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Manga artist fails to sell a single book at Comiket, still considers the day a major success

Casey Baseel Aug 18, 2022
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Comiket rookie goes home with zero revenue and zero regrets.

Last weekend marked the long-awaited return of summer Comiket, which had been on a combination Olympics/pandemic-induced hiatus since its last iteration in 2019. That three-year gap meant that a lot of artists at the independently produced anime/manga art convention were selling their works at Comiket for the first time, including Ryoumei (@ryoumei6 on Twitter), a member of doujinshi circle Doruza.

As a matter of fact, Ryoumei wasn’t just a Comiket rookie, but a total doujinshi event first-timer. Still, he had his own booth at the Tokyo Big Sight convention center where he was offering his book, titled Original Girl Illustration Book ～Many with Twintails～.

▼ The cover of Ryoumei’s book

“Cute girls” is an artistic motif that never ebbs in popularity within the otaku community, and within that category twintailed characters continue to enjoy widespread support in the current era. Even if Ryoumei had no pre-existing name recognition among Comiket shoppers, you’d think the broad appeal of his book’s subject matter should be enough to attract a few customers, right? So when his day at Comiket was done, how many copies did he sell?

None.

But even if he didn’t earn a single yen, Ryoumei doesn’t think his Comiket campaign was worthless, tweeting:

“I’m very happy that I was able to take part in [Comket] for the first time. In the end, I couldn’t sell even a single copy of my book, but the more important thing was the valuable experiences I got to have, such as getting interviewed!

I’d like to say thank you very much to the two people who looked at the cover and were interested enough to pick up the book and take a look at it. I ended up trading most of the copies with the exhibitors around me for copies of their books, and I think I’m going to give the one copy I have left over to a friend.”

C100は初サークル参加出来て本当に良かったです。結果は1部も頒布出来なかったけど、それ以上に取材等得難い経験がありました！
表紙を見て興味を持っていただき見本誌を手に取って下さった2人の参加者の方ありがとうございました。
お隣さんと交換して残った1部は友達にあげよう。#C100 #コミケ pic.twitter.com/HXHIavE6Zi

— 🐱ryoumei_イラスト描いてます🔥 (@ryoumei6) August 15, 2022

As mentioned in his tweet, Ryoumei’s lack of sales success caught the attention of at least one news crew that was on-site, and he told them he was “very satisfied” with how his first Comiket went. Truth be told, Ryoumei himself admits that he’d have liked to further polish his artwork before exhibiting it at the world’s biggest doujin event, but with this year’s summer Comiket being officially numbered Comiket 100, he wanted to be part of the triple-digit milestone.

Feeling no discouragement, Ryoumei says he’s looking to take part in variety of doujin events, and who knows, maybe at a future Comiket his books will be selling out and people will be cosplaying as his characters.

Source: Twitter/@ryoumei6 via Otakomu
Images: Twitter/@ryoumei6
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Follow Casey on Twitter, where he’s always happy to talk about otaku culture.