Manga-style covers for novels
Convenience stores are hoping that friendly/cool manga-style covers will get young people to read novels:
Concerned over flagging book sales, especially among younger age groups, publishers are having popular manga artists illustrate the covers of novels and are turning serious works of fiction into manga to be sold at convenience stores.
Such “combini novels” are proving popular among young people who are seemingly averse to conventional bookstores.
Seven-Eleven Japan Co. in May became the first major convenience store chain to put on sale revamped editions of works by three Naoki Prize-winning authors–Arimasa Osawa, Miyuki Miyabe and Natsuhiko Kyogoku.
Although none of the books are new, they have been totally repackaged, with manga artists popular with young people illustrating the front covers.
They first went on sale in mid-May at all the 4,000 or so 7-Eleven outlets in the Kanto region.
Death Note manga series creator Takeshi Obata, whose illustration last year for a new edition of Osamu Dazai’s 1948 novel Ningen Shikkaku (No Longer Human)–published by Shueisha Inc.–helped it become a fresh hit, drew the cover for Kyogoku’s Bara Juji Tantei I (Rosenkreuz I).
The series, branded “Paperbacks K,” came about from a collaboration between Seven-Eleven Japan and literary agency Osawa Office Inc., to which the three authors belong.
Kodansha Ltd. has published 40,000 copies, and publicized them on the Osawa Office Web site. The publisher is reportedly considering a nationwide second printing run after the autumn.
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Miyuki Miyabe’s books are basically manga anyway.
Dazai Osamu is BOSS.
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Yes but will they actually read it?
[...] young people who are seemingly averse to conventional bookstores.
I can’t help but utter the age-old line “Kids these days…”
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I am looking forward to the novels and classics translated into manga. There are already some, but I want more. I am not young and I love bookstores, but I am not the type of person who read “literatureeeee” but want to talk as if I knew it. Manga might help.
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Once in a while, I’ll see a high school kid (usually girls, although sometimes boys) reading an actual book, and I have to control myself from going up to them and patting them on the back and giving them a hearty handshake.
Book sales have dropped by 58 million over the past 9 years, and projected to drop another 7 to 15 million this year, although we may see a small spike in sales because of Harry Potter.
(Stats: http://www.stat.go.jp/data/getujidb/zuhyou/s01.xls)
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