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DramaQueen Hustles for Yaoi Fans Date: 8/28/2006 |
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On a brisk day last fall, Tran Nguyen had set up in a small booth at a tiny convention in New Jersey to publicize Brother, the first title from DramaQueen, a new publishing venture aimed at the yaoi manga market. DramaQueen specializes in hardcore boys' love titles, books that depict graphic and explicit sex between men, a fast-growing category among yaoi fans. DQ also publishes girls' comics licensed from Korea and Taiwan. "We're fangirls at heart," Nguyen says. "At DramaQueen our passion is our work." One year later, the Houston-based, women-owned DramaQueen has a catalogue of nine titles that includes Korean manhwa, boys' love and more sexually explicit yaoi material. Books sell for $11.99 and $12.99. Their manhwa title, Vision from the Other Side, is now on volume 2. Two Korean manhwa titles, Audition and DVD, both by Young Chon Kye, were released in July and are currently sold out. The company will publish a serialized anthology of original non-Japanese boys' love called RUSH every two months, starting this fall. DramaQueen books are distributed through wholesaler Baker & Taylor and to the direct market through AAAAnime. DQ books are also available in the European market through independent comic book stores like Forbidden Planet in the U.K. and online at www.archonia.com. DQ is in negotiations with a new distributor but because of the books' explicit content, not all stores are comfortable with its titles. Barnes & Noble will special order DramaQueen's books and sells them online through BN.com. DramaQueen held a midnight yaoi panel at the recent Otakon convention in Baltimore; Nguyen and the DramaQueen staff announced 12 titles for the rest of 2006, and five titles (two Korean, three boys' love) so far for 2007. Meanwhile, the crowd of fangirls?and boys?cheered for each title, calling out for more "hot man sex." Now that Central Park Media (and their sexy boys love imprint Be Beautiful) has been crippled by financial problems, DramaQueen has taken center stage in the yaoi category. Fans not only respond to the content of the books, but to the attention and care the DQ staff takes in publishing its books. "We treat it like art," Nguyen says of their licenses. "Our intent is to produce a quality product that is a collectors item. We want our fans to get the most for their money when they buy our books." "My general impression of the company is that their production, their translation, is super top-notch," says Christopher Butcher, manager of the Toronto comics bookstore The Beguiling . Butcher says sales of DramaQueen books have been solid. "The dust jackets fit the books, the paper is high quality and the right cream color for manga," says Butcher. "Out of the gate they were better than their competitors. They're all about their fans and they love the material." DramaQueen takes its mottos, "purveyors of fine man sex" and "harder, faster, cheaper", seriously. Their topselling title, Brother, is a balance of emotional storytelling and hardcore sex scenes. The artwork is clean, closer in style to seinen manga (Japanese comics for young men) than the wispy lines used to illustrate the willowy men typical of shojo (girls comics) and josei manga (comics for young women). "It doesn't have the usual shojo cheats where the characters get abstract [during sex], " says Butcher, "Everything is thoroughly drawn in Brother. You don?t usually see things like that." "We do not censor our books," Nguyen says. We want to capture the exact intent of the author." The publisher is also open to a wide range of styles in the titles they license. Their latest title, The Judged, the story of a corrupt politician and a young detective, is similar in style to a yakuza (gangster) manga than to the typical boys love titles seen in the American market. DramaQueen also has age-ratings for its titles. DVD, a Korean manhwa series that depicts young adult life in Seoul, is rated for age 16 and older. ?There?s no sex in it but there are language issues," Nguyen says. Likewise, Brother is rated for age 18 or older as is The Judged, although its rating is for violence rather than sexual situations. Originally a lawyer, Nguyen started DramaQueen by maxing out her credit cards and getting her family involved. Her grandmother contributed to start up costs and Nguyen?s sister is a DramaQueen employee. Nguyen had to learn about publishing. ?My printers, Brenner Printing, they taught me everything. They gave me the time I needed to learn this." DramaQueen?s popularity comes from harnessing fan culture, by positioning themselves as fans, staying closely attuned to scanlation sites and maintaining close contact with their readership. Nguyen keeps her marketing low key, centered on word of mouth and uses puts her capital into quality book production. DramaQueen hires translators with a fan background, some of who have worked in the scanlation community (scanning, translating and posting unlicensed manga online). DramaQueen actively takes advantage of their connection to the semi-legal scanlation market, working with sites that remove titles once they have been licensed for English-language publication. "They seem to be tapping into stuff that is just scanlated or not yet translated," says Butcher. "They?re doing material that no one else is doing." "We love what we do," Nguyen says. "We're passionate about it. Excellence is our aim, hard work is our means. There's no fun in mediocrity." |
| Source: Publishers Weekly |
