News Reporting

Kadokawa Purchases Majority Stake In Yen Press


Kadokawa Shoten Logo - 20150416Kadokawa’s making some major moves today!

Earlier today, Kadokawa Corporation announced that they are entering a joint publishing venture with New York-based publisher Hachette Book Group. Under the partnership, Hachette’s Yen Press imprint will be spun off as an independent entity. Kadokawa will hold a 51% stake in the new organization, which will be named Yen Press, LLC.

Yen Press Logo 001 - 20160411Yen Press, LLC. will officially launch this May. The new venture’s mission will be to grow the light novel industry and establish the format as a new genre. Kadokawa will provide leadership, while Hachette provides their distribution and production infrastructure.

Hachette CEO Michael Pietsch commented on the acquisition, stating:

This new partnership with KADOKAWA is an exciting opportunity for HBG — the venture will further strengthen our Yen Press brand, and allow us to leverage KADOKAWA’s superb reputation in both manga and light novel genres, as well as their digital distribution and anime platforms. Combining KADOKAWA’s expertise in these categories, and HBG’s excellent sales, distribution and publishing support services, Yen Press will be well positioned to continue its remarkable growth. And this important new partnership is in extremely able hands, with Kurt Hassler as Publisher – no one is more perfectly suited to lead this new venture than Kurt, who has built the publishing program to where it is today.

Yen Press is the second largest manga and light novel publisher in North America. The company, which was founded in 2006, released numerous forms of Asian print entertainment, including manga, light novels, manhwa (Korean), manhua (Chinese), and original American graphic novels.

Kadokawa Corporation is a subsidiary of Kadokawa Dwango Corporation and parent of Kadokawa Shoten. The company underwent major restructuring in 2015, which saw several core brands dissolved and a mass consolidation of staff.

Source: Yen Press

About the author

Samantha Ferreira

Samantha Ferreira is Anime Herald’s founder and editor-in-chief. A Rhode Island native, Samantha has been an anime fan since 1992, and an active member of the anime press since 2002, when she began working as a reviewer for Anime Dream. She launched Anime Herald in 2010, and continues to oversee its operations to this day. Outside of journalism, Samantha actively studies the history of the North American anime fandom and industry, with a particular focus on the 2000s anime boom and bust. She’s a huge fan of all things Sakura Wars, and maintains series fansite Combat Revue Review when she has free time available. When not in the Anime Herald Discord, Samantha can typically be found on Bluesky.

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