Fakku Releases 2014 to Present

Hi all,

Quite a while back I did a brief graph on the turnaround times between announcements and physical releases. I've recently gotten my hands on tableau and I wanted to try it out, and in true pervy fashion, I decided to do a recap of everything since FAKKU went legit in 2014. I'll point out now though that it is not perfect and I still have some ways to go to clean up the data. It also didn't help that the changes to the FAKKU store kinda screwed me on the dates front, as tableau seems to like exact dates otherwise I get nulls out the wazoo :(

Anyways, the idea is that it the dashboard will give you, at a glance, an indication of how much 2D poon tang we've been able to consume either digitally or physically over the course of a year. It also highlights the tops 10 tags across released books, and some mid range tags which look to be underrepresented, as well as the top 10 authors by user favourites. I was surprised Meme50 wasn't higher considering the number of books he has had released - also disappointed Bobobo didn't make the top ten :(

Jacob, those mid ranges tags by the way:

The ugly bastards can't seem to get a break!

Dashboard


Also on another note, if anyone is able to help me fill in my data blanks, that would be great:


Cheers and sorry for the long rant.

Reviewing the data a bit more and drawing some conclusions.

• When you look at the data, the odds are very clearly stacked in Wani's favour. Even when I combined the total number of releases which were from a non-Wani publishers, Wani still dwarfs them, though they have had more years to rack up those numbers.

• When you compare tags. There is a certain bias towards vanilla/general tastes, which from a business standpoint makes sense, as picking titles with niche genres could potential reduce the consumer pool - after all, not everyone likes NTR, Yaoi/Yuri, Futanari or Loli.

• Possibly if FAKKU skipped physical releases, for certain books, they might be able to broaden their offerings. If I remember correctly, that was the reason NTR2 got canned, in that it was too hot for most printing companies to handle.

It would be interesting to see how exactly FAKKU gauges interest. Is it solely the suggestion thread, with a bit of FAKKU preferencing thrown in or do they use viewing habits (favourites and chapters added to lists etc.) and/or web analytics? Even if only partly the latter, there are a whole host of different metrics which could be used:

• The number book orders digital vs physical.

• The number of physical purchases by location and the choice of shipping option/price.

• How often do users finish reading chapters or comparing partially read to completely read chapters.

• How many users favourite chapters without reading them.

• Are there consistent themes in viewing habits and how does that compare to user followed tags/artists.

• How do users find the content they want: Search bar, landing page or notifications.

Is it weird that I have a boner? I'm joking but seriously I would give my right hand to have access to the their analytics tool or some web API 🤤

That would actually be a really great idea for books that printing companies dont want to do.

Well I was joking to a certain extent, but I do think you're right about the suggestion thread. Sure there have been one or two titles pick-up from there but they could just as easily have been coincidences. I quite liked the idea of the poll they used for Kill the Communication licensing, as the community had a tangible impact, but I can understand why that might not work as a recurring option - though possibly one or twice a year could work.



Well that would depend on the sales figures but granted popular artists can sell niche tastes on their popularly alone. It's just that when you look at the popular artists which have had a book released, they tend to be predominately vanilla. When you think about it, possibly their original popularly, to a certain degree, could possibly stems from their more savoury choice of themes... among other factors, like art style etc.

Actually, NTR2 was canceled due to not being able to find a payment processor that would be willing to handle payments for it.

Most payment processors in the US don't even allow any transactions involving adult good and those that do can be selective about the content of the adult goods that they allow transactions for. This is because, while pornography is considered free speech under the 1st Amendment in the US, it can be possible for a piece of pornographic material to be deemed obscene by a court of law and thus lose its free speech protection. Consequently, a payment processor may find itself in legal trouble if found to be allowing transactions on material deemed obscene. As such, payment processors are more likely to refuse to allow transactions for works involving extreme content, such as loli and shota, even though the material itself is legal in the US unless deemed obscene.

