Follow-Up: ShojoBerry Publisher Details Magazine

Not long after posting the initial article on ShojoBerry today, I sent off an email requesting further details on the project. Lo and behold, Publisher/Editorial Director Garrett Boast responded quickly and this is what he has to say.

I am Garrett Boast, Publisher and Editorial Director for ShojoBerry
magazine. While our project is of fairly small scale at this point,
you probably realize how much potential it has in a market (English
shojo magazine) with virtually no competitors.

Our staff is currently very small, numbering at 5 (compared to the 50+of Shojo Beat). We are hoping that our small staff will be agile enough to survive in this down-turned market, unlike some of the industries largest magazines (NewType, Anime Insider, Shojo Beat.) Of course, we will grow as it becomes necessary. ShojoBerry is currently just a “project”, though we have the full intention of making it a long running publication.

We started work in July after Viz Media discontinued Shojo Beat (but only truly began development in September).

I personally have read Shojo Beat since 2007, and was sorely disappointed when I received amailing stating that it would be discontinued and my subscription would be replaced with Shonen Jump. Its discontinuation is the primary reason that we decided to start this project.

There is a large demand for a Shojo magazine, and I often question why Viz Media decided to discontinue SB.  Since the 20th of September, we have accumulated over 850 fans on our Facebook page. Unfortunately our designer is in the process laying out our website.  I am hoping to get rid of that atrocious white page that sits at shojoberry.com as soon as possible. We are planning on doing a promotional issue in April 2010 for Tekkoshocon (Pittsburgh, PA).

There is the chance that this promotional issue may not have manga in it and only contain j-culture articles until we are able to license manga-ka. While I don’t believe this would be detrimental to the publication, it would be unfortunate as the manga is the primary focus of the magazine.