A minor revelation from this short article about Random House’s Del Rey imprint; apparently the reason they were so quick to partner with Kodansha was that they had just finished researching how to put out a line of graphic novels for a separate project which ended up being too expensive. That’s a pretty big what-if for me; Genshiken (via a discount bookstore) was one of my big formative manga in high school, and it’s pretty heavily influenced my philosophy on fandom.