Tentai Books shutting down
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Sad news for fans of World Teacher, Seatmate Killer, etc., but Tentai Books is shutting down.
Unfortunately the company suffered throughout its history with staff shortages, a break in and theft of computers, hacked digital accounts, etc. but they did a decent job on the volumes they were able to release.
Official statement on their Discord server:
https://discord.com/channels/1243488349248032799/1250491683129524335/1267501492923797575
Though I will explain in more detail at a later date through our website, Sister Kiss will effectively be the last release we make. I plan to wind down the business over the next months. For those who want to continue reading our releases, I am currently negotiating the transfer of licenses to another company, so don't reach out to me about this! I will keep the website up, but over August/September all sales (physical and digital) will cease. To those who have digital products purchased through our website, I will keep it up so they can still access them. To those who have pending physical orders, we will proceed to a full refund of those purchases as all sales are terminated. Thanks!
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Argh. I've been waiting for the next couple of releases, now it will be "difficult". Definitely want Sister Kiss 2.
I think part of the problem would be the physical copies. Those weren't important to me, but it was part of what the company is.
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@SomeOldGuy said in Tentai Books shutting down:
I think part of the problem would be the physical copies. Those weren't important to me, but it was part of what the company is.
I think they had problems with their printing compan(ies) too during the pandemic along with everything else. Alex Tentai mentioned in a post that they did make money on the physical releases but it sounded like it was a lot of extra work so maybe only a profit if you ignored the time required for it.
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Cannot say - I've read of a lot of "Oh let's make money doing X!" projects (not just publishing) where you can make money so long as you don't consider the people costs. Problem is, eventually the people costs need to be paid, unless it was intended as a tax write-off.
Doing two languages as electronic versions isn't that much of a hit, financially. The initial translation from Japanese to either English or Spanish is a big cost, but moving to the other isn't as big, since they're related languages.
But then, moving BOTH to PRINT?
Just went through their website (discord doesn't exist from my point of view), and they do not have any mention of this. Last update says Sister Kiss will be "out in July", but you can't buy it (yet), and Amazon (where I have been buying Tentai stuff in the past) doesn't show any version at this point.
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@SomeOldGuy said in Tentai Books shutting down:
Just went through their website (discord doesn't exist from my point of view), and they do not have any mention of this. Last update says Sister Kiss will be "out in July", but you can't buy it (yet), and Amazon (where I have been buying Tentai stuff in the past) doesn't show any version at this point.
The Discord did say the website would be updated later. It also mentioned Sister Kiss being delayed a few days but it will still be published. Last I'd read Alex Tentai was updating the website himself, it's basically a one-man company (besides any contract workers for the translations) at this point.
Tentai probably stopped listing pre-orders at Amazon because I've read from Hanashi I think that Amazon punishes them if the pre-order dates change too many times.
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Oh, well that's shitty, I did look at buying World Teacher from them, but since the bonus for Vol 1 was limited to the physical, the shipping costs were absolutely nuts for one volume I was going to wait until they had a few out, guess that's out the window now.
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I was wondering about the "World Teacher" series, but it appears my worst fears have been realized. Not that I'm a bit surprised by this. They've had trouble since their inception and releases were few and far between. Also, the quality of their translations was... well, it needed some improvements. Hopefully someone like JNC can pick up and salvage some of these titles and continue their translation. Hopefully.
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@lighthawk96 that would be nice since it's a decent series. You never know with Japanese publishers though,
Hanashi is being ghosted by the publisher of Fruit and Another World Survival so at the moment the licenses will expire and they'll go out of print in a few days. You'd think free money for the existing 18 volumes with no work at all would be a no-brainer for the Japanese publisher :(
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@HarmlessDave said in Tentai Books shutting down:
Hanashi is being ghosted by the publisher of Fruit and Another World Survival so at the moment the licenses will expire and they'll go out of print in a few days. You'd think free money for the existing 18 volumes with no work at all would be a no-brainer for the Japanese publisher :(
What do you mean ghosted, as in they can't pick new licenses, or that the subsequent volumes of those two series will be left in limbo on the English side?
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@Korppi Their statement on their discord mentioned
We regret to inform you that Hanashi Media is currently facing challenges in renewing the licenses for The Fruit of Evolution and Another World Survival. Despite submitting a renewal offer to Futabasha several months ago, we have yet to receive a response regarding the continuation of these titles.
As much as we value these stories and the community of readers who support them, the lack of a renewed agreement from Futabasha may result in these titles being unavailable on our retail partners’ platforms—including Amazon, Google Books, Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo—as well as on our own store by next year.
So unclear if they can get new volumes, but they might also have to unlist the previous volumes, which will definitely hurt sales long term.
