Broken Frontier

Simon & Schuster, Inc., and VIZ Media, LLC. (VIZ Media), one of the entertainment industry's most innovative and comprehensive manga and animation licensing and publishing companies, announced today that Simon & Schuster will handle domestic sales for all lines of books from VIZ Media’s book division effective January 2006.

Simon & Schuster has been the distributor of Viz Media manga titles since June 2004, providing retail and wholesale distribution services including warehousing, fulfillment, customer service, and accounts receivable collection for its library of manga titles. The new agreement expands the relationship to utilize Simon & Schuster’s Sales and Distribution Division to further raise the visibility of the manga genre and continue to grow revenue streams from traditional book retailers as well as from newly emerging channels. Manga is now the fastest growing segment of the publishing industry and VIZ Media titles like FULLMETAL ALCHEMIST, NARUTO and INUYASHA regularly appear as top sellers on national retail sales charts.

“The vast reach and sales expertise of Simon & Schuster will play a key role in our strategy to be the dominant manga publisher in North America,” says Liza Coppola, vice president of sales and marketing for VIZ Media. “The success of Simon & Schuster overseeing our domestic distribution operations will now be bolstered further by the talents of their sales personnel. We look forward to their efforts helping to raise the profile and revenue for manga in North America to an even higher level.”

“We are pleased that our relationship with VIZ Media will now include managing sales of their manga titles, “said Joe Bulger, Vice President, Client Management and Business Development for Simon & Schuster.  “Our Sales and Distribution Division, led by Larry Norton, extends into every market niche through thousands of retail outlets nationwide, and bringing VIZ Media titles into virtually every corner of the country, growing the numbers of readers for every title, and providing them with the full array of first class sales and distribution services will be our goal.”