Rosmei orders and novel impressions

[headstone]

Some interest was expressed in a writeup of the Rosmei titles I've acquired over the last year, so I wrote up some of my impressions of their books, as well as my experience ordering from each of the two main North American distributors. On my personal site: https://durandal.blog/blog/rosmei/

I don't have comments set up on my blog so feel free to ask questions or discuss under this post. Feel free to suggest any relevant tags, as well.

Comments

[halfcactus]

Ohhhh I really enjoyed reading this, it's a very useful and thorough overview! Tysm for taking the time to review everything (I especially like the commentary on website accessibility and cover art haha) and take pictures. The Kaleidoscope of Death one—!!!!!

[headstone]

I'm glad you enjoyed!!! NGL, half of my motivation to get this post up was that the Kaleidoscope of Death art is so insanely cool.

[halfcactus]

I'm honestly SO tempted to get it (apparently my local light novel-importer has volume 1 in stock right now) just for that, but 1) my track record for finishing physical books is very bad, 2) I'm not sure I'll actually like the book (plus it's listed as 6 volumes and your apprehension about the press's ability to deliver everything is so real haha).

[headstone]

This is all very fair! At least they will probably have decent resale value, if you went that route? (Or at least this is what I told myself...)

[duckprintspress]

So, I've been pre-ordering all the titles through Yiggybean as they come out - I'm in the US, so don't have some of the same international/cross-border issues, but otherwise your experience basically matches mine. All in all I think this is a damn good write-up and I would agree with it, so when below I only talk about the parts where I differ a little, it's not meant as anything negative about the post as a whole, I just think all the rest is A+. :D

My Nanchan also got caught up in the customs snafu, and while I also wish they had e-mailed as well as updating the webpage, well... it was what it was. You mentioned wondering if a GO might have been better, and for that... I ALSO once had a GO I was in get involved a customs snafu. With Yiggybean, they communicated at least somewhat, and were able to negotiate to get the books sent back to Singapore and then returned to the US, resulting in me ultimately getting my book without any increase in price. When the same thing happened to a merch order I did in a GO, the group order person was NOT able to negotiate to get their stuff removed from impound, it was deep-sixed permanently, and the GO runner could only issue apologies and partial refunds out of their own pocket (I declined mine; it wasn't worth taking $10 from this person who was surely already dealing with a ton of people who were way more pissed than I was). Now, this doesn't mean "Yiggybean had the pull and the GO didn't" because we don't know the full circumstances - why were each orders impounded, what were the other factors and other impacted orders, etc. - but at least from my extremely limited experience, I'd definitely favor Yiggybean over a GO if customs issues are a major concern. (they're not a huge concern from me; like. I ordered from that GO after the issue, I figured things like this are bound to happen ordering through the hurdles we face in North America getting things from China. It's annoying but some amount of it is probably inevitable. Not that I think you disagree with that, to be clear, just explaining my own attitude.)

Re: back blurbs, I've seen this discussed many other places but this is a disconnect in how books are marketed different places. No back blurb is standard practice in a lot of Asian countries. My understanding is that Rosmei was really taken by surprise by how different the culture in NA is in that regard, and I think I heard they're adding back blurbs to at least some of their upcoming titles?

Re: volume counts for the Rosmei titles, they're all here (this is a blog post I wrote and that I update as new licenses are announced): https://duckprintspress.com/2024/03/26/danmei-and-baihe-c-novels-and-manhua-officially-licensed-in-english/#rosmei-flag

Anyway yeah, great post, thanks for sharing it, and hope my little additional babbling here is helpful.

[duckprintspress]

also god yeah the speed at which they're coming out is glacial it's driving me insane. I usually don't start a danmei that's new to me unless I have access to it all, which means I've only read a couple so far - I read How to Survive as a Villain, because I wanted to assess their translations before I ordered more, and so I lined up a fantranslation for the rest, and I've read Global Examination because that's a re-read for me. I might die of old age before I finally get to read Lie Huo Jiao Chou it's the worst.

Oh, I read You're Too OP! too, cause it was stand alone.

The rest I'm just. patiently accumulating in a stack. so I can read them once I have the whole story, sigh.

[headstone]

This all makes a lot of sense and is great additional context, thank you!

Yeah, I've never bought from a GO before and don't seriously expect that they would be better in this regard, so it's good to have it confirmed that I was probably right to assume in the first place that even if a shipment did get impounded, it'd have a better chance of getting recovered if I went through an established retailer.

