Over the next year or so my goal is to make high resolution, archival quality, scans of all of these no-longer published Zelda publications so they're never lost. Most (if not all?) have been out of print for 35-20 years, many of the publishers aren't even in business any more. I don't really know what to do about it after that though. Right now manga publishers are going after some scan sites: mainly because people were making major ad and subscription money on thousands of works STILL being published; which is pretty messed up. I want to state, in the 20 years I've been doing this, I've never had a single ad or sold a single thing to make money on anything from my site. I've never even so much as linked to my personal online art stores. I busted my ass and pushed for years to see the Himekawa manga officially localized outside of Japan and to get Hyrule Historia released outside of Japan too. Like, let's pay publishers and artists to do the work so we can get more works made. I absolutely get that not everything gets localized in every language and that not everyone can access and afford things though. I mean, I grew up really poor and literally started this site because my favorite childhood Zelda art book/game guide was stolen from me and I couldn't find it again to see the art I had been so inspired by again. I looked for a decade before I found it and had to spend $100 to buy it at auction. Money that also did not go back to the original creators. ...Which is also why I wish publishers could find ways to work on that issue too. Like offering free online libraries of work that there isn't much of a market for any more. Or, if they don't want to bear the costs, would even okay fans to do it under certain circumstances. Anyway...
My old hard rule was to remove them if we heard they were going to get picked up officially, to only do works that had been out of print for years, and for all of that: to make the available manga scans just barely big enough to visually understand what was going on, so people could see what they were about but would still be encouraged to buy them when they could because the small size really isn't incredibly enjoyable. It's pretty clear none of these volumes are ever going to officially see the light of day again. You can't even find them on auctions sites any more even if you have the sometimes hundreds of dollars needed to buy each one. In an ideal world I would want a new publisher to pick up the rights and produce them, give money back to the original artists or their families if they have passed, or use it to fund artists to do new works. Sadly the chances of that happening are probably close to Zero if they haven't happened by now (or maybe I should start writing companies like an insane person and beg them to get the rights and re-publish them, ...who knows.) Unfortunately, originally, copyright law only covered around the first 14 years of a work. Which means every single one of these could be reproduced without a sometimes insane and over cumbersome process.... but then Disney fought to change that to nearly a life time, with the ability to be extended... So... 2056-2066ish is the earliest...? That's just cruel to fans who simply want to be able to experience a part of the history of their favorite series. Anyway, just know I will preserve them and that I will be trying to figure out how to handle this in the most ethical way possible.
This is just a picture of my Zelda manga and novels, I don't even know how many more guides and artbooks I have.
A long time ago some of my 4koma suffered water damage and I forgot about it until now. If you have any of the remaining volumes below, and are willing to sell them, please contact me.
Edit August 2, 2021: I located 2 at auction, Piney/dat_pinez located 2 others and is sending them to me, and Edit 2: now Ikhana and Piney have helped me find the other missing ones.
I also need another German Link's Awakening guide because mine came with a missing page that has art on it. Thank you!
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