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darthmongoose
Dec '22

If you're looking to pitch, it's best to try a few publishers, but the ones where you're most likely to succeed are ones where what you're making is similar to what they already publish.

So first, have a look and see if a publisher even has submissions open at all.

https://www.viz.com/submissions31

Great, looks like they are open to pitches for "original manga".

If you scroll down, they actually list exactly what they're looking for! So that's convenient! It seems they want black and white manga books made for print. So your pitch materials would need to show that you, or your artist, whoever is doing the art, knows how to make black and white work for print. You'll also want some "comp titles", so if whatever you want to make should ideally be something where you can point to either some titles Viz already publishes, or at titles for a similar audience to things they publish and say "it'll be kinda like that".

If you want just general guidance, scrolling down further, they've even given info on what they want from a portfolio and where to get a portfolio review! So that's handy too!

Self Publishing is also an option if the thing you want to make doesn't really fit with any publishers taking submissions, or just if you feel like you'll make more money that way. A lot of NSFW creators, or ones making work tied to very current internet humour where the audience consume more content online and also the time taken to print would lead to the content being dated might feel this way, or creators whose audience are mostly young webtoon readers who don't read comics in physical form so much. I recommend looking for comp titles! Where are the comics that have a similar look and feel and audience to the thing you want to make getting published?

How to find comp titles:

  • Pick 5 comics.
  • They need to have at least been decently popular, like maybe they're a Tapas premium, published by a decent-sized publisher like nothing smaller than Boom or Oni, or if they were totally Indie, they need to evidently have been popular enough to have made decent money, not be unknown little comics or things that flopped.
  • They also need to have come out in the last 10 years, so you know their "business model" or style is still currently relevent and viable.

Now, where were they published? That's where you should be aiming.

jadenlegend6
Dec '22

Hey, i'm also planning on submitting to Viz Media. i emailed Viz a couple months back, i asked them a similar question.
this is what they sent me


i hope this helps

darthmongoose
Dec '22

Happy Christmas! Have your artist check out the screentones tools in Clip Studio and read up on Moire (the weird patterns that happen if you do screentones at the wrong resolution). You should be fine if you always make pages at either exactly print resolution, or always in increments like 150% or 200% size :smile_01:

1 month later

closed Jan 23, '23

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