Best way to get a (relatively unpopular) manga (in English)?

In My Humble Opinion
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[I considered putting in Cafe Society, but decided to put it here, since I’m asking about how to get the manga, not the manga itself. Apologies if I was wrong.]

I’m a huge fan of this manga series published by TokyoPop (Kindaichi Case Files) that has an unfortunately small fanbase here in the States, so it’s really treated poorly by the publishers (who’re just waiting to the end of their contract, I guess) and bookstores alike.

I tried ordering it from Amazon (with $15 worth of stuff for the free shipping), but that caused a huge clusterfuck that I’m too angry to get into. Long story short: they canceled my order for that particular item, even though I didn’t want to and had already told their CustServ rep so, and they’re now out of stock of that volume, and it may be that said clusterfuck caused a delay that robbed me of a chance to get my copy.

So if I want to get the manga with the free shipping, I have to buy another $15 worth of stuff with it, and I’m not sure I’m willing to reward Amazon’s screwup again. Besides, that would involve waiting until they restocked (which, with a series that’s not Naruto or Bleach or some other overrated thing, who knows how long that’d take). I’ve tried looking up this volume in the websites of Borders, B&N, and the West Coast Kinokuniya branches, but none of their systems even lists the existence of the newest volume (it’s possible TokyoPop delayed or stealth canceled it, but the way the Amazon CustServ guy was talking, it SOUNDED like it was released… Though with a small but significant language barrier up, I’m not sure.)

Anyone know of good options I can look at? I’m armed with title and ISBN (two types, in fact) thanks to Amazon - about the best thing the’ve done for me in this whole mess. Where can I look, either online or IRL?

Thanks in advance!

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For me it took me just alot of Hassle with Amazon to get my books (Battle Royale the various complete set), and I ended up w/ copies of 3 books as extras that i got 6 months later, and it was generally a pain. For the free shipping it wasn’t too bad, as Amazon is big enough that I could find SOMETHING else to order, like a CD or such along w/ my books.

But not sure what other method I’d use. You can go to a comic book store or such, and see if they’ll try special ordering them for you as my local guy offered to try to do that now, but it was already too late as I had picked up my books.

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Are we talking about “The New Kindaichi Files” (Volume 1 is Murder at the Opera House) ?

If so, Kodansha publishes bilingual versions. That might be another source for you to look for.

I like the series too.