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Kodansha, Dai Nippon Printing Buy Vertical (Updated)
posted on by Egan Loo
The Japanese publishing giant Vertical. The price of the acquisition has not been made public. Vertical's headquarters is in Tokyo, although it has an office in New York City. It has 77 million yen ($930,000) in capital. Vertical translates and publishes Japanese books in English, including but not limited to manga. Kodansha bought 46.7% of Vertical, and Dai Nippon Printing bought 46.0%.
Kodansha also announced on Wednesday that its 42-year-old chief operating officer, Sawako Noma as the company's president in the middle of April. This is the company's first presidential transition in 24 years, and the younger Noma will be the seventh-generation head from the family that founded the company. The younger Noma declared at Kodansha's press conference on Wednesday that the company will strengthen its digital and overseas ventures during the ongoing publishing slump.
Hiroki Sakai founded Vertical in 2001 after working as an editor and reporter at the business news company Peepo Choo.
Kodansha, Viz Media.
Kodansha once licensed its manga to a variety of North American publishers, including Viz, take over publishing duties for manga published by Del Rey.
Kodansha also has a separate company, Kodansha International, that DreamWorks, respectively, in 2008.
Sources: animeanime.biz, Jiji Press, Nikkei via Tadashi Sudo
Update: More background information added.
Update 2: Chavez reports that more than half of Vertical's books in its 2012 lineup will come from companies besides Kodansha.
Update 3: Chavez clarified, "We're working on our Spring 2012 list, and that should have around 2-4 Kodansha series & around 5-7 from other [publishers]."
this article has been modified since it was originally posted; see change history