Ask John: What is John’s Job?

Question:
John, you seem to run AnimeNation’s on-line news site, but is that all of what you do for AN?

Answer:
The goal of “Ask John” has always been to encourage other Americans to develop the same appreciation and respect for Japanese animation that I have. I’ve never composed and published “Ask John” articles in an attempt to earn celebrity for myself. That’s why I typically avoid composing answers that are about myself rather than anime. But occasionally, I suppose that exceptions are okay.

I don’t have a formal position title with AnimeNation because my work covers a wide variety of tasks. “Ask John” responses constitute only a portion of my daily work for AnimeNation. I try to reply to every e-mail question I receive, but my other duties sometimes prevent me from doing so promptly. I estimate that maybe only one out of ever dozen e-mail questions I reply to eventually becomes a public “Ask John” article. That’s because many of the questions I receive and answer are inquiries that are only relevant to the person that asked. Questions like, “When is the next DVD volume of series X scheduled for release?” don’t provide much informative or provocative value to a large audience of readers.

Every weekday morning I scour the web for the latest news and interesting trivia to report on the AnimeNation News Blog. I also discuss the week’s news on the AnimeNation News Podcast.

AnimeNation sends out a digital newsletter every Friday. So every Thursday I decide what products and information to highlight, and write the weekly newsletter.

Visitors to the AnimeNation front page may notice the brief tag lines for featured products and sales. I compose those. I also compose AnimeNation’s original product descriptions, primarily for imported books and CDs that don’t have official English language descriptions provided by the manufacturer. In conjunction with describing import items, I’m also responsible for discovering and recommending new Japanese books, CDs, and occassionally other imported items to AnimeNation’s procurement department. Many of the imported Japanese anime products that AnimeNation stocks are ones which I located ISBN and SKU numbers for, and recommended that AnimeNation carry.

I’m also relied upon to compose or edit occasional press announcements or form reply e-mail messages, and revisions to the AnimeNation FAQ, company profile, and any other text that AnimeNation requires.

Writing isn’t my only job for AnimeNation. I spend a portion of every work day gathering items for customer orders from the AnimeNation warehouse shelves, assembling boxes, and packaging orders for delivery to AnimeNation customers.

When time allows, I assist the staff of RentAnime.com when their workload is especially heavy.

And finally, I’m occassionally tapped to assist various AnimeNation departments with menial tasks and data entry. I also staff AnimeNation exhibitor booths when AnimeNation periodically attends anime conventions.