Yaoi-Con 2007 Wrap Up

 
Hello, all boys love fans!

Last week was Yaoi-con, the most wonderful(?) convention in the world! We BLU-ies had a great time and a big thanks goes out to all of you who came to our panel and talked to us during the show. The highlight of the convention for me was seeing the twenty Love Mode 7s we brought get bought up in like 15 minutes… Though I did feel guilty for you peeps who arrived late and were unable to purchase one. As the saying goes, the early fangirl gets the smexy BL-worm. But fear not, for our November books are hitting stores this week. I would recommend Love Pistols 3, though it’s pretty crazy!

As always, Yaoi-con was a great experience and we're already looking forward to next year. Hopefully by then they will have some nice AMV with Death Note content! To those who couldn't make it, we have some pictures below. Also, BLU people will be in New York for NYAF during early December so come by if you want to say hi!

This is during our panel. Intense discussion of BL is going on.

 
“Who likes MxM BJs?” We do!!

The boys love content was so thick that the room turned yellow!

 A poor, unfortunate victim of the Bishonen Auction...

A sample of the hot posters we gave out. Go Voice or Noise!

Awww... The perfect couple...(if they don't kill each other first!) 

Hello, loyal fans! I know BLU has been very, very bad with website updates but that is all about to change! From now on you will be seeing regular updates, so be on the look out. For today, I have updated all the series pages for the ongoing series. Check out some summaries for volumes coming out in early 08. Thanks for bearing with us!

For those who were curious, the bankruptcy of Biblos in 2006 has had kind of a delayed effect on us. Love Pistols, which was initially licensed through Biblos, was temporarily delayed while contracts were transferred and licenses renewed. It’s been pushed back from its January street date to May, but starting in May the series should be released on schedule, with no further delays.

The Biblos issue also delayed the announcement of several licenses, including two volumes from fan-favorite author, Fumi Yoshinaga. In May, BLU will be releasing Lovers in the Night (Ai to wa Yoru ni Kizuku Mono) by Fumi Yoshinaga, followed by Yoshinaga’s Truly, Kindly (Honto ni Yasashii) in August. We’re thrilled to be able to bring these great titles to you fans, and there’s a lot more to look forward to in 2007, so don’t think for a second that this is going to be it!

~BLU

Happy New Year, boys’ love fans! Thanks so much for all your support in 2006, the first full year of BLU. We had the pleasure to attend Yaoi-con once again this past year, and it was awfully exciting for us to see so many people enjoying our titles, not to mention seeing a few familiar faces at our industry panel as well. We didn’t get quite as many photos as we did in 2005 (we were too busy hanging out at the Kinokuniya booth, selling our books!), but hopefully we’ll get a chance to make up for that at other conventions this year. At some point we’d love to compile a page of photos of cosplayers featuring BLU series, so send us your snapshots if you and your friends have been dressing up as your favorite bishonen in love (we had a couple of our editors as the lovely ninja couple from Shinobu Kokoro and Kuro and Ukyo from Man’s Best Friend for Halloween! Beat that!).

At long last, the moment you've all been waiting for...we now have the capability to sell BLU books directly through our website! Thanks to our partners at RightStuf, you can click on the "buy" links in either the Release Calendar page, or Volume Summary pages, and pick up new volumes of your favorite series 24 hours a day, 7 days a week! We hope to have a full store page up and available soon, but we're thrilled to be able to offer this for the time being. Enjoy!

At Anime Expo 2006, BLU announced two new series, Gakuen Heaven, and Love Pistols! The series page for each is up now, so take a peek and start getting psyched for some hot new BL action!  (At “BL Academy,” no less, in the case of Gakuen Heaven!)

New additions to the website! We now have an online forum, and we’ll soon have an online store, as well! Stop by, check out our lovely Editor’s Blog, and drop us a line. :-)

There are new preview pages up for Menkui, Shout Out Loud, Black Knight and Man’s Best Friend.

Apologies are in order for the missing color pages in Wild Rock. We got a lot of emails about that, which was awfully embarrassing, seeing as we went out of our way to advertise the bonus color.  Sadly, we vastly underestimated how popular the book would be, and our initial print run was too small to justify the expense.  Fortunately, your support has sent the book into reprints, and has us reevaluating how much of a demand there is for hot BL material!  Rest assured, every effort will be made in the future to include original color work, and Man’s Best Friend will definitely have color (Gorgeous Carat already does!)

