The reason I'm asking this is that in June's (#1606) "Comic's Buyer's Guide", there's an article on the economic conditions faced by many manga publishers in the US.
One of these is Central Park Media, who, due to low sales and high returns of unsold books, has laid off several staff and has sharply pared down its CPM Manga and CPM Manhwa line-ups, with some manga series cancelled while the story's in progress (including one of my favorites, "Couple", which was cancelled after volume 3 with lots of loose ends).
The question is: what happens to the US publisher's license of a manga series, if the US publisher cancels a series? Do they still retain the rights until they expire, or are their rights automatically cancelled?
rugrats1 Wrote:The reason I'm asking this is that in June's (#1606) "Comic's Buyer's Guide", there's an article on the economic conditions faced by many manga publishers in the US.
One of these is Central Park Media, who, due to low sales and high returns of unsold books, has laid off several staff and has sharply pared down its CPM Manga and CPM Manhwa line-ups, with some manga series cancelled while the story's in progress (including one of my favorites, "Couple", which was cancelled after volume 3 with lots of loose ends).
The question is: what happens to the US publisher's license of a manga series, if the US publisher cancels a series? Do they still retain the rights until they expire, or are their rights automatically cancelled?
I think they have it till the time expires what they do is their call depending on how much they liscensed. But im not familiar with things like this so I maybe wrong.
My guess is they'll try to sell the liscenses to the series to another company, but in the case no one else wants it, then yes they hold it till time expires. Er, I take that back, can't they cancel the liscense? Cause last I checked whether or not you do anything with it, it's still yours untill it expires.
comics one had tonnes of stuff, probably over half their stuff never finished, which is a crying shame.
they published a lot of obscure stuff so no1 else will ever pick them up.
i mean, how long does a lisence last?
CPM, yeh they had some shoujo titles i liked but kinda stopped... surely they are gonna go under?
ouijaouija Wrote:comics one had tonnes of stuff, probably over half their stuff never finished, which is a crying shame.
they published a lot of obscure stuff so no1 else will ever pick them up.
i mean, how long does a lisence last?
The length of time varies on the conditions of the contract conditions.
bride of deimos, 70's manga shoujo horror stopped at volume 7 of 20+ that really pi$$ed me off as there is no other english publication of it.
It all depends upon the contract. In most contracts you can sell your "rights" to reproduce a copyrighted work but then again in the manga situation it includes translating then producing more so I think it takes some more negoiations to sign over those rights. Unless the company gets an offer to buy the rights to a series I think they just hold on to the licenses till they expire as they lost enough money just buying it and don't wanna waste money trying to sell it.
^If the original contract stated that resale of the license is allowed then i think it would make financial sense to sell the rights if there was interest, to recoup some costs. After all if you have no use for something why not sell it?
ouijaouija Wrote:comics one had tonnes of stuff...
they published a lot of obscure stuff so no1 else will ever pick them up.
Actually, according to that same CBG article, another company, DrMaster, has acquired ComicsOne, and has acquired the rights to most of ComicsOne's titles.
No doubt your favorite title may resume publication soon.