Bob Schaefer of Dragon's Lair Comics & Fantasy in San Antonio, Texas shares his store's recent manga sales (see "Retailers--Share Your Manga Experience!").

We've been selling manga and anime related products here since we originally opened in 1991 so we've experienced the boom times and the slower periods.  We've never really had a "bust" here but sales had definitely slowed for the last year or two only to start picking up in the last six to eight months.

For my part, one of the biggest problems I face is being able to keep the biggest properties stocked.  Diamond is great for most American comics publishers but woefully inadequate for manga.  I can't blame them to some extent, but when titles that are consistently on the New York Times Bestseller lists aren't stocked there is a problem.  We've recently been contacting distributors from outside the comics industry and they've been responding very favorably.

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