Chapter 92: The First Print Is Crucial
In the previous life, Sakamoto Ken drew the Young Lady with a sniper rifle and pantyhose! Serialization was always struggling on the edge of cancellation, with no chance of volume publication at all, so he wasn’t familiar with the volume publication process.
Sakamoto Ken asked, “Isn’t the initial print run determined by popularity?”
Editor Kaji Keiko said, “Popularity is of course the foundation, but the most crucial things are two.”
“One is presales, which we’ll start as soon as possible, and the other is the sales department’s market judgment.”
Editor Kaji Keiko’s tone carried a bit of dissatisfaction: “Actually, the latter is sometimes even more important. The people in the sales department are most afraid of producing unsold books, which would create a deficit, then deduct their performance, and get scolded by the boss.”
“Their KPI is the overall profit of the publishing business, not how well a particular work sells, so they are always very conservative with the initial print run for a newcomer’s new work. Even if the work has the potential to explode, they’d rather extend the publication period and wait for the first-period sales data before reprinting.”
“As for performance… they naturally have popular works as a guarantee.”
“Moreover… even if they choose to reprint popular works and they don’t sell out in the end, they can explain it as ‘It clearly sold well before; the unsold copies are because the author didn’t perform well recently, not my fault.'”
Mentioning the sales department clearly got Editor Kaji Keiko fired up.
After all, editors’ performance is only based on the works they are in charge of, which creates conflict with the sales department.
“The workplace is so scary…” Sakamoto Ken sighed involuntarily.
“You bet.” Editor Kaji Keiko said, “Avoiding taking responsibility is the first principle of the workplace.”
Sakamoto Ken shook his head and said, “But that said, even if the initial print run is small, subsequent reprints make no difference, right?”
“Of course there’s a difference!” Editor Kaji Keiko said, “If the initial print run is less than demand, what do you think readers who can’t buy the book will do?”
“They won’t buy it?” Sakamoto Ken said.
“Right.” Editor Kaji Keiko nodded, “Our work is already serialized on the WEB, and many people buy volumes just to collect them. If they can’t even buy the book, by the time of the next reprint, their buying impulse will have faded.”
“Worse still, after the first wave of sales, some readers who finish the book will sell the manga to used bookstores, and manga cafes will choose to buy them at this time too, so customers can read the whole thing in one go at their stores.”
“So, during the second wave of reprints, our new book has to compete with even cheaper used books. Even if the same used book circulates many times on the market, we won’t earn any royalties from it.” Editor Kaji Keiko said.
“It seems like that, the higher the initial print run, the better…” Sakamoto Ken thought Editor Kaji Keiko made a lot of sense.
“Of course, a higher initial print run is also better for Sakamoto Sensei’s royalty fees.” Editor Kaji Keiko said, “For the initial print run, we pay author’s remuneration based on the print count, but for subsequent reprints, we tally the sales volume each quarter and pay based on actual sales, and the payment cycle is very long.”
There was a difference in royalty fees too? Sakamoto Ken had never published a volume before, so he had no idea about this.
Editor Kaji mentioning the used book issue really hit home for him.
After all, when he bought books himself, unless it was a newly published work, he generally bought used books—new books were too expensive.
Moreover, after reading a new book and selling it to a used bookstore, or reading a used book and selling it to a bookstore again, the price was the same.
Second-hand, third-hand, fourth-hand made no difference…
Editor Kaji Keiko said, “For the initial print run, the most I can do is take the data and the work to try to convince them.”
Sakamoto Ken asked, “So, for our first volume’s initial print run, what does Editor think is appropriate?”
Editor Kaji Keiko spread her palm and said, “At least 50,000, I hope to negotiate for 60,000, or even more.”
“If the initial print run is 50,000 copies, I’d get about 2 million yen?” Sakamoto Ken roughly estimated.
“Haha, Sakamoto Sensei really needs a sum of money. It’s about what you estimated, around 2.3 million yen.” Editor Kaji Keiko said.
This sum was about the same as the original manuscript fee arriving this month; together, his income would approach 5 million.
He didn’t need to pay salary to assistants, so this was pure income.
Looking at it this way, that debt wasn’t much of an issue anymore.
After all, he had already negotiated with the other party through a lawyer to repay it after graduating from university in four years, which would be easy by then.
As long as he had money in his pocket, and with expected future royalty fees only increasing, even if some wealthy reader put a pile of cash in front of him, it wouldn’t be that attractive anymore.
“So, how low will the sales department push the initial print run?” Sakamoto Ken asked.
Mentioning the sales department, Editor Kaji Keiko let out a light sigh. She said, “Unless the work is exceptionally explosive, they uniformly set the initial print run at 30,000 copies.”
“That’s also because we’re with Shueisha. If it were a small publishing house, the initial print run could be pushed down to 10,000, or even just a few thousand, only stocking some bookstores in the three major metropolitan areas.” Editor Kaji Keiko held up three fingers and said, “30,000 is the baseline for nationwide bookstore stocking. With that print count, we can ensure most bookstores have at least some copies to put on the shelf.”
“I see… Then the initial print run is in your hands, Editor.” Sakamoto Ken said very solemnly.
“No, no, as the editor-in-charge, my duty is to sell more books for the author.”
Editor Kaji Keiko suddenly remembered something else and continued, “For Sakamoto Sensei, Chainsaw Man is actually just a beginning. I think I can prepare the publication of Look Back for you soon.”
“The review results won’t be out for another half month, right?” Sakamoto Ken said.
“Haven’t you checked the review webpage recently?” Editor Kaji Keiko said, “Look Back is now in the top three for number of reviews, and that’s only because the top two submissions were much earlier than yours. I think you’ll top the chart in the next couple of days.”
“Really? I haven’t actually checked.” Sakamoto Ken was a bit surprised. After uploading his work, he hadn’t gone back to look.
Editor Kaji Keiko said, “Sakamoto Sensei has a great mindset. Some authors keep checking their work’s data obsessively, unable to sleep.”
“Anyway, the manuscript is confirmed, constantly checking won’t change the ending.” Sakamoto Ken shrugged and said.
Editor Kaji Keiko had already organized the manuscript and information by now and stood up.
“Sakamoto Sensei, I need to head back to the publishing house. I still have to work overtime tonight tallying various data, prepare the PPT for the production meeting this weekend, and then next Monday…” Editor Kaji Keiko clenched her fist and said through gritted teeth, “The production meeting to confirm the print quantity is a war for us editors…”
“Then, Editor, you must win this war for me!”
“Definitely!”
Editor Kaji Keiko gave Sakamoto Ken an OK hand gesture, then quickly went to the entrance to change shoes, and pushed the door open with her full bag and left.
Sakamoto Ken watched her enter the stairwell, closed the room door, and returned to his desk.
Thinking of Editor Kaji mentioning Look Back just now, he actually didn’t care about online reviews before—after all, he was replicating a work from a later life, so even bad reviews wouldn’t make him change it.
But since it came to mind, he might as well take a look.
Sakamoto Ken picked up his mobile phone and tapped into the submission webpage in his favorites.
