Kodansha USA has announced the Kodansha Print Club, an initiative to bring digital-first titles to print to reach a larger audience.
The great thing about Kodansha Print Club is that it’s a chance for titles that have niche audiences to reach more fans. The Print Club’s goal is to print manga titles that have online followings thanks to their dedicated fanbases, but are otherwise obscure in the wider anime and manga fandom. You can read an excerpt from the Kodansha Print Club press release below.
“In the US, manga has to check a lot of boxes to be viable in the traditional print publishing route. As fans know, there are many deserving stories that could reach more readers if given a physical format. Some folks have been following and championing these series in their digital releases, and it has been encouraging to see how ready people are for them,” says Haruko Hashimoto, Kodansha USA, Sr. Editor, Digital. “Internally, we’re actually quite a small team working on Kodansha Print Club books. Each series, each file takes careful consideration from all sides: editorial, production, design, etc. It’s been a long time coming, but it’s an effort that we’re excited to finally launch. My hope is for the Kodansha Print Club to bring refreshed and improved localizations to long-time fans, and introduce these series to new readers, too. There are a lot of English-language manga to pick from these days, so giving an often-overlooked story another chance at visibility is important. I’m looking forward to seeing if what we’ve curated for you finds a place in your shelf—or your friend’s shelf!—like it did mine.”
This will hopefully allow for more unusual series to reach US markets instead of mainstream shonen and isekai titles (not that there’s anything wrong with them, I love isekai sometimes).
Being a vocal fan is a good way to get involved with your favorite series, and thanks to the internet American fans can speak directly with Japanese artists and publishers. Just recently the shojou-ai series LOVE-BULLET got a second life thanks to dedicated western fans.
The first three titles coming to Kodansha Print Club are Love, That’s an Understatement, Teppu, and Blade Girl.
