The Bookseller’s Caroline Horn reports that UK publishers are warning booksellers that they are missing out on sales by failing to acknowledge consumer demand for manga. Publishers have been piling into the manga market for the past two years, with Little, Brown‘s Orbit the latest entrant through US list Yen Press this autumn. Random House launched its Tanoshimi imprint last year, while Orion‘s Gollancz started publishing manga in 2005, and Pan Macmillan signed an exclusive sales and distribution deal with manga publisher Tokyopop last summer.
“There is a lot of stock out there, but perhaps the growth in retail space allocated to manga is not keeping step with the amount of titles being published,” said Orbit business manager George Walkley. “In any of the major chains, manga is being under-cooked in terms of space.” Tokyopop UK sales director Dennis McGuirk added: “The issue is about the amount of space dedicated to this sector by high street retailers—manga is not given a huge amount of space so fans are given a limited offering and need to seek out specialists or go online for purchases.”