Del Rey Manga, an imprint of Random House, has announced the launch of new title-specific Websites for Gacha Gacha, Ghost Hunt and Sugar Sugar Rune, which will allow readers to preview up to thirty pages from the first volume of a new manga series -- before the official publication date -- via an innovative page-a-day approach. Del Rey plans to add a new page of manga content each day for thirty days hoping to encourage readers to come back every day and build buzz for the new properties.
Del Rey began publishing manga in 2003 and already has over a million volumes of manga in print in the United States. Of course lots of other publishers are also releasing manga titles here in the States, which has produced a glut of titles and made it more difficult for new series, no matter how worthy, to get established. Del Rey's VP & Editor-in-Chief Betsy Mitchell explained the manga preview Websites this way: 'There's a lot of manga on the shelves these days, and this is one way readers can decide for themselves whether our titles are the ones they want to spend money on -- Obviously we think we've got the right stuff.'
