Today I will share an interview I made with two entrepreneurs who made bold moves and took big steps about their dreams despite their young ages. These two young gentlemen are known as Bang Çizgi publishing House in Turkey. Sarp and Tolga were kind enough to answer my questions.
Ö.BURCU: As young entrepreneur you are drawing attention. a lot of people can't find the opportunity to follow their dreams in these ages. For Dreamers can you tell us how Bang Çizgi started?
BANG ÇİZGİ: Actually everything started with a thought in 10th grade because I met Tolga back then. when I learned that he is half Japanese, we started to talk about manga, anime and figures...etc.
Later I am not sure who said it first but we came up with the idea. First because we didn't know what to do we wanted get some advice from the publishing houses who publish manga here. But they didn't say anything supportive to us, quite the contrary, they said we can't do anything and there are too many people who want to enter this sector, who were we to do something like this... But we didn't give up even we heard those things and published our first product.
Ö.BURCU: where does the brand name come from? I guess it wasn't easy to decide.
BANG ÇİZGİ: Actually everyone said something different, but when we want to find something to agree on, we thought " we are going to publish comics, why don't we use a comics effect." and thats how we found the name.
Ö.BURCU: You enter the publishing sector with the manga called "made in abyss". In the future, what kind of genre you are planning to publish?
BANG ÇİZGİ: We wanted to begin with a series which is popular, high quality and something we like.Made in Abyss is a really great manga especially in the upcoming volumes. I feel really proud and happy to have a chance to publish a manga series like this. Actually we are not thinking to stick to a one genre in the future. Seinen, shounen, josei, shoujo… we would like to publish manga from different genres. and we will, when the time comes.
Ö.BURCU: I had a chance to watch an interview you made on TV. you mentioned that you made a serious marketing research.The publishing houses in the abroad make surveys every year to determine the manga they are going to publish. Are you also going to make surveys like this to learn the Turkish readers’ preferences?
BANG ÇİZGİ: Our readers’ choices are important for us. we are planing to make surveys like this using social media time to time. we need some time because we are new at this sector.
Ö.BURCU: Comikon is coming, after that Istanbul Book Fair is coming... for Manga lovers I would like to ask if you are going to be in these fairs?
BANG ÇİZGİ: We will be in Comikon Istanbul! and our discussion for TUYAP Istanbul Book Fair is continueing. There is a good chance we are going to be there. don't forget to check all the salons :)
