I’m not interested as much with connecting buyers with comics as much as connecting an ecosystem with creators. Because in the world of self-publishing with Print On Demand, all you need to do is drop a PDF. Amazon.jp may work great as a distribution channel for retail ops like First Spear, but Amazon is not yet very robust as an ecosystem for publishing stuff that is very temporary.

Plus, the costs! How do we lower it?

So I have a few ideas.

Do the leg work and contact POD sites who may be interested in this business idea. The pitch is a doujinshi fair, but it’s all going to be online. There’s this Japanese cultural aspect to it which makes it feasible at all, and the question is a valid one as to who would ever want to do this. But I think of it like NaNoWriMo for comic books and magazines: give people a reason to create something, and sample the fruits. There’s already a template. There is a demand for creators. Maybe there is one for buyers too? I don’t know.

But creators are POD’s clients. If an organizer can bring the two together, there’s an opportunity there. The act of doujinshi publishing is still a subgenre of self-publishing after all.

The organizer will instill the doujinshi process and philosophy behind it, groom the authors so their submissions will fit guidelines for publishing legally. Not as censors, but to avoid the lawyers. That’s kind of the same idea behind Comiket and the like? I guess. Ultimately the good doujinshis should be products that will sell, for whatever the reason. This is kind of a driver for that. The organizer should tip the author as to what is smart investments and what isn’t. But also a clean hands-off for the opportunity post-retail. Whatever that makes it tick, hopefully, and give people the freedom to do stuff while respect the “event.”

Details to be determined… including Market Validation!