Yen Press is a publisher that one may not think they take license suggestions since they don't have any survey form nor do they use something like Discord. What they do is accept suggestions the traditional ways: social media and email
What we'll be covering is how to compose a message to Yen Press requesting a manga you want them to license in English!
Suggesting Manga to Publisher Yen Press Process:
Composing an email is pretty straightforward. I created a template on how to suggest titles to Yen Press on X (formerly Twitter) but I will add it here too.
Template:
Hello Yen Press! I have a few manga titles I wanted to submit for your company to request!
The titles are as follows:
Title: <MANGA TITLE>
Author: <AUTHOR(S) NAME HERE>
Japanese Publisher: <JP PUBLISHER NAME HERE>
If you want both light novels and manga, I would have separate categories in the email, i.e.,
Manga:
Title: <MANGA TITLE>
Author: <AUTHOR(S) NAME HERE>
Japanese Publisher: <JP PUBLISHER NAME HERE>
Light Novel:
Title: <MANGA TITLE>
Author: <AUTHOR(S) NAME HERE>
Japanese Publisher: <JP PUBLISHER NAME HERE>
This generally helps the publisher know most or all the information needed to go after the license if they're interested.
Social Media
This approach I haven't personally used with Yen Press but I don't think there would be any difference between them and any other publisher when asking for a license.
Using X (formerly Twitter), I would compose the tweet like this:
Template:
I would love to see <MANGA NAME HERE> by <AUTHOR(S) NAME HERE> licensed in English! @yenpress
<MANGA SERIES VOLUME COVER IMAGE HERE>
Things to Note:
Like the other publishers, make sure to suggest titles that are unlicensed in both formats (digitally and physically)
While co-owned by Kadokawa, Yen Press pulls licenses from multiple Japanese publishers. Some of these include:
Kadokawa, including:
Enterbrain
Fujimi Shobo
ASCII Media Works
Media Factory
Shueisha
Shogakukan
Square-Enix
Hakusensha
If you submit a suggestion via email, Yen Press will respond with something along the lines of:
While we cannot guarantee that Yen Press will definitively acquire suggested and/or requested titles, we greatly appreciate all suggestions from our audience.
While this may sound discouraging, I have been informed that if a title is reoccurring across different people's submissions, they will take note.
From my personal experience, I suggested the Lycoris Recoil manga adaptation a few times to them via email and received that response. The series did get licensed by Yen Press recently.
So it's just a matter of patience, perseverance, and getting your friends, mutuals, and fandoms/communities to reach out via email
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!
Hopefully this helps in your goal!
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