Plain sailing! Otariman - Chukei Publishing - 80,000 copies already

"Boku Otariman (I am Otariman)," a comic book launched on March 23rd by Chukei Publishing has already seen a release of its third edition, which amounted to a run of 80,000 copies. The author, Mr. Yoshitani, is a systems engineer who helms "Dancing Company" (http://dancom.jp/), a popular website with a cumulative total of 15,000,000 hits. In 2005, he became the winner of Netrunner magazine's "Best of Junky Site" award.

The book took ten years in the making and was made by compiling the entries posted on the site over the years. The editor of Chukei Publishing, Ms. Yuko Ito, who also happens to be the author's friend, is responsible for the compilation.

The collection of these essay-style comics, featuring Mr. Yoshitani as the otaku salaryman (ergo Otariman), became the first comic book to be released by the company. Even prior to its release, the work had generated buzz and the company saw a tenfold rise in their homepage traffic as a result. This prompted them to urgently boost the book's first edition release of 7,000 copies to 20,000 copies, but they nevertheless sold out immediately.

At stores, the book was promoted with displays revolving around paperboards containing the author's handwriting and name of the selling store, while copies of it were stacked flat in the business books section, which is the company's main specialty. Copies were also made available in the new books and comics sections. Reportedly, the book has been enjoying a large response from mainly young businessmen and its inventories have been selling out at many stores.



*Some of the book titles are tentative translations.
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