I wonder what kind of contract mangakas sign with publishing houses.
When the magazines just disappear because are considered not profitable enough, do they keep the manga's intellectual property rights?
So the mangaka cannot even continue publishing the rest of the story elsewhere?
The copyright model in Japan appears to be different; I don't know the details, but it does not appear that publishing houses take on characters and settings as their own IPs. They seem to just have publication rights to individual chapters.
Regarding Hirari (and this conversation should probably be in the Hirari thread), on the one hand you have at least one artist who was able to jump ship: Miman got her collected works in Hirari published by Yuri Hime Comics (an Ichijinsha imprint), and even had one of her Hirari chapters reprinted in a recent issue of YH. On the other hand, you have at least one artist who's just continued to release her series on her own: Takashima Hiromi has gone on to release Kase-san online, and Shinshokan (Hirari's parent company) still plans to release a third tank for that.
Incidentally, the Real Her also has a planned tank release in 2015 with Shinshoka, and with luck that will include a fair bit of extra content.
Also, why oh why is Yuri Hime the only yuri magazine that can stay afloat?
One word: Citrus
Two words: Yuru Yuri. I'm sure Citrus is doing quite well for itself, but even if you combine that and the other 2nd-tier series YH has (Yuri Danshi), I think you'd be hard-pressed to argue they bring in more revenue than yuri's ultimate cash cow.
I wonder about that. I suspect Yuri-Hime stays afloat because it has a built-in readership base, and that new publications fold because people who read yuri are already all buying Yuri-Hime and not enough of them can be enticed into buying multiple publications. Yuru-Yuri may be an important part of that, but I haven't been paying any attention to any of the popularity surveys or tank sales.
(Incidentally, I do hope that everyone who is bemoaning the collapse of yuri publications has been doing their best to support those publications by at least buying their tanks).
Edit:
That may be the case. When Morinaga Milk left Yuri Hime (I don't know why she left), she wasn't able to finish Kisses, Sighs, and Cherry-Blossom Pink until Comic High bought the rights to it from Yuri Hime.
That's interesting. I'd be curious to know why she left...
last edited at Dec 29, 2014 10:11PM