From Newsarama comes its annual analysis of data provided by Nielsen BookScan:

The book selling the most pieces in 2007 was Naruto v13 with 80,423 pieces sold. Like last year, you can probably call it Naruto’s year, as all 27 (!) volumes chart, and they all chart within the top 100 (or Top 65, to be more precise) – that’s a pretty major accomplishment.

Via: MangaBlog

ICv2 has released its 2007 anime and manga sales report:

ICv2's manga and graphic novel market estimates aren't available yet, but it does appear that manga had another strong year in 2007 although its rate of growth is clearly slowing.

Also included in the report is ICv2's top 10 manga properties for 2007:

1. Naruto
2. Fruits Basket
3. Death Note
4. Bleach
5. Kingdom Hearts
6. Pokemon
7. Vampire Knight
8. Fullmetal Alchemist
9. Absolute Boyfriend
10. Loveless

Three Of The Hottest Animated Action Series Sweeping North America Offered With Convenience, Flexibility And DVD Quality

San Francisco, CA, January 25, 2008 – VIZ Media, LLC (VIZ Media), one of the entertainment industry's most innovative and comprehensive publishing, animation and licensing companies, has announced the availability of three of its most popular and successful animated action series – NARUTO Uncut, DEATH NOTE and BLEACH – for digital download from Amazon UnboxTM, Amazon’s digital video download service. Amazon Unbox offers customers thousands of television shows, movies and other innovative video content from numerous studio and network partners from Hollywood and around the world. This service can be found at www.amazon.com/unbox.

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This week sees Sweatdrop Studios reach its sixth year as a manga collective! To celebrate this special occasion, they are giving a whopping 50% discount on their comics until 1st February 2008. Sweatdrop also offer free international shipping for orders over £15 (about US$30), so if you ever wanted to check out some UK-made manga, there couldn't be a better time.

Visit their online shop at: www.sweatdrop.com/shop

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TokoToko Editor's Misc. Note, a blog run by a female manga editor who has been in the business for over 15 years, has posted a multi-part article titled "The Reason I Quit as a Manga Editor." Below is a translation of the epilogue of the article:

The Reason I Quit My Job as a Manga Editor Epilogue

From here on, the contents aren't exclusively related to manga editors, so I'm calling it an epilogue. Ignoring all the ins and outs of the story, if you said I ran away from becoming a manga editor, you'd be right. But I don't think "running away" was really the wrong choice. (Although I did quit my job at the first publisher I worked for as though I were running away, so in a way, I might've spent most of my life running.)

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ANN reports that Animate, one of the largest retailer of anime, games, and manga in Japan, is buying (PDF) a 11.31% stake in Broccoli, a publisher of manga, games, music, owner of the retail chain Gamers and the parent company of U.S. manga publisher Broccoli Books:

the two companies are forming a partnership through a new joint venture called AniBro. ANIMATE has obtained 3.7 million shares, or 11.31%, of Broccoli from the Digital Adventure company. Although the value of those shares have not been officially announced, 3.7 million Broccoli shares were worth about 250 million yen (US$2.3 million) at the close of trading on Wednesday.

BL publisher Iris Print has an updated of its current status since the last update on its financial situation:

On the subject of volunteers--wow, I'm amazed at the response! I'm practically swimming in volunteer proofreaders now...more than I could use, in fact. I was trying to respond to each person individually at first, but it quickly became apparent that I wouldn't be able to.

Source: MangaBlog

BL publisher Iris Print has posted an extensive blog post on how the company is running out of fundings, and is currently struggling to survive in the manga market:

The short story is, Iris Print ran out of funding. Orders for in-stock books are still shipping, and refunds for BL Twist are being issued, slowly but surely. But there hasn't been enough money coming in to support this venture for a long time, and to be honest, the plug was pulled a lot later than it should have been.

Go to Yaoi for more info.

In early December last year, ANN reported that Japanese publisher Dijima will ceased operation after suspending its free manga magazine Comic Gumbo. Now Anime! Anime! reports that Dijima has officially filed for bankruptcy. Manga Jouhou has a translation of the article:

According to the Teikoku Databan, the large bankruptcy journal, on January 4th, [Dijima] Co. began the procedure of filing for bankruptcy at the Tokyo Region Court. The company applied to Tokyo District Court for voluntary bankruptcy on December 28th. The administration dealing with the bankruptcy is accepting credit reports until February 15th. The aggregate amount of the debt is thought to be about 200 million yen.

In the latest issue of PWCW, Kai-Ming Cha and Ed Chavez interviews Kio Shimoku, mangaka of Genshiken: The Society for the Study of Modern Visual Culture.

Also available is an article by Calvin Reid titled "Tor Books, Seven Seas Together at Last," which looks at Tor Books' joint venture with manga publisher Seven Seas Entertainment.

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