Apparently trying to diversify from NewType USA was a mistake. Unofficial reports say that the current issue of PiQ is it’s last. So will those of us who still have an outstanding subscription get our money back, or are they going to herd us over to yet another publication.
PiQ had hoped to expand NewType’s subscription base by 10 times by diversifying it’s content.
My guess is that people who would by magazines like that had no incentive to buy PiQ over magazines that already existed that covered the same content, while PiQ’s already existing subscribers who were used to NewType ditched the magazine in droves. I had basically already decided to not renew my subscription when it was up myself, though I wasn’t going to go so far as canceling the subscription I already had.
Perhaps the more alarming news is that the person who made this public also notes that “apparently the parent company is going out of business.”
Now, last time I knew, ADV was PiQ’s parent company, unless there is a corporate layer between ADV and PiQ and that extra layer is what is being folded (assuming that part of the report is correct). ADV has been hurting for a while, and I noticed that my copy of Kanon 5 is already on backorder from RightStuf even though it was just released (though Amazon apparently has it in stock).
I really hope this doesn’t mean that ADV is going down as well. If so, that would mean we would effectively have only 3 major anime distributors left: Funimation, Bandai Entertainment, and Viz.
Update:
Apparently a PiQ LLC exists, with offices at the same address as and is itself owned by ADV. Whether the reference to “parent company” just meant PiQ LLC or meant to include ADV, I don’t know, and from the sounds of it, the author of the post doesn’t necessarily know for sure either.
Update II:
The PiQ webpage makes it official:
It’s unfortunate that we’ll never get a chance to see how successful PiQ could have been, but a combination of low advertising revenue, poor business management and a lack of proper marketing and promotion all hamstrung the magazine from the start. We, the editorial/creative/production staff, did the best we could to put together a quality publication, but as we’ve discovered, without a good financial backing, it’s all an exercise in futility.
So basically the reasons for this were:
- We tried to re-launch a formerly anime and manga based magazine into an already saturated market, and for some reason no one wanted to buy ads in it
- We wasted money
- We didn’t advertise ourselves, and
- ADV screwed us over
As nckl notes in the comments, I’m not sure I would advertise that you basically drove your magazine into the ground via “poor business management” but oh well. Actually, it kind of sounds like some guy who decided to give ADV the middle finger just as he’s walking out the door to me. The “exercise in futility” especially seems to make it read like that. It’s not just a “we’re going bye-bye” announcement, it’s a “we’re going bye-bye, and these are the reasons why we are but didn’t have to if the people above me weren’t morons.”
Look at it: complaining about poor business management and bad financial backing…those would seem to be targeted at either the people put in charge of PiQ LLC or towards ADV itself - especially the part about financial backing.
As for those of us with subscriptions, they say they will have “more details later.” If they’re just going to refund money, I don’t know why they wouldn’t just say so, which means that we’ll probably eventually get our money back in some sort of round-about way.
