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| Founded | 2011 |
|---|---|
| Founder | Tony Gonzalez, Joseph Reeder, Alexander O. Smith |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Headquarters location | Austin, Texas |
| Distribution | Createspace, Amazon Kindle, iBooks |
| Publication types | Books |
| Official website | bentobooks |
Bento Books is an independent American book publisher based in Austin, Texas.
Bento Books was founded in 2011 by three experienced translators, Tony Gonzalez, Joseph Reeder, and Alexander O. Smith. [1] Bento Books publishes English translations of Japanese titles, with an emphasis on works overlooked by traditional publishers.
In 2011, the company released Math Girls , the first in a series of math-themed young adult novels by Hiroshi Yuki that can also be used as textbooks. [2]
March 2014 saw the release of Cage on the Sea by Kaoru Ohno, a novel based on a true story about a group of Japanese holdouts on the island of Anatahan after the end of the Second World War. [3] Later that same year the company announced plans to release Avatar Tuner, Vol. 1 by Yu Godai, a novel set in the world of the popular Megami Tensei video games.
Manga are comics or graphic novels originating from Japan. Most manga conform to a style developed in Japan in the late 19th century, though the art form has a long prehistory in earlier Japanese art. The term manga is used in Japan to refer to both comics and cartooning. Outside Japan, the word is typically used to refer to comics originally published in the country.
Tokyopop is an American distributor, licensor and publisher of anime, manga, manhwa and Western manga-style works. The German publishing division produces German translations of licensed Japanese properties and original English-language manga, as well as original German-language manga. Tokyopop's US publishing division publishes works in English. Tokyopop has its US headquarters near LAX in Los Angeles, California. Its parent company's offices are in Tokyo, Japan and its sister company's office is in Hamburg, Germany.
The Twelve Kingdoms is a Japanese series of fantasy novels written by Fuyumi Ono and illustrated by Akihiro Yamada. The first entry in the series called The Twelve Kingdoms: Sea of Shadow was published by Kodansha in Japan in 1992; the last Kodansha volume was released in 2001. In 2012 the series was resumed under the Shinchō Bunko line from Shinchosha. Shinchosha has also begun reprinting the older volumes with new cover and interior art from Akihiro Yamada. The first new publication of the series in six years was announced for a 2019 release date.
Seven Seas Entertainment is an American publishing company located in Los Angeles, California. It was originally dedicated to the publication of original manga, but now publishes licensed manga and light novels, as well as select webcomics. The company is headed by Jason DeAngelis, who coined the term "World Manga" with the October 2004 launch of the company's web site.
Harcourt was an American publishing firm with a long history of publishing fiction and nonfiction for adults and children. The company was last based in San Diego, California, with editorial/sales/marketing/rights offices in New York City and Orlando, Florida, and was known at different stages in its history as Harcourt Brace, & Co. and Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. From 1919 to 1982, it was based in New York City.
An original English-language manga or OEL manga is a comic book or graphic novel drawn in the style of manga and originally published in English. The term "international manga", as used by the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, encompasses all foreign comics which draw inspiration from the "form of presentation and expression" found in Japanese manga. This may also apply to manga-inspired comics made in other languages.
VIZ Media LLC. is an American manga publisher, anime distributor and entertainment company headquartered in San Francisco, California. It was founded in 1986 as VIZ LLC.. In 2005, VIZ LLC and ShoPro Entertainment merged to form the current VIZ Media LLC, which is owned by Japanese publishing conglomerate Hitotsubashi Group, which includes Shueisha, Shogakukan and Shogakukan-Shueisha Productions (ShoPro). As of 2017, Viz Media is the largest publisher of graphic novels and comic books in the United States, with a 23% share of the market.
A light novel is a style of Japanese young adult novel primarily targeting high school and middle school students. The term "light novel" is a wasei-eigo, or a Japanese term formed from words in the English language. Light novels are often called ranobe (ラノベ) or, in English, LN. The average length of a light novel is about 50,000 words, close to the minimum expected for a Western novel, and light novels are usually published in bunkobon size, often with dense publishing schedules. A distinguishing characteristic of light novels is that they are illustrated with a manga art style and are often adapted into manga and anime. They are mainly published in separate book volumes, while some of them have their chapters serialized in anthology magazines before being collected in book form, similar to how manga is published.
Disney Publishing Worldwide (DPW), formerly known as The Disney Publishing Group and Buena Vista Publishing Group, is the publishing subsidiary of Disney Parks, Experiences and Products, a subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company. Its imprints include Disney Editions, Disney Press, Kingswell, Freeform, and Hyperion Books for Children. It has creative centers in Glendale, California, and in Milan, Italy.