Thanks for all the input on the possible Earthian box set!  There were a lot of votes for a set that wasn’t too pricey, but in the end, we decided to scrap the project.  We just didn’t have enough time to do it right (or for the right price), and this series is one that deserves the very best, not a hasty rush job.  So volume 4 of Earthian, the “Secret Garden” stories, will be out in August, right on schedule, and with all the lovely color pages and shiny covers you’ve come to expect, but without a collector’s box.  Maybe for the holidays? 

BLU announced three new series at New York Comicon in February  Kai Tsurigi’s Black Knight, Fumi Yoshinaga’s Gerard & Jacques, and Shungiku Nakamura’s Junjo Romantica  So all of you asking about Junjo, there you have it.  It’ll be in your hot little hands as of October 2006, just in time for Yaoi-con!

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• Fangirls resting between massive squeal-fests

Yaoi-Con Wrap Up

As BLU's first foray into the spotlight, we hardworking editors had been looking towards Yaoi-Con with both excitement and anxiety. We'd been working on planning and putting this line together for over a year, and finally having all our work thrust into the public eye was a nerve-wracking experience! What if the fans all hate us?! What if they call the Love Mode cover hideous?! What if they grab my butt?! Luckily only one of those things happened, and Yaoi-Con was a smashing success for BLU (and I'll get over the emotional scars eventually).

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• Chrissy and Alexis manning the booth.

Everything went very smoothly at the con, and we'd be greatly remiss if we didn't thank the Yaoi-Con staff for all their hard work and help! We can't thank all you folks who came by our booth and shared your thoughts enough. Your enthusiasm and support is overwhelming and it only motivates us to work harder to keep bringing you titles that you love! One fan was even brought to tears when we gave her our promo poster for Gorgeous Carat! It's so great to be able to bring a little joy to someone's life through manga, and joy involving Ray Balzac Courland is just that much more joyful, right? Dealing with so many fans on a personal level really helped us understand the marketplace and we will definitely incorporate your suggestions and advice in our future decisions.

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• Swordfish cosplayer posing in front of our beautiful BLU banner!

The panel went better than we could have possibly hoped (Lillian was very nervous beforehand, but you set her little heart at ease!), and the hall was absolutely packed. Thanks for everyone who came by and asked great questions! All the squeals of joy when we announced our titles were thrilling (and ear-piercing). So many fans showed genuine excitement for the books we're doing, and since the series we're releasing are ones that we're particularly fond of ourselves, it felt great when fans would say how much they were looking forward to having the books in their hands. We were worried that the announcements of things like Shout Out Loud, which we thought were a bit more obscure, would meet with thunderous silence, but in fact it was the exact opposite, and we're pleased as punch about it!

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• The happy recipient of the Gorgeous Carat poster!

One of the really great things about smaller conventions is just having the chance to talk to fans, even if it wasn't about our books (we don't always have to be salespeople, after all). One girl showed off all the great art she had bought at the auction including some featuring Harry Potter characters doing what Harry Potter characters aren't old enough to do... And for a relatively small convention, the cosplay quality was really high! There was a cadre of fans cosplaying as pixies, with Pixie Sticks to prove it, there were some really cute Loveless characters walking around the hall, there was a Naruto group in beautiful homemade kimono, and even a girl dressed up as Swordfish from Under Grand Hotel! Hawt! We don't recommend cosplaying as characters from Wild Rock, since it can get chilly in San Fran in late October, but we hope to see some Earthian or Gorgeous Carat costumes next year! We can't wait! Is it 2006 yet?

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• Lillian fans herself in the face of the hotness that is Wild Rock!

We want YOU! (to give us your opinion)

As many of you may already know, we're eager to hear about what titles you're interested in having us license. Send suggestions through our comments form, or directly to blu@blumanga.com, and we'll add them to our list!

In exchange, we've got a question for you:

We're thinking of doing a collector's box for Earthian, to be sold along with Earthian volume 4. Volume 3 is the conclusion of the main arc of the series, and volume 4 is a shorter book of side stories, and bit of an epilogue, so it's a bonus for fans, but not required to enjoy the story. What do you all think?

1. You bet! If it's pretty, at least.
2. Maybe, if it wasn't too expensive.
3. Nah, box sets don't interest me.
4. I'd like the box and volume 4 to come separately.
5. Didn't buy volume 1, so I don't really care.

Drop us a line with your thoughts!!