Spice and Wolf book in English

Well, Spice and Wolf has definitely been the hot button issue on the site ever since we unveiled the new cover a couple of months back. Reaction among fans was immediate and opinionated, and I promised at the time that we would look into a possible solution for those fans who felt that they simply couldn’t do without the original cover art.

It’s taken some time, but I wanted to thank everyone who bore with us while we worked through the approvals and notifications necessary to put our plan into action. I’m very happy to report that the behind-the-scenes machinations have been resolved, and we can now fill you in on what we’ve come up with!

In order to provide fans with an option to obtain the Spice and Wolf novels with the original light novel cover art, we have decided to do a special limited print run dust jacket (already under way) that we will offer for free to our online retailers. Those online retailers who choose to participate in this offer will be shipped the flat (uncreased) jackets to make them available at no additional charge to anyone ordering copies of the novel through their sites. This is strictly a voluntary offer being communicated now to our online retail partners, so be sure to verify participation with your retailer of choice when placing your orders if you are interested in receiving the jacket.

As we’ve said in the past, our customers are truly important to us. We do listen to your feedback and make every possible effort to insure that you are happy with our offerings. While I am quite certain that not everyone will be satisfied with this solution for one reason or another, we are pleased to have been able to make these additional efforts on behalf of our Spice and Wolf fans, and we do not doubt for an instant that you will enjoy the book.

Light novels have a short but checkered history in the U.S. market. Conventional wisdom holds that they don’t sell — that it cannot be done. I have to say, though, that I’m just not convinced. What is a light novel, really? It’s a novel. It’s a book with spiffy illustrations. Sure, there are some distinct challenges when it comes to positioning these books in our market, but ultimately there are a lot more readers of novels out there right now than there are readers of manga and comics. That’s a huge potential audience, and we really want to help our novels realize that potential. These are great stories, and we’re proud to be introducing them to whole new readership.

Of course one of the main challenges we face is with presentation. We love the original designs of the novels we’ve licensed from Japan. Love them to death! The unfortunate reality we face, though, is that these designs that we adore, while they work brilliantly in markets where manga is ubiquitous, tend not to be impactful with more general audiences here — and we want everybody to enjoy these books! So the challenge we have to undertake is to come up with new cover designs for these fantastic books in hopes of garnering for them the readership they deserve.

Some people won't buy a book simply because it has a different cover on the front.

Yeah, I don't like the new cover.

However they already screwed it up with the cover already way before the release.

Fixed

As if changing the cover art is going to attract the attention of the target market.

Problem is that the inner illustrations are still manga-form, and the differences between the two creates a contradiction that won't sit well with readers.

To be honest, I don't think they are making the right move in trying to reach to the general audience simply because light novels are almost synonymous with anime/manga.

They should probably stick to the otaku audience and leave it at that until the anime/manga phenomenon gets even bigger.

As if being pessimistic is really going to help produce more S&W in English.
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This is true. As someone else put it, "Once you open the book, you get a face-full of manga."

Except no one in the mainstream knows what a "light novel" is. And S&W is more or less the same size as a regular novel.

Except no one in the mainstream knows what a "light novel" is.
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How naive. Just how much larger will the "phenomenon" need to be to support light novels just on their own? It's because the community is too small that the cover change was necessary.

@ZeroOBK: I get the feeling that you're arguing for the sake of arguing here.

What you did was split my argument into individual points that make no sense, even though the second quote shows you understand my point.

Pessimism is not the issue here.

Again, you're saying something that deviates from the point I'm making. My point is that light novels are sold and read by the same audience that basically makes up those that read manga and watch anime, i.e. Japanese teenagers and young adults in Japan and otakus/weeaboos/Japanophiles in America (for example).

...

My counter to this is that by replacing the front cover image, it's supposed to somehow sell the idea of "light novels" to the Western audience and expand the target audience... what?

1) Light novels are heavily influenced by Japanese modern, pop culture.
2) Light novels are targeted mainly for the teenager/young-adult audience.
3) Light novels are usually sold in conjunction with manga volumes at bookstores.

It's quite obvious from these facts that light novels aren't meant to sell outside of a rather small and selected target audience.

Trying to appeal to the general audience will take more than just a cover change, e.g. placing light novels in the stands where regular novels are placed or marketing them as novels instead of "light novels". Either the phenomenon gets bigger or Yenpress comes up with better marketing tactics to sell more light novels. In short, my entire post (before you decided to tear it apart to non-coherency) was saying that a cover change is not enough as a marketing tactic.

I respond to what I feel like responding to,

so of course

my replying setup

has no sense.

Last I checked we were talking about a novel that takes place in a European-medieval-type setting, were we not? There goes point #1.

Point #2 is irrelevant since we are not talking about expanding the age of the audience, but just making sure the cover leaves a good impression on Americans of the same age bracket.

Also, S&W seems to be appropriately placed in the Fantasy section, rather than the Manga section. Point #3 is true in most cases except for this one. S&W in the Fantasy section? Check. S&W being called a "novel" instead of "light novel"? Check. An attempt at the only practical marketing tactic? Check. You really can't ask for too much more than that. A commercial is out of the question, and only the most popular releases are lined in the store-front.

Then I should feel free to disregard your argument in its entirety, because my replying setup has no sense... right. Good job invalidating your argument, but I'll debate with you further before moving on.

If this was meant to be sold for all audiences, a translation would have been made and sold simultaneously as the Japanese version.

Oh I'm sorry, did you just try to discredit my argument by not defining what you meant by "mainstream" in your context?

To be honest, this isn't like you, ZeroOBK, to make incohesive arguments.