Who are the Best Publishers?

[waalex11]

I'm trying to find all the best English manga publishers so I can have a list of publishers to send requests of manga to license.

"Best" to my standards would be ideally digital chapter release, and consistency of not dropping a manga or not communicating to the fans. Proper great translation should be a given.

In regard to flaws, I don't know how communicative publishers- if at all to news of continuing a series are or not, but I guess they're reserved.
Anyway. I'm familiar with a fair amount and found a few new ones from wikipedia, and this is what I've come up with so far;

• Comikey
• MangaPlus
• Yen Press
• Viz Media
• J-Novel Club
• Azuki
• Tokyo Pop
• Seven Seas Entertainment
• Kaiten Books

At the moment, I personally use Comikey and Viz, while having access to Crunchyroll which I don't use because it's so limited.
As for the rest, most I am familiar with, and am judging them all into this list because they're active with a seemingly good amount of manga, including new manga of today which is a good sign,
but I don't know how reliable they all are.

I personally love Comikey because of its key system payment which is great and would be awesome to have from other publishers, because instead of paying monthly or a volume, you buy an amount of "keys" that is used to pay a chapter that is greater or lesser in price depending on its length/etc.
The only slight complaint I have with them is how they had no news of 'My First Times with Suwa-san' resuming after a year to complete its translation, except for when I asked directly on their discord, to which coincidently released quickly after days later.

Regardless.
I'm curious to know if you guys can give me insight of whether this list is good and if there are any other good publishers that I should include?
I may know a few more that I'm forgetting that I've noticed on MangaUpdates over the years from the manga I've looked through.

 

[UnnamedPlayer]

I know those publishers, but i don't know if they are good enough for what you want :

• Renta!
• INKR Comics
• Manga up! (Square Enix official distribution website/app)
• e-manga and his sister sites like Lilyka
• Bookwalker, my prefered (less expensive) but i'm not sure if it's a publisher for this one...

 

[waalex11]

Thank you!
Decent selection of manga from all of them, some better than others.
... Although, Manga Up is mainly App Exclusive, and BookWalker is a book store.

I think Renta!, INKR Comics and EManga have a good selection of manga.
INKR Comics has Non-Japanese (Manhua, etc.) so I think Renta! and EManga are better options.
As for EManga and its sister affiliates, it has a good selection of more adult or sexy manga, so good list overall.

 

[TestAddress]

Seven Seas Entertainment, I guess.

I do not even see on Google Books the other brands.

 

[ieatass69]

Seven Seas Entertainment, I guess.

I do not even see on Google Books the other brands.

Not sure about the manga dept., but SSE is known to have censored a bunch of light novels. That makes me doubt their credibility. Though, truth be told, I rarely trust any localizers (read: talentless rewriters) these days.

INKR has dog shit translation, around unedited MTL level.

I have had decent experience so far with MangaPlus, though, some translation decisions seem quite questionable.

This has to be the first time I see someone praise Comickey's key system. Most people I see absolutely shit on that system, me included.

Can't remember about YP but I think I didn't have a good impression of their stuff.

No ideas about the rest.

 

[TestAddress]

Not sure about the manga dept., but SSE is known to have censored a bunch of light novels. That makes me doubt their credibility. Though, truth be told, I rarely trust any localizers (read: talentless rewriters) these days.

INKR has dog shit translation, around unedited MTL level.

I have had decent experience so far with MangaPlus, though, some translation decisions seem quite questionable.

This has to be the first time I see someone praise Comickey's key system. Most people I see absolutely shit on that system, me included.

Can't remember about YP but I think I didn't have a good impression of their stuff.

No ideas about the rest.

Some more memories flowed from ( less than two ) decades ago.
Yen Press ... I have a lot of rips from them : ) - from

• Jobless Reincarnation, I bought legit light novels ( this is how I found out Yen Press can delete WHOLE CHAPTERs just to remove Rudeus C.A.) ,
• CLASSROOM OF THE ELITE (rip 'em ALL),
• Bottom-Tier Tomozaki ( rip some )
• GOBLIN SLAYER ( rip 'em ALL )
• Starving Anonymous ( ... mmm ... can't say I made a good purchase or not ... )
• Marginal Operation ( I bought this one, it is too darn good, it seems the author really went to EMEA. ) .

TOKYO POP ... ah I remember my sibling buying them because they translate A LOT OF SHOUJO BL. The only non-BL I read from them was "In Search of the FULL MOON", which got an anime.

TOKYO POP publishing and CLAMP studios seem to partner way back.

 

[PantsMan]

Not sure about the manga dept., but SSE is known to have censored a bunch of light novels. That makes me doubt their credibility. Though, truth be told, I rarely trust any localizers (read: talentless rewriters) these days.

