News
Mariko Hihara Self-Publishes Boys-Love Novel in U.S.
posted on by Gia Manry
Web retailer Amazon.com is listing the September 26 release of Mariko Hihara's boys-love (BL) novel With All My Loving on the Kindle electronic-book platform. The volume has been translated into English and published by "Enjugroup," which is also the name of Hihara's official website. The story features a romance between a young man and a doctor, as well as a cover illustration by Yuki Amane. Amane has illustrated several of Hihara's manga such as Sabaku no Hanayome (published by Frontier Works) and Doctor Stop (Houbunsha).
On her website, Hihara discusses the Japanese release of the e-book on September 18, and her motivations for self-publishing online. Hihara cites the recent slump in the entire publishing industry and closure of some magazines as reasons why the book was not published traditionally. She also discusses the matter of print royalties versus digital royalties, finding them to be 10% in both cases.
In March of this year, Japanese boys-love publisher Libre began releasing previously-published BL manga on the Kindle. Last week, Libre also confirmed that it had sent out cease-and-desist notices to groups which scanned and translated its titles.
Kindle Books can be read on Amazon's own Kindle devices (in several different versions); via a free App for iOS, Android, BlackBerry mobile devices; and via the free Kindle application for Windows and Mac OS X operating systems.
