I decided to take a look at the performance of our Valentine's Day oneshots and the other oneshots and short series we've completed this year. I'll just publish the numbers here now, since I haven't made any sense of what the numbers mean. I'm not really sure whether I can.
The readership is normalized against "Risou no Kareshitachi" which had the highest readership.
What surprises me the most is the poor performance of "Megane no Incubus". Granted the female MC wasn't to my liking, but it seems in typical shoujo, this is the preferred type of heroine. Between the first chapter and the last, it lost 37% of the readers. Supernatural high school romances are popular license getters, so I expected it would be popular. I also thought "Kuma-san to Issho" would do better, but I guess zombies were too far out of readers' shoujo comfort zone. As for "Risou no Kareshitachi" coming out on top, I know some people were lured by the beginning because it started out like a typical high school shoujo and by the end, they were taken somewhere they didn't want to go. I think the pure shock value keeps small waves of readers coming to it every couple of weeks. "Ringo no Asobikata" seems to be one of those oneshots that only a few people got. I'm actually surprised it's hanging out in the middle of pack. I don't know... feel free offer your explanations in the comments section. "Lip Smoke" and "Hajimari" did well as I expected. No surprises with those two.
Anyhow... a lot of what's planned for the June oneshot party is different from what we done before.
There will be a light sprinkling of typical shoujo oneshots, but the rest will be aimed at an older audience. No, this doesn't mean smut (though we will be releasing some racy oneshots in July), but oneshots about people who are out of high school. As for our oneshots with high school aged characters... well, let's say I've gotta pickier. I've received some good feedback from the few folks that interact with me while I live tweet shoujo and josei oneshots. Taking my time to pick through the oneshots in the bi-monthly supplementals has been an eye-opening and enjoyable experience. I had become jaded against high school setting shoujo, but I see that there are many fun and poignant stories out there. I've also come to appreciate the oneshot format even more. And yes, we will scanlate the oneshots that resonated well with me and the folks on Twitter. If you would like to be a part of that, come find me at @KuronekoOO3. I usually tweet shoujo 1 - 3 times a week after between 10PM to midnight Pacific (Los Angeles) time. As of now, I am live tweeting oneshots from the latest issue of The Margaret magazine.
For the rest of year, we'll see how the slow injection of josei and seinen (more like neutral stories about adult relationships rather than what you think of when the topic of seinen comes up). goes. Will they perform similarly to the shoujo? Will the audience for this blog change? I will say last year's runaway success, "Lovely Vampire Weddings" was a josei surprise! Yes, that was josei, and it ran circles around everything else we released other than "Kanojo ni Naru Hi", which was also an amazing success. Now that we completed or dropped most of our series, we will become a mainly oneshot and short series group. I look forward to showing readers the many facets of shoujo and josei through these shorter form stories.
This fall I'll release the numbers on the June and July oneshots so we can see how things stack up again. I expect the July releases to do really well. June... haha... I'm a little scared. The stories are top notch in my opinion, but different from what we done before.
The readership is normalized against "Risou no Kareshitachi" which had the highest readership.
- Risou no Kareshitachi -- 1.00
- Hajimari wa Suna no Ichiya -- .8
- Lip Smoke -- .72
- Risou no Ouji no Tsurikata -- .45
- Ringo no Asobikata -- .43
- Tobenai Washi -- .4
- Kuma-san to Issho -- .34
- Megane no Incubus -- .31
- Lip Smoke -- shoujo age-gap romance
- Risou no Kareshitachi -- shoujo horror
- Ringo no Asobikata -- shoujo psychological
- Kuma-san to Issho -- shoujo horror (zombie apocalypse)
- Risou no Ouji no Tsurikata (guilty pleasure) -- shoujo royal social gap romance with historical setting
- Tobenai Washi -- shoujo fantasy with animal themes
- Hajimari wa Suna no Ichiya -- Josei desert prince romance
- Megane no Icubus -- shoujo supernatural high school romance
What surprises me the most is the poor performance of "Megane no Incubus". Granted the female MC wasn't to my liking, but it seems in typical shoujo, this is the preferred type of heroine. Between the first chapter and the last, it lost 37% of the readers. Supernatural high school romances are popular license getters, so I expected it would be popular. I also thought "Kuma-san to Issho" would do better, but I guess zombies were too far out of readers' shoujo comfort zone. As for "Risou no Kareshitachi" coming out on top, I know some people were lured by the beginning because it started out like a typical high school shoujo and by the end, they were taken somewhere they didn't want to go. I think the pure shock value keeps small waves of readers coming to it every couple of weeks. "Ringo no Asobikata" seems to be one of those oneshots that only a few people got. I'm actually surprised it's hanging out in the middle of pack. I don't know... feel free offer your explanations in the comments section. "Lip Smoke" and "Hajimari" did well as I expected. No surprises with those two.
Anyhow... a lot of what's planned for the June oneshot party is different from what we done before.
There will be a light sprinkling of typical shoujo oneshots, but the rest will be aimed at an older audience. No, this doesn't mean smut (though we will be releasing some racy oneshots in July), but oneshots about people who are out of high school. As for our oneshots with high school aged characters... well, let's say I've gotta pickier. I've received some good feedback from the few folks that interact with me while I live tweet shoujo and josei oneshots. Taking my time to pick through the oneshots in the bi-monthly supplementals has been an eye-opening and enjoyable experience. I had become jaded against high school setting shoujo, but I see that there are many fun and poignant stories out there. I've also come to appreciate the oneshot format even more. And yes, we will scanlate the oneshots that resonated well with me and the folks on Twitter. If you would like to be a part of that, come find me at @KuronekoOO3. I usually tweet shoujo 1 - 3 times a week after between 10PM to midnight Pacific (Los Angeles) time. As of now, I am live tweeting oneshots from the latest issue of The Margaret magazine.
For the rest of year, we'll see how the slow injection of josei and seinen (more like neutral stories about adult relationships rather than what you think of when the topic of seinen comes up). goes. Will they perform similarly to the shoujo? Will the audience for this blog change? I will say last year's runaway success, "Lovely Vampire Weddings" was a josei surprise! Yes, that was josei, and it ran circles around everything else we released other than "Kanojo ni Naru Hi", which was also an amazing success. Now that we completed or dropped most of our series, we will become a mainly oneshot and short series group. I look forward to showing readers the many facets of shoujo and josei through these shorter form stories.
This fall I'll release the numbers on the June and July oneshots so we can see how things stack up again. I expect the July releases to do really well. June... haha... I'm a little scared. The stories are top notch in my opinion, but different from what we done before.
