6/12/09

BL on Demand?

Okay, so June is offering an on demand service for some of their books. Print on Demand isn't new, but I find the way June has theirs set up reminiscent of what I've seen popular online comic artist do. What June wants is for people to place pre-orders for a certain book. If enough people pre-order than they will get the book a month or two earlier than the original release. You can monitor how much progress has been made by a status bar. But wait a minute! The book will be printed regardless? The only bonus is the people who pre-order get it a few months before the rest of the public? Yeah... This would be odd if what they had up was a manga, because, lets face it, majority of fans already read scanlated versions of BL manga before they're even licensed by a US company. So, what June is offering instead is a early print release of a novel to pre-order customers. Novels are very rarely translated by fans, so this is a wise move by June because they're offering an item that has had little to no exposure. But, then again, this is a translated BL novel, and I've read very few reviews which were fond of these translated versions. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.