And yeah, the communication levels around the delay truly weren't a big issue; if anything, it seemed worse in retrospect purely due to how communicative The Beguiling were throughout the process. Despite how it might sound in the post, I would definitely order from Yiggybean again if there weren't a domestic alternative (or the border considerations.) I mentioned the stuff about the delay in the interest of expectation-setting for folks (like myself) who may not have a ton of experience buying from overseas; it's good to know in advance the kinds of things that can happen.

The back blurb info makes a lot of sense (and yeah I'm sure there's a lot of conversations about this stuff I'm not privy to since my social media use these days is minimal.) I had a feeling it might just be a difference in publishing industry conventions. I'll update the post later to reflect this, I just don't have my computer on me right now.

Thanks for the link to the post with volume numbers! That's extremely helpful. Where did you get that info? It's very possible it's on their site and I just couldn't find it...

[duckprintspress]

nodnod that makes a lot of sense. I've been in danmei fandoms for over 5 years, and I've bought every single English edition I could get my hands on since I found out English editions existed so... all the Peach Flower titles, all the Via Lactea ones tho I'm dealing with the shipping issue in reverse - they're in Canada and they have a couple pre-orders right now and because of shipping I flat-out cannot afford them right now, I'll have to wait until I get holiday money of some kind - ofc all the 7S, and the Rosmei, and I've gotten Chinese editions from like six different sources, including GOs, so I've ended up with a decent amount of experience (this makes it sound like I have a lot of money lmao, when in fact this is like... every spare penny I've had this entire time. other hobbies? what other hobbies?) AND I'm quite active on Tumblr and other platforms, so I tend to be relatively looped, and I often forget that a lot of people... aren't. Which is reasonable! I've hyperfocused on this as a special interest and not everyone gonna do that lol.

The publisher I'm currently pissed at is Aloha - they've got some manhua - Nirvana in Fire, Link Click, the donghua-made manhua for Tian Guan Ci Fu (as opposed to the manhua by Starember), and they recently announced they got the first two volumes of Little Mushroom - and I spent like $250 to pre-order TGCF and Link Click in like January, they said they'd be out during the spring, and there hasn't been a *peep* since then, and I'm slowly going from annoyed to "maybe I'll just never buy from you again" because that is a LOT of money to just get. nothing. not even an e-mail suggesting when they WILL be out. It's especially frustrating because I've seen the physical books at Kinokuniya and I know some are out. So why haven't pre-orders been fulfilled???

Re: the volume numbers, the Rosmei website is - as you said - a nightmare to use. I only have the progress update link because I found someone else had it. It's here: https://rosmeihey.top/pages/progressreport and as far as I know it's basically accurate. In addition to the list I keep up-to-date, there's also this one - https://licenseddanmei.carrd.co/ - the person who maintains that one is a HUGE LHJC fan so they follow the Rosmei updates pretty closely; I follow them on Bluesky and also get some info that way.

[aurumcalendula]

I haven't ordered any Rosmei books via Yiggybean yet (I'm impatiently waiting for the preorders for Ning Yuan's booka to open), but it defintely sounds like they might have more recourse than GOs over customs snafus.

I'm pretty sure blurbs on the dust jacket flaps or back cover, depending if it's a hardback or paperback, are fairly standard in western English language publishing, not just NA (like the UK published books I have usually include them)?

[duckprintspress]

Yeah that's been my limited experience with European books too but I didn't want to assume cause that's definitely not my main, uh, sphere? but yeah, books I've encountered from the UK, France, and Spain have had back blurbs. I've figured it's a feature of publishing traditions based in European tradition but I'm not familiar enough with publishing in a lot of areas of Europe to want to make any blanket statements in that regard, whereas at least for the US and Canada I could say it with confidence that I was right.

[aurumcalendula]

Neat! Thank you for taking the time to write up your impressions!

[dayadhvam_triad]

Thanks so much for sharing! I don't own any of the published cnovel English editions out there, so your writeup on the ordering experience and Rosmei vs. Seven Seas branding/design was v. interesting (wow I like the style of Rosmei's covers a lot more than that of 7Seas, though yeah holy shit its website is maddening).

[douqi]

Thanks for sharing this! Great to have your impressions. It also dovetails with mine in that Rosmei is pretty good at producing books as physical objects (which IMO it shares with the Taiwanese/HK/Macau publishers I buy from), but not necessarily the best publisher.

