Tokyo: Earth Online Manga Artist

"Of course you can."

Lin Shiping neatly put the storyboard back into the folder, placed his hands on it, and said, "Teacher, your 'Fog Hill of Five Elements' is amazing. It's the most authentic hot-blooded shonen manga in the JUMP series."

To be honest, my first reaction after reading the storyboard was to ask the author if this could be expanded into a feature film, but I also knew the author was drawing Titans.

Eri Aragaki immediately smiled and said, "You flatter me. I'll draw according to this storyboard from now on."

"Okay, no problem."

Lin Shiping said, "If you finish before the deadline at the end of the month, please let me know at any time and I will come to pick it up in person. It doesn't matter what time it is, even on the weekend. Please contact me anytime, teacher."

After chatting for a while, Eri Aragaki said goodbye to Shihei Hayashi and left the cafe to go about their own business.

……

In the days that followed, Eri Aragaki spent her time drawing the manuscript for Attack on Titan.

Although the storyboard for the short story is finished, the final artwork will have to wait until the end-of-month deadline. Right now, the most pressing task is still the weekly Attack on Titan serialization.

She placed the storyboard of "Fog Hill of Five Elements" on the shelf next to her workbench, spread out the giant's artwork in front of her, and picked up a G pen to start drawing lines.

Just as Eri Aragaki began drawing the new week's draft for Attack on Titan, some good news suddenly arrived.

The cell phone on the workbench rang; the caller ID showed Masaya Sakurai.

Eri Aragaki put down her G-pen and answered the phone with her uninked hand. "This is Aragaki."

Masaya Sakurai's voice came through the receiver, "Congratulations, Riko-sensei, I have some good news for you."

Eri Aragaki shifted her grip on her phone, looking somewhat surprised, and asked, "Mr. Sakurai, what's the good news?"

News from major bookstores indicates that the stock of the first volume of Attack on Titan is running low.

Masaya Sakurai immediately said, "The publisher is already arranging a reprint, and the publication plan for the second volume has also been started ahead of schedule."

After hearing this, Eri Aragaki leaned back in her chair and stared at the fluorescent light on the ceiling for a long time.

Then she held the phone between her shoulder and ear, clenched her fists, and silently waved them at the air.

Chapter 89 Making a Huge Fortune (Eighth Update!!)

This achievement was actually quite surprising even to the editorial department of Shueisha.

This means that Attack on Titan sold at least 7 to 8 copies in its first week.

While first-week sales figures for manga volumes are not currently being taken into account, the Oricon manga sales chart will not be officially established until next year.

However, judging from the news circulating in bookstores and other channels that the Attack on Titan manga volumes are about to sell out...

This news would only come after at least two-thirds of the first volume of Attack on Titan had been sold.

Bookstores aren't stupid; they'll start sending restock notices to publishers when they have about a third of their stock left, otherwise they'll run out of stock.

Moreover, the Attack on Titan manga sold so many volumes in just one week after its release.

Within a week, most of the 150,000 copies were sold.

Based on this trend, it will definitely sell out within the next two weeks. However, reprinting takes time, including plate making, ink mixing, printing, binding, and delivery. The entire process will take at least two weeks.

We definitely need to notify Weekly Shonen Jump in advance to prepare for a reprint; we can't wait until all the stock is sold out before scrambling to make arrangements.

After all, good sales mean good profits.

Who wouldn't be eager to make money?

The publishing house's printing, distribution, and sales departments are probably already scheduling reprints for Giant's book.

Attack on Titan has consistently ranked in the top ten in terms of overall popularity.

However, other editors at Shueisha predicted that the first volume would only sell 3 to 5 copies in its first week, and that a reprint would not be considered until more than a month later.

This is a normal expectation, not a malicious underestimation. JUPM editors have their own set of empirical formulas for the data.

This is perfectly normal. Attack on Titan hasn't been adapted into an anime yet, and it hasn't been promoted much, such as appearing on a "This Manga is Amazing!" list, which would allow the work's influence to break through its original readership.

Its only current exposure channel is the readership of Weekly Shonen Jump itself, without cross-media traffic.

Based on past experience, manga on the edge of the top ten in popularity on JUMP usually achieve similar results.

For serialized works that rank around 80th or 90th, the first volume of the collected edition usually sells 30,000 to 50,000 copies. If you're lucky, you can reach 50,000, but if you're unlucky, you might not even get 20,000.

For example, before it was adapted into an anime, "Katekyo Hitman Reborn!" sold less than 20,000 copies in its first week.

Two months after its release, approximately 270,000 copies of the single-volume edition had been sold. It took more than a month to sell out the first print run before a second batch of single-volume editions was printed.

Akira Amano spent nearly two years waiting for the anime adaptation, and the manga sales only really exploded after the anime aired.

As I said before, manga works that haven't been adapted into anime, unless they're as powerful as monsters like Naruto, Bleach, and One Piece that have dominated the charts since the beginning of their serialization, generally don't have much popularity in the early stages.

Manga is the foundation of the Japanese entertainment industry, but what truly transforms a work from a "popularity within its niche" to a "national phenomenon" is animation.

Attack on Titan is currently in roughly this period in the eyes of Shueisha's editors.

