Anime Article in Fortune Magazine

An interesting article in Fortune Magazine concerning the business practices of Anime/Manga firms in the US.

An interesting lesson to be learned. The Anime industry caters to fans, treating them well. In return, the fans become (rabidly) loyal and the industry gets a lot of profit for a minimal investment.

Other current industries... let's use the mainline movie and music industry as an example... not only doesn't cater to fans, but actively treats them like criminals. It also seems to assume it is owed money, even when the content has become crap. Its fans become alienated, and the purchasing declines. When they see their incomes shrink, instead of saying to themselves "Hmm, this is a problem. Let's start to accommodate our fans and offer them better content," they say "Hmm, this is a problem. Let's load up our DVD's with even more restrictions to prevent piracy, and we better heavily advertise more pointless unoriginal crap because original content is too much of a risk."

Hence, we get "Mission Impossible 7" loaded with Digital Rights Management software that melts down your computer if you have ever even thought about having an Internet connection. They are shocked and outraged that no one will buy it, and assume it is because of piracy (not the lack of quality or bite-the-hand-that-feeds business practices), and gets even more irate with every passing iteration of this cycle.

Meanwhile, mostly unconcerned about piracy because fans tend to purchase real copies anyway (either out of loyalty and support of the product they enjoy or because they want a better quality item than the one they downloaded off the Internet) and understanding that loyalty and trust is a two way street, the Anime industry makes sure to cater to fans. These few Anime companies are quietly make a killing, relying almost totally on word of mouth to carry their product. And it works. That, my good people, is a nice business model.

Rock on, kids.