Been ages since I talked about SSE, but in light of what’s going on lately I figured it was time to bring them up again.

I’ve made no bones over my thoughts on SSE, the fact they wimped out of Kodomo no Jikan, giving into the fundies, the delays over their titles, and then the suspension of their Yuri line up, pissed off a lot of fans; me included. Yet despite this they did put out a quality release.

For ages now rumours have been going around that SSE is struggling financially, I first came aware of them on their own forums when the evidence was raised, and SSE refused to comment. However other forums have said similar things, that SSE is running out of cash. These rumours are being reinforced by the lack of releases, releases being delayed or cancelled, and the breaking of reprint promises.

For me, things started a year ago when I tried to order Kashimashi, which was out of print. After researching I found that the vast majority of their titles were out of print. SSE blamed this on them moving to a new distributor, then the fact that titles had gotten lost in the moving but that they were going to reprint.

Vague promises were given of reprints, but these have yet to materialise. Since then they lost the license for several titles, and even more titles have gone out of print, and their entire yuri line was ‘suspended’.

Apparently they weren’t selling enough to be viable, but to be honest no one seems to be buying that. SSE licensed some of the gems of the yuri line up, most of which already had a huge fan base. Yet for some reason they claim they aren’t selling, but the truth seems more along the lines they aren’t selling because there’s no stock available.

What I’m finding even more disturbing is that even the few titles they have releases recently (Afro Samurai for example) seem to be heading out of print. Companies such as  Amazon have reported they’re having difficulty getting stock, so once again titles are in short supply.

Several titles that they have at the moment, such as Kanokon and Zero’s Familiar have been on hold for years. SSE claim they’re waiting for the fanbase to get used to the new small sized format of the books, but I wonder if that’s really the case. Several other light novels are selling well, and have been accepted by the fans, and it has nothing to do with the size. Whether the novels are standard sized, over sized, small sized or something else entirely is irrelevant. If the fanbase is there they’ll buy it. The problem comes when publishers start to mess the fans around. Changing release dates, cancelling series, or postponing them, it all adds up to messing the fans around, and we don’t like that. Fans get fed up and move to scanlation, or translations sites for the novels.

The damage these actions can do to the company is insane, it’s the fans that make the company work. Without the fans the companies wont survive for long. SSE have been messing the fans around for to long, and the damage is going to be really hard to recover from. Their releases are exceptionally well done, I’ve always admitted that, and it is a good basis to start a recovery from. However it has to be done now, they need to admit to the fans they screwed up and made a mistake, apologise and start to put it right.

Will I buy anymore of their releases? Yes and no. I’ll buy releases I already have, such as Kashimashi (if they ever flipping reprint it!!), Shinigami no Ballad, and Strawberry Panic. However it’s unlikely I’d ever buy a new release, even if they started to release Kanokon and Zero. The problem is the uncertainty, given their track record it’s unlikely they’d ever fully release the series, and I like many fans don’t want to start a series just to have it dropped part way. Most of us I think would wait until the series is well established or even fully released before starting to buy them. This is the result of SSE own actions, and the sooner they accept that, rather than blaming other sources, the sooner they can start to do damage control.

Sadly I can’t see that ever happening. SSE still seem to be on a see no evil hear no evil track, and accusing fans who ask questions of stalking and trolling (seems I wasn’t the only one that was accused of that hehe)

So, who killed Seven Seas? I think that ultimately it’s a case of suicide. I’m not going to deny that the current financial crisis hasn’t contributed, but over all, considering these started over a year ago, these are self inflicted.

The fans have stood by SSE, but in return we’re given abuse and insults back. Now they have to pay the price.