Manga Factory Direct Anime News Network was able to talk to company representative Mika Ogata and get some more details about Manga Factory and their prior relationship with Aurora. Despite having been former employees and having volumes of the defunct publishers books for sale, there is no connection between Manga Factory and Aurora. They are completely new company. The books are just a way to get some funds in. They won’t be making any announcements for licenses for the summer, but considering they’ve just started, that’s understandable. And I think it makes total sense for former employees to band together like this and create their own company. They no doubt have the contacts and the knowledge of the US manga market, that executives back in Japan that were calling the shots didn’t. This is like a manga fan’s dream come true, and I hope they succeed, just to prove that dreams like this can still come true. Manga at the Harveys The Harveys are awards nominated by and chosen for people in the comics industry. Since this is for the US comics industry, manga doesn’t make a big splash except in the “American Edition of Foreign Material” category. Two manga…
From Aurora’s Ashes Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, the people behind the company have banded together to create a new manga publisher. Calling themselves Manga Factory, former staffers from Aurora have created a new independent company instead of being a subsidiary of a Japanese company, as Aurora was. They have already announced one title, Teen Apocolypse: Guilstein for the Kindle and promises to do more electronic books in the same genre’s as Aurora; shojo, fantasy, josei and yaoi. This seems to tell me that Aurora wasn’t doing too bad, but maybe they just weren’t doing good enough to please the exec back in Japan. For these former employees to come together and create their own company, in this economic environment must mean they seen a reason to keep plugging at it. I look forward to see what they offer, especially in the digital format. Tokyopop + Zinio = ?? Tokyopop has been a pioneer of digital manga. They were the first to put their OEL manga on an e-reader, they feature sample chapters of new manga, and whole volumes on their website, and now they are teaming up with digital magazine and book publisher Zinio to make their…