It's not that I underestimate Attack on Titan or don't have high hopes for its potential; it's just that its influence is limited since it hasn't been adapted into an anime yet.

There are only so many comic book readers, but the number of anime viewers is several times, or even dozens of times, that of comic book readers.

The editors' assessment of Attack on Titan was that "this work has potential and should become a hit after it is adapted into an anime." There was no disagreement on this assessment. However, in the stage before it became a hit, no one expected that its collected volumes would sell so quickly.

The first volume was just released last week, and this week you're telling me you're considering printing a second batch.

That's quite impressive.

However, this was not surprising to Masaya Sakurai.

Well... it was still a bit of a surprise.

Although he had always thought that Attack on Titan had great potential, he felt that this work was different when he first saw the 31-page manuscript after submitting it to the Tezuka Prize.

In addition, he orchestrated a marketing strategy for "Attack on Titan" by featuring Eri Aragaki's photo on the interview page, which visibly boosted online discussion.

However, the sales of the Attack on Titan manga volumes are still higher than he expected.

He originally thought that selling 6 copies in the first week would be a very good result, but now the news is that the initial edition is running out of stock, and the number is at least 7 or 8.

For Eri Aragaki, however, it was an even bigger surprise.

After thanking Masaya Sakurai and hanging up the phone, she paced back and forth in the studio several times, constantly calculating that number in her mind.

She remembered that when discussing "Attack on Titan" in her previous life, the information she found seemed to indicate that although the first week's sales of the collected volumes of "Attack on Titan" were not bad, it seemed to be "only" around 40,000 copies.

In its previous life, Attack on Titan was serialized in a monthly magazine, which naturally had a smaller readership than a weekly magazine. The first volume of the collected edition sold 40,000 copies, which was considered a very good result at the time.

But when it came to her, although the exact first-week sales were unknown, the stock of 150,000 copies of the first edition was running low, so at least 100,000 copies must have been sold in the first week.

Sales more than doubled in the first week, roughly 2.5 times!

That's wonderful!

After all, this is all money!

Based on the calculation of income from individual volumes, the price is about 500 yen per book, and with a 10% royalty, she can get about 48 yen for each book sold.

The 15 single-volume editions could bring her an income of about 700 million yen. Of course, she would have to pay taxes, and after taxes, she would have about 500 to 600 million yen.

Moreover, the better the sales, the more copies will be reprinted.

The first printing, the second printing, each printing brought in a new royalty income.

Soon came the second 700 million yen, then the third, and eventually the total came in the tens of millions of yen.

She still has more than 800 million yen in debt. At this rate, the first volume can be reprinted once and all the debt will be paid off at once.

This is all her money.

At this point, she no longer cared about appearing on camera or having her true face exposed.

As long as she can make money, she wouldn't mind taking a few more similar photos and publishing them!

When she took that photo last time, she was worried about being recognized on the street. Now she wishes that photo could be printed even bigger.

Fortunately, she took Masaya Sakurai's advice and did some marketing. As it turns out, Masaya Sakurai had been in the industry for over a decade, and his judgment was indeed more accurate than hers, a complete novice.

In reality, the exceptionally high sales of the Attack on Titan manga, almost double the first-week sales of Eri Aragaki's previous life, were not solely due to her marketing as a beautiful girl manga artist...

Chapter Ninety: Chuan Visits (Ninth Update!!)

The main reason is that, unlike the previous Attack on Titan which was published in Bessatsu Shonen Magazine, this Attack on Titan, written by Erii Aragaki, was published in Weekly Shonen Jump.

This is far inferior to Weekly Shonen Jump, the leading manga magazine in Japan. Bessatsu Shonen Magazine is a monthly magazine with a circulation far lower than that of a weekly magazine.

The difference between the two is like that between Dianzi and Pineapple, Green River and Moupei in the online literature world—they are not on the same level.

The saying "it's good to have a big tree to lean on" is timeless. With the promotion of Weekly Shonen Jump, Attack on Titan naturally achieved a slightly higher level of success in its early stages than in its previous version.

With a weekly circulation of millions of copies, every single magazine is an advertising space—a natural advantage that no marketing tactic can replace.

Secondly, Eri Aragaki's drawing skills gradually improved.

Because of her extraordinary talent, her drawing skills improved, and she adjusted the manga's paneling and visuals in a super creative state, referencing the storyboards of Hikvision's anime. Naturally, the overall look of her manga is much better than that of Hajime Isayama.

Hajime Isayama's early drawings were indeed rather rough, with stiff human proportions and dynamic lines, but Eri Aragaki's version looks like it's been patched with high definition.

To put it another way, it's like Isayama Hajime writing a story script for Kenjiro to draw a giant – how could that not be good?

Ken's drawing skills are recognized as top-notch in the Japanese manga industry, while Eri Aragaki's drawing skills haven't reached that level yet.

But the direction is clear, and readers have discerning eyes. If the illustrations are good, they will naturally look at them several times, and after looking at them several times, they will naturally want to buy a copy to collect.

While drawing skills are not as important as a good story, they are completely indispensable.

Just like ONE's version of One-Punch Man and Murata's version, the story is the same, but the visual presentation is worlds apart.

Finally, it was Masaya Sakurai's marketing as a beautiful girl manga artist that gave readers their curiosity.

A combination of factors led to such high sales.