I’m Yen Press fan, I consider them one of the best publishers of manga out there. However even this time I’m scratching my head over what’s happening this time.

I recently went to pick up my magazines from my local comic store, and was told that from next month Yen Plus would be more expensive. He didn’t have a firm price yet, but was expecting it to be £9-15 region. And wanted to know if I still wanted to keep it on my list. Needless to say neither he or I were surprised when I said no hehe.

What worried me was that he had had a flier from Diamond stating they were no longer acting as the distributor, and were acting as a middle man for another company, hence the price increase.

Well, I picked up my other magazines (maxed out my credit card in the process lol) and blitzed home to email Kurt Hassler and find out what was going on with my favourite monthly.

I don’t think Kurt believed me when I emailed him initially about what my retailer had said, but as I was also emailing Diamond he suggested waiting to hear from them, since as far as he was aware Diamond were still ordering copies.

This had me head scratching even more, how can they be ordering copies but telling retailers they weren’t.

Diamond got back to me a few days later, confirming that the retailer was right. Although Diamond are going to be supplying Yen Plus, they no longer get it direct, rather they import from another company in the states, resulting the cover price of the magazine shooting up to to a whopping £6.99, from £3.99.

This entire situation is leaving me (and at least one retailer) asking what the hell is going on.

The move to Diamond for distribution was supposedly to increase access to Yen Plus, but has it really had that effect. I for one don’t think so, if anything I think it’ll kill off Yen Plus in the UK.

COMAG who held the initial distributor was the right choice, however they only did a limited distribution within certain areas as a ‘test’. They stated (as I mentioned in a post a while back) they were following Yen’s instructions. Not long after that the UK subscriptions went live, which was great, even if they were pricey. Finally things started to settle down and the availability improved.

Now they move to Diamond supposedly to increase availability, but in truth the reverse is true. Since newsagents, supermarkets and others don’t have Diamond accounts how are they supposed to order them? Should they open a Diamond account solely for buying Yen Plus? I can’t see that happening any time soon.

And how does removing a UK distributor, increasing the cost of the mag, improve availability? It doesn’t make much sense to me. What’s also worrying is that Yen Plus has lost it’s UK price markings. Previous volumes had the price in both US Dollars and UK Pounds. I’ve noticed some of their newer releases of manga are also lacking the UK price, which makes me wonder if Yen are moving away from the dual release system they’ve been using.

Sadly, all this means for us brits is that the availability of Yen Plus has shrunk considerably, while the costs has almost doubled. It now out strips Shoujo Beat considerable, which sells for £4.99.

Yen Plus has moved from being the cheapest anthology on the market, to being the highest. (Even Shonen Jump only sells for £5.99)

UPDATE:

Okay, it also seems that the UK no longer has a subscription service for Yen Plus. Magazine Cafe which was running the service is (I believe) a part of COMAG, they’re basically their shop front. Since COMAG aren’t doing the distribution anymore, they pulled Yen Plus from the subscription site.

Still waiting to hear on whether they’re honouring old subscriptions, or giving a refund. However I don’t see how they can honour them if they’re not getting the magazines anymore. So sadly we’re without a subs service in the UK.