Oddbean

From what I understand the western companies all get together with the 2-3 Japanese publishers and they auction the licenses to the American companies. The American companies i am quite certain work to make sure that nobody else can get their foot in the door to that conversation, because if free market principles were allowed to work here the manga boom of the last decade would almost certainly have involved new publishers popping up left and right to try and get a slice of the pie, but that hasnt happened. Little upstart companies like that do exist but there’s not that many and they usually go for loli and other licenses that are untouchable by the big companies.