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Scoot Pilgrim Vs. Tokyopop

I can see what you're saying here. You're absolutely right that fans are often pretty dumb and way to quick to jump on companies for anything and everything. But pick your battles. Do you really have to be a lawyer to recognize that there are some pretty obviously questionable parts to this contract? I think this is probably a case where the fan reaction is really relatively appropriate. If anything what seems a little over the top is how you seem hell bent on defending them. First you say it must not be true because it's so terrible and then when you find out it is, you start rationalizing it and explaining why it isn't really that bad after all. Yeah, fans jump on companies prematurely a lot. But there are certainly also times when companies do screw up. This seems to be one of them.

but he provided backup that was more than just another blogger saying "this is wrong"-

Because, from my perspective, a person should not entrust his career to any random prick with an internet connection.

Tokyopop's program is *not* a money-making opportunity for the artist/writer. It's never intended to be. What is is, really, is basically an internship with a stipend, comparable to the thousands of other unpaid summer internships that every high school and college career office will tell you that you NEED to have in order to then get a better chance at a real paying job. Once you prove that you can do this, then maybe, either Tokyopop or another publisher will consider you when looking for someone to bring on for a full-length project.

Aaron White wrote:

Saying that a fledgling creator should go ahead and sign this crappy contract is like saying "No one likes their first job, so you might as well take a job where you get paid a dollar a day and your boss gets to pee on you."

Yep, there it is. I knew the ridiculous analogy was coming sooner or later.

Unless and until someone with equal or greater credibility in this matter (hint: no one on this thread, myself included) launches an informed counterargument, there is no informed counterargument.

In the end, we regret not a whit of our righteous anger. The contract is written in an offensive way and the pay is so low that you might as well do it yourself.

...

And yet, reading the responses over on the Tokyopop message board where this is being discussed, it’s hard not to see, as Kiel Phegley put it in the comments here, the young aspirants who really don’t have a [expletive] clue how to do this. We flash back ourselves to our own first published writing, when a penny a word seemed like a king’s ransom, and just the idea of getting published had the whole family, from Tucson to Nyack, excited. It’s easy to imagine young Eloise “Bonzai Trooper”Jones excitedly telling her parents that Toykopop, the #1 American manga publisher, has accepted her “No, teacher! It’s sore!” manga pilot and the family beaming with pride. They don’t care about $20 a page. They just want to see Eloise in print or on a phone or whatever.

Everyone has to learn their craft somewhere. Some young folks may well learn from the Manga Pilots program. They may learn how to get better at their craft, or they may learn what it feels like to get screwed. Everyone will have a different story, we imagine.