I know you guys might feel as though we view the suggestions thread as a bottom of the barrel options that we go to, but I actively click on it and check out each and every suggestion you guys post, especially if you have a link (the first thing I check is who the publisher is). I know I'm not the only one who does it in the company either. It's brought up any time we have a book meeting when we are discussing adding books to the schedule, and high contenders often include people who ask for a book frequently. There's a couple on my 'to publish' list that I'd like to get done just based off of the requests alone. We're aware of what artists are very popular on FAKKU and know that customers would enjoy them, so sometimes we just happen to have a book planned that someone recently requested.

Lots of factors can be involved on it not ever getting licensed though, especially if it's a different publisher, sometimes we just can't work with a publisher because they don't want their content uncensored. Sometimes they're not interested in an overseas market. Sometimes the artist isn't interested.

Despite that though, please always share books you're interested in, while we can't promise they'll be published based on reasons above, still upvote and encourage other peoples requests and let us know what you guys want. It's not falling on deaf ears.

Thanks for the feedback Brittany. I suppose It's easy to forget that there's a lot more involved than just a simple exchange with the publisher. Out of interest though, do books which have largely been translated through magazine chapters carry more weight? I know myself and others somethings compile lists which show those that are complete or nearing completion and assumedly because you've already done most of the leg work, such books would be quick wins.



Thanks ditama, I didn't know that. I suppose that defeats my suggestion then.

My answer is kind of yes-and-no. Yes it can impact a decision when an artist consistently has higher than average favorites and a lot of community discussion on them. When we can see distinct interest in an artist, it makes it an easy decision for us to pick up a title so fans of that artist can support them and they can get a definitive collection of that artists work.

Sometimes it's interpreted that a magazine book is easier for us to do, and I would argue that's where the no part comes in from me. Artists add extra content, they update their artwork or change things around. We have to go back and make sure we do all the SFX and any additional moans that were outside of bubbles to 100% complete the pages along with additional eyes on the translation / grammar mistakes potentially missed to polish it up before we send it to print. Believe me, I really wish I had moments where I could say "oh good, this book will be super easy" but it never works out that way lol... there's always something for us and some type of roadblock that we have to overcome.

Hmm, there's a lot more involved than I had initially thought. Appreciate you taking the time to explain some of the process though :D

Where here do these community discussions occur? Is it on the FAKKU Discord? Twitter? The comment section on a release from an artist? (If this is the case, is simply commenting on a release the same as discussing it in your eyes?) Somewhere else? Because discussions about an artists work certainly do not happen on the forums here.

Yes, all of the above. Anyone is welcomed to make more threads on artists and discuss them if you'd like to see more of it.

Thanks for replying Brittany!

Brittany, I noticed an artist I love has alot of chapters:

https://www.fakku.net/artists/kerorin

But is that enough for a book? Or are there other factors/consideration? I know some of Kerorin's work has been published by ProjectH, but not the chapters on Fakku.

Can a series of published shorts be bundled or do they have to already be a tank or collection?

If you carefully read Brittany's posts on this thread, you'll see that there are indeed other factors that are in consideration outside of the amount of chapters released on FAKKU. Furthermore, even if you assume the number of releases dictates whether a book comes out, that means that artists like Hamao and Esuke would have more books out already which is not the case since as of right now, both artists have a book that was already released in Japan which contain the bulk of the their releases that are already on FAKKU. Here's the book from Hamao, and this one is from Esuke (The release dates in Japan were August 2018 and April 2019 respectively). So simply put, if you want a book, suggest it in the Book Suggestion Thread and then pray that your book gets picked.

I really like how in depth you went with this, it's super interesting to see statistics. I also support digital only releases for some titles if it were to mean more releases

This is good stuff!

Thanks Jacob. I'm working on some more stuff while in quarantine, as some people helped to fill in the gaps I had in my data. Should hopefully have it finished shortly but the FF7 remake has been a bit of a distraction this week.

Fakku prioritizes books and physical releases. They try to diversify with KUMA, many artbooks, a few niche books. Doujinshi are the easiest way to cater to niche tastes: 200pp digital books cost 10$, 30pp digital doujinshi cost 6$, yet doujinshi took a backseat in the last few years for Fakku. With Covid-19, anime convention sales will be compromised so I don't know what will happen.