Spanish Bone; More Manga Due from PSB
This story originally appeared in PW Comics Week on December 12, 2006 Sign up now!
by Calvin Reid, PW Comics Week -- Publishers Weekly, 12/12/2006
It was a good year for Spanish-language comics at Public Square Books, a New York firm that brings Spanish-language editions of U.S., European and Latin American comics into the U.S. market.
PSB sales have doubled over the past year, said company founder Larry Bennett. In 2007 PSB will add several very popular manga licenses, including Fruits Baskets, Chobits and Oh My Goddess, to its list. And over the next three years, PSB will release nine volumes of Jeff Smith's Bone series plus a Bone compilation volume. PSB acquired its first manga licenses (Rave Master by Hiro Mashima (nine volumes) and Tokyo Mew Mew by Mia Ikumi (seven volumes) in early 2006, and Bennett said he expects the new licenses will "double sales" of its manga titles.
Bennett also has a deal to supply three Borders Books and Music stores in Puerto Rico with about 100 Spanish-language graphic novel titles. "Until we came along," said Bennett, "most of the graphic novels sold in Puerto Rico have been in English."
PSB gets exclusive licenses to popular graphic novel series from Spanish publishers, assigns them new ISBNs and imports these editions into the U.S. market. PSB offers Spanish publishers a low-risk channel into the American market and provides extensive sales and marketing information for the titles. PSB has worked mostly with Norma Editorial, a major Spanish publisher based in Barcelona, Spain. But over the last year, Bennett says, he has increased the number of publishers supplying titles and he now has about 10 different Spanish publishers. "But Norma remains our biggest partner," said Bennett.
Bennett has eliminated some slower-selling licenses, and PSB currently offers about 175 titles and is adding 12 to 15 new Spanish-language graphic novel and nonfiction titles to its list each month. PSB offers Spanish-language editions of the most popular and critically acclaimed comics, including such works as Hellboy, Love and Rockets, In the Shadow of No Towers, Persepolis, Queen and Country and Sin City.
Bennett acknowledges that the market for Spanish-language comics in the U.S. is small—probably $2 million to $3 million in annual sales—but it is growing. PSB titles are distributed by National Book Network, and PSB also works closely with library-oriented distributors like Brodart and Baker & Taylor. Libraries, typically important to immigrant populations in the U.S., are a bigger outlet for Spanish-language comics than are bookstores.
"Libraries continue to be a big focus for us," said Bennett, "and we're making some inroads into the school market as well." The new titles, particularly the manga series, raise the profile of PSB among national retailers. "The chains want more Spanish-language manga, so the new titles will help us," said Bennett. "We're getting a critical mass of titles together. It'll be a lot easier for a store to build a Spanish-language section."
