About

Manga beyond Japan!
There are many stories that want to be read.

We aim to build the opportunities readers and creators seek from the Japanese market, here at home in the west.

What is Mayapple?

Mayapple is a manga publisher based in the USA.
Our monthly digital magazine shines a spotlight on up-and-coming indie manga creators, whose volumes will be available in print world wide. What sets us apart is where others are only focused on manga, we also plan to feature inspiring creatives from other fields to go along with our themes.

Why did you choose the name Mayapple?

There is something really magical about the mayapple plant, also known as the American Mandrake , and in that we found a lot of metaphorical symbolism that seemed perfect for this endeavor.
These tiny little plants are the among the first to herald spring, carpeting the floor like tiny little umbrellas before the canopy above leafs out and blocks out any sunlight. A pair of giant, 8-lobed leaves open up to capture as much sunlight as they can to produce a single flower. Once pollinated, it produces a single fruit, which is highly prized by the wildlife that lives in the area. Having completed their work, they go dormant for the remainder of the year, only to pop up again the following spring and repeat the process.
It might seem like a lot of work for a single pair to do alone, but the forest is carpeted by these little plants, connected under the nourishing earth by a network of roots, ones which look like tiny people (hence the name "mandrake"). The pair of leaves symbolize the coming together of an artist and writer, each under their own umbrella, working together to create a single fruit - the manga. Or, if it's someone who does both writing and art, then the two are connected by the humanoid root - the creator. Each manga is connected with other manga by an underground network of roots: the Mayapple magazine.
Although individuals go through a natural rhythm of production and rest, the network continues working underground in preparation for spring to come again. There is strength in unity: a single plant may easily be missed, but that's not likely for an entire forest floor community. All manga creators start out on the ground as indie creators before they can reach the canopy above. They herald the spring of the future of manga. They nourish the community with their ideas, and the ecosystem would not survive without them.

What do you provide to readers?

Each of our monthly issues will contain a number of captivating stories with amazing artwork that you've come to expect in the manga from overseas, but that's not all.
We also have sourced content from other highly-skilled creatives outside of manga to help contribute to our magazine. The additional content will include a variety of interesting and informative articles as well as fun, crafty tutorials to go along with each publication's theme.

What do you provide to creators?

With this magazine, we wish to give creators the freedom to create the type of work that inspires them the most without having to worry about potential barriers, or feeling pressured to create work for a particular market niche. We love offbeat topics. While we aren’t opposed to publishing manga that tends to be more popular on the current market, we want to embrace independent thought. We feel that by providing a welcome space for the unique and unusual, we are helping to encourage innovative concepts to help propel manga outside of the status-quo.

We’ve already done all the legwork by securing a high quality professional printer who can print reverse bound books and an international distributor that ships worldwide, as well as growing our community of indie shops excited to stock our magazine once it is printed. Initial funding has been covered out of pocket, all you need to bring to the table are your talent and skills.

I've heard scary stories of companies stealing IPs...

We have been where you are. We have independently created and published our own manga, paid for out of pocket, spent weekends all summer sitting in booths in various conventions and local book markets. We are creators, too, and as such, we know about all of the hard work and long hours that go into bringing an idea to paper. There is no mega company to profit off of your work. We believe that there is strength in unity, and we wish to see manga grow beyond what it is now. Our hope is to help make that happen by reducing the barriers for other new creators, as we’ve already cleared the path.
To help protect your intellectual property, we will be going the legal route of licensing works. We have created an LLC and are taking the steps to make sure that everything is set in place to protect all of us individually as creators.

Contributors