inventory control by book retail giant Borders Books, many observers have begun citing the possibility of a serious decline in the U.S. manga market. But Yen Press publishing director Kurt Hassler says otherwise. Formerly the manga/graphic novels buyer at Borders and a pioneer retailer in cultivating the U.S. manga market, Hassler was named the most powerful man in manga by pop culture trade news site ICv2 in 2006. Hassler is now the sole director of Yen Press (former co-publishing director Rich Johnson left the company as part of the reorganization) and oversees its publishing program. His experience in retail and on the publishing side gives him a unique view of the evolution as well as the ongoing development of manga in the U.S. Hassler chatted with PWCW about the future of Yen Press, the future of manga in the U.S. and the importance of strong properties to any publishing category.

PW Comics Week: Yen Press is joining Orbit under the Orbit imprint. What does this mean for Yen Press?

Kurt Hassler: All that’s happened is that Hachette has created a new corporate division—like Little Brown—a new division focusing on these two imprints. The feeling is that there are a lot of similarities [between Orbit and Yen Press]. The types of books are similar in some respects. They are geared towards similar audiences and have similar buyers. It makes sense to group them together. But Yen Press will continue to be Yen Press. The difference is that I’ll report to Tim Holman [v-p and publisher of Orbit] and Tim will report to Hachette CEO David Young.

PWCW: What does this mean for the books? Will Yen Press keep its logo?

KH: From a consumer perspective, there will be no interruption in what or how we publish. Yen Press will continue to be the logo on the books. No one will notice the difference. We will evolve as a separate entity under one umbrella.

PWCW: How is this going to change the marketing of the books if at all?

KH: Distribution and sales and marketing-wise the approach is not changing. Hachette handles all of that.

PWCW: The economy has slowed and manga sales growth has slowed. What would you say to the people that are predicting gloom and doom for manga’s future?

KH: Let’s be quite clear: manga growth slowed over a year ago. That was inevitable. It’s impossible for it to maintain the same rate of growth that we’ve seen for the past years. If it continued, we’d have entire bookstores full of manga and nothing else. [The early aggressive sales growth of manga] was unprecedented in books. We had not seen another category with that kind of growth in such a short period of time.

We have not seen contraction [in the U.S. manga market]. There’s a difference between slowdown and contraction. There’s still growth, but growth in a much more mature category that went from nothing to what it is now in less than a decade. But people predicting the bust of manga—that’s not going to happen. There are still hits on the USA today list.

PWCW: Has the Borders restructuring influenced Yen’s marketing position? Are you feeling the squeeze for shelf space?

KH: Not a squeeze for shelf space—look, anything happening at Borders is happening across the board and not just with manga. It’s not just a squeeze on manga and not other publishers. I can’t speak specifically to the Borders situation, but retailers in general are bracing themselves for tougher economic times and being more selective in what they carry. But it’s not specific to the manga category. We have to clarify what’s going on in the industry in general, in the broader economy and what’s going on in the manga category.

PWCW: What types of challenges does Yen Press face in this new market?

KH: The challenge is making a title stand out, getting it in front of retailers and confidently saying to them ‘these are the titles you should be supporting. These will elicit the greatest fan reaction and the greatest sales.’ Not all licenses are equal. It’s not specific to manga. This is what all publishers do. They tell buyers ‘this is the book where you should make your big stand. Buy big volumes of this book and you’ll make the best sales.’

Manga has the additional challenge of being unfamiliar and hard to differentiate in the minds of buyers. That’s where you hit a challenge in terms of telling a buyer which license to stand behind. There’s a lot of material being presented to a buyer. If you have 26 new series you’ve got to make the case for what’s going to stand out and get the best return on their investment. That is more challenging to do in the manga category.

What’s really changed in the current market is that material is coming out much more quickly in the States than in Japan. We used to have years to see popularity growth in Japan [for new series]. We don’t have that anymore. It’s because [U.S. manga] publishers are buying material much more aggressively than they were before. So how do you build brand familiarity when you’re used to having the existing popularity in Japan?

Our main initiative has been the magazine [Yen Plus, a monthly anthology serializing Yen Press titles]. We looked to Japanese and Korean markets and the fans there. It’s not like books are released cold onto shelves. They build up fan awareness through serialization. The reaction we’ve gotten so far for Yen Plus is, “This is great! I came to it for Soul Eater but found all these different titles that I’m excited about.” We brought 6000 copies to the San Diego Comic-con and every copy was given away. We brought 3000 copies to the New York Anime Festival and didn’t get through the weekend—and we brought issue one. (At the time we were already on issue 3 of Yen Plus).

PWCW: Yen Press took over publishing the Korean manhwa list of ICE Kunion. How has Korean manhwa been faring in the U.S?

KH: ICE Kunion titles have been doing very well—they’re comparable to Japanese titles. One of the perceptions is that manhwa is an inferior product. But it’s just that there isn’t as much license awareness. That’s one of the reasons why the magazine has been an extreme success in introducing Korean licenses. The reaction has been overwhelming. We get fan art for the Korean titles as much as for the Japanese titles. The lapse between volumes—that was unavoidable. The challenge we have is repromoting these series. But we’ve been featuring older properties [in Yen Plus] and it’s great. The whole purpose is to build awareness of the property. We made Yen Plus a vehicle to introduce material here.

PWCW: What about anime tie-ins? Yen Press and Little Brown are giving The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya [a major Japanese license featuring manga and prose formats] a pretty major push in the U.S. market. You’re essentially treating it like a major American brand. Are anime tie ins still important in moving manga?

KH: Anime tie-ins are a good thing for a property if it has exposure, ideally if it’s broadcast. It’s great exposure for your manga and we would like to see nothing better than the Black God anime come to the U.S. [Black God is another Yen Press manga license]. But it’s not necessary for a series to be wildly successful.

Fruits Baskets is a manga that never received any national or cable anime in the U.S.—I think it was subscribe on demand. But that’s a property that didn’t build it’s fanbase based on the anime broadcast. The animation drives a ton of awareness, but it’s all about the license itself. It can build awareness on its own. The animation only helps. I’d love to see more competition for more broadcast of animation. With Toonami [the Cartoon Network’s former block of U.S. and Japanese animation] folding—Toonami was huge in terms of launching manga in general, broadcasting Sailor Moon and Dragon Ball. I’d love to see that expanded.

As far as [the launch of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya] is concerned, Bandai released the anime last year and it was among the top 10 anime. That’s one [property] where an enormous amount of awareness was based on the knowledge of the manga and prose novel in Japan. Because it’s already a proven success in Japan, it warrants that kind of [star] treatment. The novels have sold over 4 million copies in Japan alone and they have a way smaller population than we do. So that is a lot of success. When you have something like that you want to treat it like it’s a brand that’s already established. And the story is great.

PWCW: What’s going to be different for Yen Press going forward? Have you guys been exploring different retail avenues?

KH: We’re definitely reaching out to different retail avenues—bookstores, libraries are a big focus. But it varies depending on the property. For the Haruhi novels, those are published by Little Brown Readers and they are treating it like they treat any other high profile property. But every outlet has its own hurdles. Not everyone orders like a bookstore. It depends on how much we can reach out to and introduce this to other markets.