It’s time to check in on another Previews orders, and see how things went. All and all, it went all right. It’s an order of 10 volumes, four of which go to other members in the house hold.
It was really hard getting through Previews this month. In the catalog, May is Manga Month, so along with all the regular series, there were new ones coming out that had to be evaluated. Top that with a weakening economy, and you get some really tough decisions to be made with this month’s order. More after the cut.
Here’s an FYI if you’ve been interested in some of Tokyopop’s older manga, but haven’t wanted to pay full price. This is via AnimeonDVD.com in their [email protected] forums. BookCloseouts.com is having a sale on Tokyopop manga. 75% off the titles they have available. That’s only $2.49 a piece! Kids titles can be even cheaper at $1.49! It’s mostly older titles, so don’t expect to find titles that have just come out. And there won’t always be a full run of a series, especially if it was popular. But, if there is an older series you want to look into, it’s definitely worth a look The shipping’s by media mail so it won’t be outrageous and skew the price. Feed your manga hunger without breaking our pocketbook!
We went out shopping today. My oldest’s birthday is coming up this week, and we were getting the last gifts we needed. One of our stops though, wasn’t for presents, but for supplies. Both my girls like to collect Pokemon cards (actually my oldest is totally hooked on Pokemon right now) and the box we bought for their cards has filled up. So, we went to our local comic shop (LCS) to get another box. Our LCS is small. Every wall is stacked with books, comics, games and toys. There isn’t an inch of wall that isn’t displaying something. The middle holds shelfs for back issues and trades. And then there’s the table, directly opposite the register that is for clearance items. Every couple of months, or until the table is cleared, the shop would put out stuff that hadn’t sold and was taking up space needed for new inventory. Sometimes it’s comics, or toys or trading cards, or manga. This week happened to have manga. Three rows length wide across the table stacked about 8 volumes high and a sign over it saying $2.50 each. So, guess where I was for the next 10 minutes. The only problem with…
Oh! Pay me! (If you get that….) It that time of the month again. Yes, that’s right. It’s time to do my Previews order. It wasn’t so bad this time. Only eleven titles on my first count, and two weren’t too hard to drop. I had considered getting the title Kannazuki no Miko. It’s only two volumes longs, but it’s an “only if I’ve got nothing else to get”, and I’ve got more to get . The other was Good Witch of the West. That was a little harder to give up. The story was finally getting good. We’re out of the courts and into the wilds, facing the “dragons” (dinosaurs), and finally searching for the meaning behind the Star Queen. But the other titles that are scheduled to come out are more interesting to me. That takes me down to 9 titles, and a total of $60.72, right at the top of my limit. There are some new titles coming out in April that I’d like to read. Two are from Viz; Fairy Cube by Kaori Yuki. I’ve become a big fan of her work. And Record of a Fallen Vampire. I don’t know much about this series, but…
Growing up, my family never had a lot of spending money, and we never got allowances like kids do today! But, when you’re in that kind of situation, you learn a fun, new pastime; Window Shopping. That’s where you go to stores or malls and look at all things you would buy if you had the money. With the proliferation of the internet, it has become Screen Shopping, I guess. And it’s so much easier now, with the store only being a click away. You can “wander” for hours looking at all the things you want to buy. For me, that’s manga, of course. Amazon.com and Half.com have become my favorite Screen Shopping sites. I’ll drop in on Ebay every once in a while as well, just to see if there are any long runs I might be interested in. I’m not going to buy, just to look. But these sites have a secret weapon to use again us Screen Shoppers; Wish lists. With just a click or two of the mouse, and there’s a long list of wishes just waiting to be granted. For Christmas and birthdays, they’re useful. But for the rest of the year, they’re there, taunting…
Now that I’ve admitted that I have a problem, it’s time to take the next step. Cut down the number of titles I buy. To do this, I first made a list of my manga in order of priority. What titles I would get no matter what. What titles I would get when the first list didn’t have any coming out, the titles I could take or leave and then the titles that I could drop. Do everything in moderation, even reduction, right? Once I had my list, I then had to come up with a criteria by which to apply it. I decided I would get between $50-$60 worth of books. If felt this was the best way to go, since releases tend to fluctuate from month to month. I also wasn’t going to count the manga other people in the house bought (ie, the 2 titles my oldest daughter reads, and the 3 my husband gets). So, now I have my list and my limit. I then turned to the Previews catalog, the harbinger of happiness and dread. I actually started this with last month’s order, but it wasn’t so hard. There were only 12 titles total, one…
Hi. My name is Lori, and I’m addicted to manga. It started innocently. It was 2002. My husband and I were in a comic book store, and I was looking for some new series to pick up. There, I discovered Dragon Knights, a series Tokyopop was publishing in comic form. It was fun and I love dragons anyway. It lasted 6 issues before Tokyopop abandoned the comic form and went to publishing in graphic novel form, unflipped. I of course, followed the change in format since I wanted to follow the story. And thus was my addiction born. Why do I think I’m addicted to manga? Let me explain. I was looking at the numbers for Tokyopop’s releases for a small blog I keep there, and on a whim decided to look at how much manga I purchased over the year. My husband is always complaining I had too much manga, and I just brushed it off. Until I looked at the numbers myself. For the year 2007, I ordered 156 volumes of manga through Previews. I purchased another 47 from amazon.com, Deepdiscount.com and other sources. So that’s 203 volumes I purchased throughout the year. 25 of those volumes were…