Almost one year after announcing the debut of the first weekly comics anthology magazine in the U.S. (see, 'Gutsoon To Launch First Weekly U.S. Manga Anthology'), Gutsoon Entertainment has decided to make its weekly Raijin anthology a monthly starting in September. The new monthly version of Raijin will include a minimum of 16 extra pages and will retail for $5.95, one dollar more than the current weekly version of the magazine. Horie Nobuhiko, President and CEO of Gutsoon Entertainment, explained the move this way: 'Based on numerous conversations and extensive research with our readers, subscribers, retailers and distributors, we have been encouraged to move to a monthly magazine, thereby giving readers more time to read all the exciting stories in our magazine, and giving retailers more time and longer shelf dates for the issues to reach a growing number of manga fans.'
While the weekly format works in Japan, where manga sales represent 30% of all publishing revenues, weekly comics in the U.S. have never succeeded in gaining a foothold. Manga graphic novels on the other hand, have been doing very well and Gutsoon has wasted little time in preparing graphic novel editions of the high quality manga series that are currently running in Raijin (see 'Gutsoon Announces Slate Of Graphic Novels').