Manga, or Japanese comics, have appeared in translation in many different languages in different countries. France represents about 40% of the European manga market and in 2011 manga represented 40% of the comics being published in the country. In 2007, 70% of the comics sold in Germany were manga. In the United States, manga comprises a small industry, especially when compared to the inroads that Japanese animation or Japanese Video Games have made in the USA. One example of a manga publisher in the United States, VIZ Media, functions as the American affiliate of the Japanese publishers Shogakukan and Shueisha. Thouugh UK has fewer manga publishers than the U.S, most manga sold in UK are published by U.S publishing companies like Viz media and Kodansha Comics which are in turn owned by their Japanese counter parts. Alongside UK, the U.S manga publishers also sell their English translated manga in other English speaking nations like Canada, Australia and New Zealand with manga being quite popular in Australia compared to other English speaking countries.
Twilight is a 2005 young adult vampire-romance novel by author Stephenie Meyer. It is the first book in the Twilight series, and introduces seventeen-year-old Isabella "Bella" Swan, who moves from Phoenix, Arizona to Forks, Washington. She is endangered after falling in love with Edward Cullen, a 108-year-old vampire frozen in his 17-year-old body. Additional novels in the series are New Moon, Eclipse, and Breaking Dawn.
Richard Russell Riordan Jr. is an American author. He is known for writing the Percy Jackson & the Olympians series, about a teenager named Percy Jackson who discovers he is a son of the Greek god Poseidon. Riordan's books have been translated into forty-two languages and sold more than thirty million copies in the US. 20th Century Fox has adapted the first two books of his Percy Jackson series as part of a series of films. His books have spawned related media, such as graphic novels and short story collections.
Melville House Publishing is an independent publisher of literary fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. The company was founded in 2001 by the husband and wife team of Dennis Loy Johnson and Valerie Merians in Hoboken, New Jersey The company is named after the author Herman Melville It has a reputation as an "activist press" and publisher of left-leaning books.
MacAdam/Cage was a small publishing firm located in San Francisco, California. It was founded by publisher David Poindexter in 1998. In 2003, it published around 30 to 45 titles per year, primarily fiction, short story collections, history, biography, and essays, and had twelve employees. Most notably, it published The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger and The Contortionist's Handbook by Craig Clevenger. Publishers Weekly describes MacAdam/Cage as "one of the West Coast's most literary" independent publishing firms.
Millennium is a series of best-selling and award-winning Swedish crime novels, created by journalist Stieg Larsson. The two primary characters in the saga are Lisbeth Salander, an asocial computer hacker with a photographic memory, and Mikael Blomkvist, an investigative journalist and publisher of a magazine called Millennium.
Ben-To is a Japanese light novel series written by Asaura, with illustrations by Kaito Shibano. Shueisha published 15 novels from February 2008 to February 2014. Shibano also illustrates three manga adaptations, and a fourth manga is drawn by Sankaku Head. A 12-episode anime television series adaptation produced by David Production aired in Japan between October and December 2011. Funimation has licensed the anime in North America.
Math Girls is the first in a series of math-themed young adult novels of the same name by Japanese author Hiroshi Yuki. It was published by SoftBank Creative in 2007, followed by Math Girls: Fermat's Last Theorem in 2008, Math Girls: Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems in 2009, and Math Girls: Randomized Algorithms in 2011. As of December 2010, the series had sold over 100,000 books in Japan. On November 23, 2011, an English translation of the book was released by Bento Books, who subsequently released translations of Fermat's Last Theorem (ISBN 978-0983951339) and Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems (ISBN 978-1939326294) on December 5, 2012 and April 25, 2016, respectively.
Kaoru Ohno is a Japanese non-fiction writer.
Cage on the Sea is a 1998 novel, written by Japanese author Kaoru Ohno about a group of Japanese holdouts on the island of Anatahan in the Pacific Ocean. The Anatahan holdouts had also inspired a 1953 film, Anatahan.
J-Novel Club is a digital publishing company specializing in publication of Japanese light novels in English. They stream light novels in weekly installments before publishing the finalized e-books. By 2017, J-Novel Club has licensed 23 light novels, some completed, some still ongoing, and have published more than 40 e-books. They have licensed titles from the Japanese publishers Hobby Japan, Overlap, Kodansha, PHP Institute and Earth Star Entertainment.