“Vertical represents what every designer wants. They’re fearless, they’re smart, they want to be challenged, they want to challenge the marketplace. ”
—Chip Kidd, Print Magazine

“Five years ago, an energetic, chain-smoking Japanese entrepreneur named Hiroki Sakai arrived in New York with a new and bold (and some said crazy) idea: to market Japanese popular fiction in North America. Sakai was not what one would call a literary man, nor did he speak much English. Yet he knew the book-selling business in Japan and was confident that Japanese literature could be commercially successful abroad…
A good story, after all, was a good story anywhere…”
—The Globe and Mail

“Thank goodness for Vertical, Inc. with its translated texts for the everyman… While Japanese pop culture has become ubiquitous in the Western entertainment industry, the Japanese book market in translation has been dominated for the most part by so-called literary classics. No more. Vertical, Inc. is about to change all that. ”
—AsianWeek

“Fans of genre-oriented fiction have to check out the incredible new selection by Vertical, Inc.… they are making available the best Japanese fiction for English readers.”
—Las Vegas Weekly

“Vertical approaches the (manga) market from a very different perspective. They are an outside player to the usual machinations of the industry, and have breathed into it a new life.”
—Anime News Service

“Vertical Inc.’s publications offer a wider, more contemporary view of modern-day Japan beyond the clichés and the tourist propaganda. We should welcome such a brave contribution to publishing.”
—Japan Times