Yeah, Seven Seas is a mixed bag. On one hand they're the publisher that's most responsive to customer suggestions for what they pick up, so their catalogue reflects a mix of good niche series you won't find elsewhere and whatever flavour of the week is popular on scanlation sites. They seem like they're the most on the ball when it comes to using scanlations to gauge interest and meet demand that way rather than blindly copyright striking. Not sure if that's still the case, though.

On the other hand they're extremely cheap. Even by American manga publisher standards a lot of their printed stuff looks like it's cutting corners just in terms of print, page and volume-condition quality. They're also the most likely to cut out extras (illustrations, bonus 4koma, or even translation notes) of any sort.

Can't remember the rumors exactly, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if they're at the forefront of firing most of their translators and replacing them with glorified MTL "curators and localizers" to save a few pennies.

 

[TestAddress]

I know those publishers, but i don't know if they are good enough for what you want :

• Renta!
• INKR Comics
• Manga up! (Square Enix official distribution website/app)
• e-manga and his sister sites like Lilyka
• Bookwalker, my prefered (less expensive) but i'm not sure if it's a publisher for this one...

Add Apple Books & Kobo

 

[Manko-sensei]

In last years a lot of new publishers came out to focus on a few series, I lost track last year since I also stopped buying translated manga. Seven Seas Entertainment is one of the older ones (from the 2000s) but the releasing policy is quite awful. Like other major publishers, they kept adding titles so they could release a lot of volumes every month but it's quite frustrating when some series have a new volume every three months (which is a lot for a regular one that has to catch up with the originals) and others release a single volume every year, including series that were best sellers in the past. They're not the only one with this kind of policy but I should add that they're prone to censor certain things whereas they release uncensored shonen series such as Yuuna and the Haunted Hotsprings. I am referring at how they dropped Kodomo no Jikan after the first volume because of one article in the New York Times, but there are other examples of course (they removed a Itou Hachi one-shot from a one-loli anthology following the example of Germany). If we're talking from a professional perspective, they only have a handful of people hired on a full-term basis (chief editors and such) whereas editors, letterers and translators are always freelance under the guise of "you don't need to live in USA to work here! Twinkle twinkle".
I could also talk about how Yenpress those similar things or publish poor digital editions with misplaced text and translating issues from over-localising (like SSE or Viz Media), but it depends on the series and the interests of the high-ups. Kodansha Comics absorbed some minor publishers in the past and they are not bad per se, but some of their series had been discontinued. The other publisher that has been a long time is Tokyo Pop, that has a mess of catalogue with a poor website interface (it has been changed recently though). They aren't better than the others when it comes to postponing releases arbritarely, Konohana Kitan is the best example I can think off, they even released a volume that was printed in poor quality and nothing happened. With all these things being said, when I have the chance to look into late 2010s and 2020s new publishers they seem to care more about what they do, and they release both in digital and print version (Tokyo Pop was really reluctant to release digitally, but eventually they did). The prices have been rising over the years and the paper quality also differs from some years ago. Overall, the difference between big and small publishers are the advertising they can use and how the older ones want to keep their position basically mass-releasing volumes of a lot of series so online retailing becomes the only choice to buy (unless you can afford having a bookstore with enough clients to buy every month over a hundred of new different volumes and don't go bankrupt/out of space).
Long story short, publishers are competing quantity over quality, so rating them in terms of quality makes no sense. Just find the series that suits you, read as many samples as you need first, but don't disregard a series because it has been picked by a certain publisher... unless we are talking about the Project H publisher or FAKKU.

 

[waalex11]

So, ultimately, most of them are flawed one way or another. Maybe none are perfect.
I personally love Comikey and Viz from what I read from them,
or whatever else I buy as a volume digitally through Kobo which are mainly sourced by Seven Seas Entertainment, Yen Press, etc.

Overall, communication of news is often lacking in the business, and translation isn't always perfect from what I could tell by using romanji instead of exact translations at times, but I wouldn't know about actual overall translation from japanese to english.

All good insight though. Thank you.
There's a few newer mainly exclusive application manga services, but I don't think they're exactly worth mentioning.
Or moreso too lazy to find and mention them if I haven't already listed some.

 

[Manko-sensei]

I mean, there are online publishers that do a good job but the catalogue is short and are really new, such as Yuri Hub. For older publishers, the hardcover edition of Jojo from VizMedia is great and it pays the price, but then there's an ongoing yuri series that for some reason it was picked by them that is terrible when it comes to lettering. Sometimes they specialise on a genre or two and the other series they pick are generic or lazily edited independently the quality of the series itself. Returning to the same point, until you see the preview or the whole book, there's no telling if that translation is worth or not.

 

[kohelemon]

Comikey's weird, it delivers you 1/3rd of a chapter every day or so. Nevertheless, that stops someone like me, a binge-reader from speeding through before I really focus in, like some kid trying to wank one out before their parents get home.
I read Baki in a week, 1400 CHAPTERS IN A WEEK! I have a problem, but to my defense, Baki is a fighter anime, which despite it having a ton of dialogue, it's mostly fighting.