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Be Beautiful Report (Extended) |
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Written by Nikki Green
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Sunday, 22 October 2006 |
John O'Donnell of Be Beautiful declared “We are alive”. The BB representatives did acknowledged that their publishing schedule got a “little pushed back”. Then Be Beautiful then outlined a fairly aggressive release schedule.)
This is long and complicated, so it's all after the jump. Oh, and several titles were mentioned that we hadn't heard before-- Haruka Minami's "Ren-ai a la Carte" and "Virgin Soil," plus Nitta Youka's "Casino Lily." It turns out that these were all mentioned at New York Comic Con in February, but as we missed it, we thought a couple of you might have too. :)
Yaoi Con discussion thread is here.
November -
Sound of My Voice by Youka Nitta
January -
Embracing Love vol. 4
February -
Kizuna vol. 7
March -
Midaresomenishi: A Legend of Samurai Love
April -
Embracing Love vol. 5
May -
Kizuna vol. 8
Casino Lily by Youka Nitta
(They noted that they just finished the translation on Casino Lily)
June -
Yebisu Celebrities by Fuwa Shinri
Love ala Carte by Haruka Minami
July -
Embracing Love vol. 6
Virgin Soil by Haruka Minami
August -
Kizuna 9
The idea of these great titles coming out is very exciting. The Be Beautiful representatives seemed very confident in this schedule. (I can practically hear you guys snickering at that.)
They said that they never went bankrupt. Apparently, Animenewsnetwork.com misreported a con panel at Anime Boston. Musicland went bankrupt. This caused them problems as they never got paid for shipments to them. Also, the more recent Tower Records bankruptcy also affected them.
The good news is that they say everything they have is in print. If anything needs reprinting that will just take two to three weeks. They have fulfilled all their shipments to Amazon.com and will shortly be doing the same for other online retailers like Rightstuf and Triple A Anime. The fastest way to get their books is to order from them directly. They say the online store will be up and running in a week. Once it's back orders should ship within a day. While this sounds great, I should note that their booth had no copies of Kizuna 5 when I checked about ten minutes after the dealer's room opened. They did have lots of copies of Kizuna 6, but were only putting them out a few at a time.
They stopped doing business with the famously bad Diamond distributing because they were not getting money from them. This further restricts their sales as some stores can only order from Diamond. Even for those without such a restriction, getting stores to add another vendor can be a hassle. They are now with Consortium Books. In a month they should have stock in warehouses and be fully set up with them.
They claim they were too short staffed to update the website to quell any rumors. They had to lay off employees and switch full time employees to part time to survive. According to one person at the panel, the BB mailing list had also stated that Central Park Media (BB’s parent company) had gone bankrupt. Apparently, BB feels no need to hunt down and correct these mistakes. Anyone spreading information around the internet should have called and checked with the State of New York. A bankruptcy is a matter of public record, we should have called and check for legal forms ... We should do this even though they cannot be bothered to drop a note to ANN or update their website? Also, they pretty much said they do not respond to email to that is why anyone writing to ask got no response. We were told we should simply call BB directly and ask, as if that were the obvious course of action.
The Biblios bankruptcy affected their ability to release the Embracing Love OAVs. Be Beautiful had paid half the licensing fee and had master copies of the shows. After the bankruptcy they could not complete the transaction. Be Beautiful sent back the master tapes and did get their money back. Next month they will be in Tokyo and hope to again secure those rights. Currently, the OAVs are unlicensed.
When asked by an audience member about how they choose titles to license they named a number of criteria. One is that the artist has to be easy to work with. Stories need to take place in 'the grown up world'. They also look at the sales records in Japan.
When asked about Borders and Waldenbooks having trouble ordering from them, the Be Beautiful representatives said that there is no problems at their end. In fact, individual Borders stores can place direct orders with them.
They also gave us information on the state of some licenses. The Finder Series is licensed through volume 3. If a fourth volume exists they do not yet have the license. While in Tokyo next month they will look into licensing additional volumes of Play Boy Blues. They would like to diversify outside of Libre and work with other publishers. The person asking about this listed some companies, but the representatives did not recognize most of the names.
After the panel I sat down with Masumi O’Donnell and John O'Donnell to ask them a few more questions that our readers had. I told them of some of the animosity fans have towards them. They said that everything had been completely out of their control and they are not accountable for any of the problems. They asked me about these feelings and what caused them. I said that it was due to their lack of communication and the worries that we would never see additional retails volumes of these titles.
John O'Donnell said that he doesn't "use corporate speak". He likes to just tell things as they are. He has no intention of keeping any information secret. He re-iterated that they get too much email to reply to and that the way to reach them is by phone.
I asked about high cost of their manga and whether they might consider lowering it. First John joked that they were "greedy bastards" and wouldn't. Then he said that if sales volume increased they could consider lowering the price. They blame the price on small print runs and market factors. I did point out that other companies have lower prices and higher quality printing.
I asked about DMP licensing Youka Nitta's Embracing Love art book "Kiss of Fire". They said that DMP is a friend to them and that more exposure of Youka Nitta’s work only helps Be Beautiful.
Ands that about sums up the panel. Yep, this a doozy of report. Here’s hoping I have my greedy little hands on more volumes of Embracing Love and Kizuna on schedule. And I am also hoping that they understand how a small amount of communication can really help their relationship with their fans.
I would like to thank the representatives for taking extra time to answer all of my questions. They were very pleasant and professional even when being asked more aggressive questions and when I critiqued their responses.
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Last Updated ( Monday, 23 October 2006 )
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