Kai-Ming Cha interviews Hikaru Sasahara, president and publisher of Digital Manga Publishing, in the latest issue of PW Comics Week.

Also available is an interview with Dramacon artist Svetlana Chmakova by Johanna Draper Carlson.

PWCW talks about Dark Horse's past and future in "Dark Horse Celebrates 20 Years."

Last Gasp Publishing and Japanese volunteer group Project Gen together donated copies of Keiji Nakazawa's Barefoot Gen to three thousand libraries in the United States.

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LOS ANGELES,12 December 2006: The American Library Association (ALA) and graphic novel publisher Go! Comi announced today that renowned manga artist You Higuri has created an exclusive poster for the ALA's popular poster series. The poster depicts Cesare Borgia, the troubled hero of Ms. Higuri's graphic novel series Cantarella, a dark fantasy set during the Renaissance.

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Volume 12 of VIZ Media's Naruto ranked #147 on this week's USA Today Booklist Top 150 (PDF) for the week ending December 3rd.

Fifth Dimension Ltd is looking for a Professional Manga Inking Artist. The artist will be required to ink final pencil work. It is essential that the artist show experience in manga/anime style. We would like to see examples of ink work only. Interested applicants are required to send samples of their work to email@5DLtd.com and refer to website: www.5DLtd.com for style and standard. Good luck to all applicants.

From ActiveAnime: JManga introduces new service - purchasing popular and rare otaku goods that are only sold in Japan on behalf of customers worldwide.

Tokyo, Japan, Dec 11, 2006 - (JCN Newswire) - JManga, a Japanese trader in popular manga, is pleased to introduce a new service - purchasing popular and rare otaku goods that are only sold in Japan on behalf of customers worldwide.

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Manga blog Precocious Curmudgeon is now powered by WordPress.

Anime News Network has a new layout:

Yes, it's true. After 3+ years of our current layout, we've decided that it was time for something new. The new layout incorporates a lot of features that we hope will make the site more intuitive and easier to browse. There are several additional features to go with the new layout that will be introduced to the site over the coming month, we're very excited about some of them, and we hope you enjoy them as much as we think you will. In addition to the new layout, we've also ported much of the site from PHP to Ruby on Rails, this has caused a few glitches, which are currently causing the site to run slow at times. These will hopefully be sorted out very soon. All in all, within a week to ten days, the site should not only be as fast as it used to be, but faster. In the meantime, we would like to thank you for your patience. Let us know what you think of the new layout in the forum or be quick about it and let us know in this poll.

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Newsarama interviews Pop Mhan, creator of Tokyopop's new global manga BLANK.

Source: MangaBlog

Go! Comi has posted a 15-page preview of its upcoming manga Train + Train volume 1.

The Beat has confirmed the licensing of Apollo's Song (by Tezuka Osamu) from Vertical:

New York-based independent publisher Vertical, Inc. has announced it is publishing its third Osamu Tezuka property in June 2007. Apollo???s Song will be published as a single-volume graphic novel at approximately 500 pages in length and will follow the same design format as the award-winning classic Buddha, and the runaway hit Ode to Kirihito. Apollo???s Song will have the same trim size as well as an obi-band mini book jacket just like its two American predecessors, and will be published as a trade paperback.

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