Hi Everyone,

I hope everyone had a good 3day weekend!  ‘cuz I did!  I actually got lots done in 3 days!  Must I say, it was very productive!  Friends, family, pool, beach, BBQ, shopping, reading…  awh…  when is the next 3day weekend? 

I want to let you know, Hey Class President volume 2 is now on sale at akadot.com !  Yes, they are on sale for $14.36 (10% off) - so, go get your credit card and let me hear you go cha-ching!  http://www.akadot.com/product_info.php?products_id=28658&ref=new   Coming in month of June is, On Bended Knee by Ruri Fujikawa.  Yes, I will be hosting another contest in about 10 days, so be sure to check back here soon for more details. 

I see that a lot of you took advantage of the eManga.com’s Memorial Day weekend Super Sale event at www.emanga.com ! It was totally worth it right?  Uh-huh!  Thanks for your support and thanks for your comments and suggestions!  This sale ends Wednesday 27th at noon.  You still got time to get your last minute super-saver-sale before the prices go back up again!   

801-Chan

*psst*

Just a heads up from your favorite mascot, 801-chan! All good things must come to an end and a couple of the 801 Media books are almost sold out of their print runs! So if you were waiting for that perfect sale or perfect opportunity to pick up a certain title, don’t wait too much longer or you may miss out on these great gems.

Now, don’t get too worked up about it or start posting crazy things all over the internet. Just 801 Media Inc.’s philosophy is to print the life of our books up front cuz they are really pricey! So I am not going to list specific titles that are getting to be in short supply in order to avoid wide spread panic. I will just say that if you have been procrastinating on picking up some of our early 2007 titles - titles that may or may not have been released in March, April and August 2007 - you might want to hop to it! Once these babies are gone, you are going to be stuck buying them off ebay or learning Japanese!

These books may be in stock for another year, or we might get a huge order from our distributor tomorrow and mail out the last few books. But there are only a few hundred copies left at the 801 warehouse. So… procrastinate at your own risk!

~801-chan (^_^)

I got a lovely package in the mail today!!! Yay! Love is Like a Hurricane Volume 4! Banzai! Banzai! Sadly… our printer was supposed to send us like 3 boxes ahead of our main shipment. *sniff* *sniff* But they only sent us 1 lonely box.

So… sadly, we have to take these babies to New York Comic Con. *sniff* *sniff* Waaahhhh! Kampai won’t even let me take a copy home. I might be able to sneak a few out of the box without her noticing and put them up on the 801 store. I’ll keep you posted on my success or failure.

~801-chan ^ ^

Okay, okay, okay. The real reason why LILAH Volume 4 and A Foreign Love Affair are late…

5 DOZEN DONUTS!!! O.o I get into work today and we have 5 dozen donuts for all of 12 people in our office. That is 5 donuts each!!! And yesterday was chocolate chip cookies!!! No wonder we can’t get anything done!!!

~801-chan ^ ^

P.S. I apologize in advance for any donut glaze that finds its way into any 801 Store orders.

P.P.S. Please buy more 801 books so the company can buy all the employees a gym membership. We need it!!

*sigh* Our newsletter is broken!!! So while we are debugging it, I am going to go ahead and post the update on the March books here!

So the question on everyone’s lips is… “Where are Love is Like a Hurricane Volume 4 and A Foreign Love Affair?”

Love is Like a Hurricane Volume 4 is currently on a boat somewhere in the Pacific Ocean between mainland China and the Port of Long Beach. So we should have our hands on copies in the next couple of weeks. We get the shipment to our warehouse in Los Angeles and then ship it to our distributor. So… depending on where you buy your books and what wholesaler they use, you might have your hands on it in about 3 weeks. It just depends.

A Foreign Love Affair is still being printed… We had a little bit of trouble with the dust jacket. So, here is your quick lesson on printing manga.

Color printing is usually done in 4 colors called CMYK - cyan, magenta, yellow and black. (I would think they would call it CMYB, but that is just me.) Think back to your 4th grade art class and the color wheel. With red, yellow and blue you can make any color in the rainbow. And if you mixed it all together, you got black and your teacher got really mad at you for wasting paint.

A lot of Japanese manga are printed with a 5th color that adds the flesh tone to the characters. Just so you can compare, Affair is printed with 5 colors where as Ichigenme is printed with 4. The boys in Affair look more life-like, where as the boys in Ichigenme look more yellow than a realistic pink. Same goes for My Paranoid Next Door Neighbor and I’m Not Your Steppin’ Stone. Try and guess which one is 4 colors and which one is 5. *teehee*

Five color printing makes the books more expensive. So most publishers will actually modify the covers and only use 4 colors. But I think they look prettier with 5. With older books, the publisher no longer has the 5th color data. So, Love is Like a Hurricane has 4 colors on volumes 1-3 and 5 colors on volumes 4-5. Anyhoo, in conclusion, 5 colors = increased difficulty but Kampai can handle it no problem.

