Hidarikiki no Eren Author Vents About Inefficient Marketing

At the beginning of the month, we reported here that the author of Hidarikiki no Eren paid out of his own pocket to invest in the anime adaptation of his manga. According to his clarification, he did not invest all of his money, only a small portion of it, so he should not face financial problems even if the anime fails.

What Kappy said:

“While I’m drawing manga, I end up crying, I can’t sleep at night, and I have to keep promoting things all the time. My schedule is completely packed with what to promote and on which day, and I end up drawing manga in between promotion tasks. Maybe my real job is promotion.

I draw interesting manga, so it would be nice if people just read it, enjoyed it, and shared it, but that’s not how it works. I draw it myself and I also promote it myself. Who even likes promoting their own work? Obviously, I don’t want to do it.

When X was still Twitter, it was better. If you posted something interesting, people would retweet it and it would actually create real buzz. You could see the faces of people supporting you. Now, because of the algorithm, even followers don’t see the content, and every time I promote my work, it drains me emotionally.

These days, it feels like you can’t even sell books just through an author’s X account anymore. Since authors value their own work too much, they can’t easily cut parts out to make them catchy. It’s also hard to create attention-grabbing posts about your own work.

I don’t want to work selling things anymore. I don’t want to keep counting how many copies were sold. I want to be an author who creates thinking only about how many people cried or laughed, not how many copies I need to sell to avoid cancellation.

I started drawing believing it would be enough to reach just one person.”

If you didn’t understand, in another post he explained that he is exhausted from constantly promoting his works, especially since he will release 4 books in just one month along with the anime. He feels drained because no matter how much he promotes, there will always be someone who hasn’t heard about his work.