KANONARA

Genres

Tankōbon

Japan's standalone-book format and, in English, the collected volume that gathers previously serialized manga chapters into a paperback-sized book.

Tankōbon (literally "independent or standalone book") is a standard publishing format in Japan; as an English loanword it means a printed collection of manga previously published in serialized form. Manga chapters first run in cheap, phone-book-sized weekly or monthly anthologies treated as disposable; since the 1930s, installments of a single series have been compiled into tankōbon, reprinted in roughly paperback-sized volumes on better paper, typically a handful of chapters per volume. Common trims are Japanese B6 and A5, and reissues have their own names: the A6 bunkoban, the kanzenban "complete edition", the aizōban collector's edition and the wide-ban. In English markets the volumes are marketed as graphic novels or trade paperbacks.

This is the print endpoint of serialization: the same chapters-to-book path the light novel takes from magazine or web to collected volume, and the bunkoban cousin of the bunkobon size is where compact editions of both land.

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