Well, A Foreign Love Affair is printed with a 6th color!! 6 colors = complicated and fraught with peril, not to mention really expensive. So we are still trying to adjust the colors so Al and Ranmaru don’t look like aliens. >_< We are almost there! The color proofs in the post below were pretty close to the Japanese cover.

I am currently digging out the color proofs from Affair to show you what 5 color printing gone wrong looks like!! It is pretty scary. And it is a good example of why we take our colors very seriously…That and I am a fangirl at heart and I want my books to be pretty!

So if Amazon is sending you nasty messages to cancel your order, just tell them you will wait a few more weeks. Or you can always order directly from us! All orders come with a handwritten note from yours truly!
~801-chan ^ ^

Yay! Yaoi in 4 colors!

We got the color proofs for Love is Like a Hurricane Volume 4 and A Foreign Love Affair ages ago, but I was too lazy to actually post them! >_<

But the pages look wonderful:

In Love is Like a Hurricane, we get colored manga pages instead of 4 pin-ups. (It gets really good on the very next page.)

And then the 801-chan comic is really cute this time around!

*teehee*

~801-chan (^ ^)

801-chan and Tomo-chan here with a look at the Fall 2008 books in the 801 Media Inc. line up! *teehee* We have 4 new titles shaping up the end of 2008! So here we go!

Black Sun by Uki Ogasawara

801-chan: This one is about this really hot guy, whose fortress is under siege by an even hotter guy! So of course cutie #1 offers his head to save all the poor and helpless soldiers from the evil invaders…

Tomo-chan: But the leader of the invading army, cutie #2, is more interested in his a$$! >_<

801-chan: Tomo-chan!!!! We can say that on a public blog!! Umm... moving right along...

Meeting You by Mio Tennohji

801-chan: Kampai still can’t stop talking about The Sky Over My Spectacles! All those lovely pages to look at. So we decided we needed another Mio Tennohji title more shocking than the first one!

Tomo-chan: Yup, this one is really heavy on the blow jo-

801-chan: Tomo-chan!!!!! This is supposed to be PG-13 not rated XXX! Finishing off the year, we have a set of related books by Takashi Kanzaki.

Tomo-chan: Yup! Falling Into Love and His Arrogance. These books are set in the same modeling agency. Actually in Japan they were released simultaneously, but we are going to spread them out. The best part? On page 148 of Falling Into Love, hottie #1 handcuffs hottie #2 to the bed and then begins to cut off his clothes with a pair of scissors! And then –

801-chan: T-O-M-O-C-H-A-N!

Tomo-chan: And then in His Arrogance –

801-chan: Look on the website for more information!!!!

~801-chan ^ ^ and Tomo-chan m(_ _)m

We got in the sketches for the next set of 801-chan comics from the lovely and talented Yamada Botan!!! And we finally get to see Tomo-chan when she isn’t a super deformed character. Let me tell you, Tomo-chan is hot!!!

We are totally up our old tricks in this next set of comics. You finally get the story on how Tomo-chan and I meet. Of course it is somehow related to yaoi.

We find a host club and have some unusual requests. And, my favorite, we sit on a park bench and try to decide if the boys that pass are semes or ukes!!! *teehee* A fun game to play, let me tell you.

This next set of comics will go into rotation starting around May of this year! *teehee*

Have any suggestions for future 801-chan comics? Let us know! I still want to see the boyfriends go at it in a dream or something…*drool* And I think the 2 need a few adventures at Comiket and a couple more host club visits.
~801-chan ^ ^

*teehee* Geez… this is just the day for blog posts! Kampai got a box in the mail from China last week. So I, being ever so respectful for other people’s belongings, took it upon myself to snoop around her desk. *teehee* And good thing I did, because I managed to find this:

Pretty sweet! Keep your eyes out for these two lovelies in the coming weeks. I’ll let you know when they are available for order on the site.

801-chan ^ ^

*801-chan looks around the website*

Kaaaaaaaaaaaaaaampai!!!!!!! Aren’t we supposed to have two books out this month? WTF?!?! Where is The King of Debt? The month is already like half over!! January books are like supposed to come out in January!!!

Yup, you might have notice that The Prime Minister’s Secret Diplomacy is on sale at the 801 website and The King of Debt is nooooooowhere to be found. *sniff* *sniff* Well, our printer sent us these wonderful sample copies of The King of Debt. And everything was perfect…except for 1 minor little detail… They happened to bind the pages OUT OF ORDER!! That in itself is pretty amazing considered how the pages are NUMBERED. Not to mention that they sent us the page order for approval and they had it in the right order. *sigh* So The King of Debt is going to be a little late, cuz not only did they bind the pages out of order once, but they did it twice!!! Well, the 3rd time is a charm right? Hopefully? If not, we are taking Kampai out to get totally smashed!!!
Anyway, the 801 Media Inc. store should have copies of The King of Debt around January 25. You should be able to find it at your 2nd favorite retailer (cuz 801 Media Inc. is your favorite retailer) about 2-3 weeks after that. Just think, the anticipation will make your enjoyment just that much better.

801-chan - _ -