Square Enix Manga & Books is one of the new manga publishers in the English market since Square Enix Japan launched a U.S. branch in 2019. Since then, they have licensed titles such as My Dress-Up Darling and Daemons of the Shadow Realm.
The question a manga fan might have is: do they take license suggestions? Well, luckily for fans, they do with with one approach: social media.
We will be covering these approaches below!
Suggesting Manga to Publisher Square Enix Manga & Books Process:
Social Media
The first approach is to create a post whether it's a post on X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, or Blue Sky.
Using X (formerly Twitter), I would compose the tweet like this:
Template:
I would like to see <MANGA NAME HERE> by <AUTHOR(S) NAME HERE> licensed in English! @SquareEnixBooks
<MANGA SERIES VOLUME COVER IMAGE HERE>
Things to Note:
You might think of DMing the Square Enix Manga & Books X (formerly twitter) account. Unfortunately, you have to be a verified account to DM them. With Blue Sky, you cannot DM them either. So stick to public posts for your suggestions.
Like the other publishers, make sure to suggest titles that are unlicensed in either format (digital and physical)
So if there is a series on Manga Up Global you want to see in print, you can suggest it to them
Square Enix Manga & Books will only pull titles owned by Square Enix Japan. This will restrict suggestions to be from the various Gangan magazines and their online platforms such as Gangan Pixiv
So no, they will not license Kingdom or Ao Ashi for English. Those aren't published by Square Enix Japan
The only exception is The Apothecary Diaries Light Novel, but again, that's an exception.
What about Out of Print (OOP) Yen Press titles that are published by Square Enix in Japan?
That one is an iffy situation that I don't actually know how the licensing goes. I would assume that Yen Press would still have the rights to those series, especially if Yen had access to both formats and there's still a digital volume copy available (so Scum's Wish is out of the question).
However, this is all speculation on my end.
If you suggest a manga to them via social media, do not use fan translated panels or images in your tweet. I would suggest volume covers (preferably volume 1). If you want to show art from the series, use the raw, untranslated version of the manga. This goes for any publisher!
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