While it is too early to tell just how big an impact this will have on the major North American based manga publisher, an new announcement has been made by Hachette Book Group and KADOKAWA Corporation regarding Yen Press. KADOKAWA will hold a majority ownership (51%) of Yen Press, with Hachette Book Group holding the remaining 49%. This transaction is set to be completed at the end of this month, which will then see Yen Press become properly known as Yen Press LLC.
According to a post on the Yen Press website under the title “Exciting News About the Future of Yen Press!“, they hope that this join venture will “continue to leverage HBG’s strengths in manga publishing, distribution, sales, and marketing“. They also claim this partnership will enable Yen Press and Kadokawa to “maximize marketing collaboration between book publishing and anime distribution (through KADOKAWA’s expertise in the anime marketplace), while also seeking to expand ebook distribution, to maximize the growth potential of Japanese content in the North American market“.
You can see the full announcement HERE.
While it does seem like things will be business as usual in the short term, with seemingly no major shake-ups, this partnership seems like it could provide new opportunities for English-localised manga releases in the future.
Yen Press has been a major publisher of manga and light novels for a number of years, working with series including (but in no ways limited to) Log Horizon, A Certain Magical Index, Usagi Drop, Sword Art Online, Spice and Wolf, Azumanga Daioh, Black Butler, Durarara!! and more.