Re: back blurbs — I've heard this a lot, but in my extensive experience 'no back blurbs' is NOT necessarily the standard in Asian countries. The mainland Chinese print novels I own, across a bunch of genres, have back blurbs of some sort in many cases. E.g. the Chinese translation of Kim Ji-Young, born 1982, by a press which also publishes webnovels in print, has a fairly detailed summary on the back cover. I also think that if a publisher is targeting a particular market (e.g. readers in the West, reading in English), it ought to do basic market research about the expectations and norms in that market.

Re: future of baihe publishing, in particular — the existing Seven Seas and Rosmei baihe licences feel, to me, very experimental, with a vibe of 'let's see how these do before we invest any more in this genre'. I'm also not sure where Seven Seas will be able to branch out to if it sticks with this current formula of: has an existing fan translation + short (hence lower risk) + historical, preferably wuxia/xianxia.

[halfcactus]

While not as relevant, the Asian books in my experience typically had blurbs: original Taiwanese manhua (with varying levels of independent), traditional Chinese translations of Japanese manga, and non-East-Asian Asian novels.

As far as I know, the cnovel physicals that didn't have back blurbs still to had the summaries up on the respective websites/listings; a lot of the pushback was because the English summaries were not in Rosmei's website OR its preorder page OR anywhere official, which they have since amended (mostly) (after fifteen months). Like maybe if the issue was trying to keep things on the down-low because of censorship I'd get it, but it does seem more like a lack of foresight that they passed off as East-West differences.

Re: baihe - PERSONALLY I think 7S should go for the alpaca baihe because 1) it's transmigration, which seems sellable, 2) alpaca baihe seems like it will fit in well with the translated fish danmeis (I don't know how many there are, but I think there are at least two?)

[headstone]

a lot of the pushback was because the English summaries were not in Rosmei's website OR its preorder page OR anywhere official, which they have since amended (mostly) (after fifteen months).

For sure. From where I stand, it's deeply frustrating as a prospective consumer because the amount of time and effort required to put some simple copy together and update their website is low any way you slice it. The effort to impact ratio is so disproportionate that the fact they are still not caught up (as I mentioned in the post, The Defectives is still listed as "TBA" and without cover art on their site months after its release) suggests they're either really disorganized or have strange priorities. I understand that they're a young, small company, but they've acquired a lot of licenses and I'd prefer they took the time to get their processes in order and complete the publication of some of their novels in progress before continuing to expand.

It really speaks to the dire state of the English-language cnovel publishing landscape that even with all this in mind, Rosmei are unquestionably one of the more reputable and professional extant publishers simply by virtue of the fact they a) actually publish books and b) maintain a reasonable standard of quality of said books...

I also agree with douqi that regardless of standards and conventions within Rosmei's regional publishing sphere, the international English readership is clearly a pillar of their business model and it behooves them to do some basic market research about what said audience will expect.

[duckprintspress]

re what other people said - none of the manga I've gotten from Japan has had back blurbs, and none of the manhua or danmei novels I've bought from mainland China have had them.

It may depend on genre and/or publisher, then.

but yeah, their webpage is a disaster, and especially considering how much they're relying on cross-country cross-language buyers, I definitely agree their priorities are all wrong in that regard and I agree with you that they've had more than enough time to course-correct but still haven't and that's weird.

To speak from a little personal experience... so I own a book publisher! that publishes books! lol. Our first four print books, I never anticipated selling in any context where the physical book would need a back blurb - I thought they'd only be online - so we printed them without back blurbs. That was like the first year or so of us putting out books. And then it became clear I'd misgauged the market and I would be selling in person and the books would need back blurbs. So all subsequent books have had them, and for two of those first four I have done reprints so they now have them too. For Reasons, I haven't been able to reprint the other two, so I printed out cards that have the back blurbs and I bring those cards to in-person events so that every time I see someone pick those two up, turn them over, and go "uhh..." I have the thing in hand to go "yeah sorry those two don't have back blurbs but you can read the blurb here" and hand it to them. So it's not like this is a super difficult course correction to make, and I'm doing it with a fraction of their manpower - I'm my company's only full-time employee and I have to do a lot of this logistical stuff myself. And the books don't already have blurbs, whereas c-novels all do. So their lag on adjusting their strategy is. not great.

[aurumcalendula]

*nods* That definitely makes sense

[geraineon]

Thanks for sharing your impressions! This tracks with my experience, and I've ordered about five Rosmei books so far. I definitely prefer their cover design over 7s, but translation quality ... Varies...

And yeah their website design is awful orz