Press Release for DEL REY MANGA sites

Jane and I did the design and HTML for these 3 mini-sites for Del Rey Manga, a division of Random House Publishing. Here’s the press release they sent out to announce them to the whole earth:

DEL REY LAUNCHES MANGA “PREVIEW” WEBSITES
(New York, NY; September 20, 2005)-Del Rey Manga, an imprint of The Random
House Publishing Group, announced today the launch of new title-specific
websites, each of which will allow manga readers to preview thirty pages from
the first volume of a new manga title-before the official publication date-in
an innovative ‘page-a-day’ approach.
Cited as the fastest growing category in bookstores today, the graphic novel
market has doubled each year for the past two years, leading to an estimated
$100 million market today. The vast majority of the growth in the market has
been due to the increased popularity of Japanese comics, known as manga, a
genre that Del Rey jumped on in the summer of 2003; Del Rey now has well over
one million manga in print in the United States.
Although other large manga publishers have offered preview content on their
websites, Del Rey’s approach is unique in that each day for thirty days, a
new page of manga content will be added for each individual title. In this
way, Del Rey hopes to encourage readers to come back every day, and to build
buzz for their hottest new properties.
“Our page-a-day concept goes beyond what the other large manga publishers
have offered on their sites,” said Betsy Mitchell, VP & Editor-in-Chief of
Del Rey. “We wanted to give our fans an opportunity-absolutely free-to sample
Del Rey’s new series before laying down hard cash. There’s a lot of manga on
the shelves these days, and this is one way readers can decide whether our
titles are the ones they want to spend money on. Obviously, we think we’ve
got the right stuff.”
“If this promotion is as successful as we anticipate it to be, we hope to be
able to provide preview websites-well in advance of publication-for as many
forthcoming new series as possible,” added Del Rey’s Manga Director Dallas
Middaugh.
The first three titles to be featured on the title-specific sites – all
Kodansha properties – are GACHA GACHA by Hiroyuki Tamakoshi (on sale
September 20, 2005; ages 16+), GHOST HUNT by Fuyumi Ono and Shiho Inada (on
sale September 27, 2005; ages 13+), and SUGAR SUGAR RUNE by Moyoco Anno (on
sale September 27, 2005; ages 10+).
The URLs for the first three title-specific sites are:
GACHA GACHA
GHOST HUNT
SUGAR SUGAR RUNE
About Del Rey:
Del Rey Books (http://www.delreybooks.com) was founded in 1977 as a division
of Ballantine Books under the guidance of the renowned Judy-Lynn del Rey and
her husband, Lester del Rey. Del Rey publishes the best of modern fantasy,
science fiction, alternate history and manga. Ballantine Books is an imprint
of the Random House Publishing Group, which is a publishing group of Random
House, Inc, the U.S. publishing company of Random House, the trade book
publishing division of Bertelsmann AG, one of the world’s leading
international media companies. In the summer of 2003, Random House joined
together with Kodansha in a creative partnership to bring some of Kodansha’s
top properties to the United States, making Random House the first major
trade book publisher in the United States to do so.
About Kodansha Ltd., Publishers :
Kodansha is the largest trade and magazine book publisher in Japan. Founded
in 1909, the company by virtue of its long history, the quality of its
publishing, and its established network of sales and marketing is regarded as
the trade book market leader in the publishing business in Japan. Moreover,
Kodansha has been recognized as the leading publisher with a mission to
introduce Japan through its publishing business.