Forum - View topicNEWS: Tokyopop to Restructure
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Sheleigha
 Posts: 1673 |
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I personally always thought their ani-manga (or whatever it was called) was dumb. Having titles from Cardcaptors, to Disney movies, to Family guy. I'm just not a fan of having screenshots of a movie with word bubbles forced in -_- Best to see the show/movie, how it was meant to be seen. Sooo I sure wouldn't mind stuff like THAT cut out.
Also, their site for the past couple years has been all about fanworks. I've never understood WHY. Maybe to encourage people to create their own manga, so they can put it out and publish them to sell? I'm not sure. But when a website is MORE about fancrap (pardon me...) than the actual product, it worries me. Bad enough it takes you FOREVER to even FIND their actual product on the site. Should it NOT be on the main page? Well, there's only a couple of new hits listed. Just some criticisms as a consumer. I like sites where there is a nice long list of what they have out, like THIS to let me know what they have and when it'll be coming out. They used to, but the new site.... I'm just not a fan of its setup. ...ok I'll finish my rant here^^ But just to follow up on the restructuring talk, there ARE certainly some things they can improve on >_> |
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Tempest
 I Run this place.ANN Publisher  Posts: 10425 Location: Do not message me for support. |
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Egan and I have been looking into that, Our current educated guess puts their roster at about 100 employees. So it's significant. It also doesn't include all the freelancers who simply won't be getting any contract work... -t |
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Pepperidge
 Posts: 1104 Location: British Columbia, Canada |
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Well, the final two volumes of Welcome to the NHK are already solicited, so I don't think there's too much to worry about with that title. How many of Tokyopop's manga titles are still set to be running through 2009 anyway? I've always gotten the impression that they currently distribute far more world manga than they do actual manga. |
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dormcat
Encyclopedia Editor
 Posts: 9902 Location: New Taipei City, Taiwan, ROC |
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So it's ~40%. That's a big wave of layoffs. 
Things aren't optimistic on this side of Pacific either: we all know Young Sunday is closing down, and in Taiwan a major manga licensee who is walking on a wire (Egan should know which one I'm talking about). I wouldn't be surprised if similar layoffs or even a complete shut down in near future. |
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Sheleigha
Posts: 1673 |
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The anime/manga market as a whole seems to be shutting down slowly, really. With reading the comment on the Taiwan company, comes to mind stuff on the North American end, such as Geneon.
Even in my local comic shop where they used to have ALOT more of a selection of DVDs (still quite a large manga selection), the manager of the place had said that sales aren't doing too great... ...is now the time to point the finger at downloaders/downloading? >_> Or, perhaps the fact being that retail as a whole (due to cost of living, gas prices etc) has plummeted recently? |
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castmodean
Posts: 4 |
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Basically think of it this way. Your average bookstore makes X amount of money off a given category, and as such allots shelf space accordingly. Lets say your bookstore or comic store have 6 shelves of manga. In those 6 shelves you have to display everything. With 400 odd titles coming out in a year, plus your back catalogue, stores are hard pressed to choose what to display, and what to pass on for the sake of space. When a company doesn't buy as much as you are producing...well it cuts into your bottom line and you can't afford to license that hot new title now. On the topic of license dropping, I fear they will start by pruning(I say read that as canceling) their novel line first. Sadly this doesn't seem to have captured the North American market like they hoped it would. After that, it will be looking at under performing titles to cut back, or not license future volumes if they only grabbed, lets say the first 10 or whatever. They could very well sit on the license until it expires and not produce anymore, and unfortunately the chances of a dead license that wasn't performing then to be picked up by another company, is probably not very good. |
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ScottGreen
 Posts: 20 |
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I wonder which entity will be taken public...
Seriously, I imagine that this is at least in part to have cleaner, more attractive accounting ledgers for their multi-media ventures. |
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CMB
Posts: 44 Location: Lock Haven, Pa. |
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 This is very sad news. I hope they will trim the book line by letting series end and not starting as many new ones.
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Vulcannis
Posts: 41 |
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Gah, I hope nothing happens to Aria. They just rescued it, it would suck to lose it again.
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Big Hed
 Posts: 1607 Location: Melbourne, Australia |
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Wow, 39/100 would be terrible. I hope that it's the case that Tokyopop is larger than that. At any rate, if any manga publisher was going to be affected by the slowing economy, I would have guessed Tokyopop. They are the "license everything" company, after all.
There's only two volumes left?!  Oh well, I'm just glad that they are likely safe.
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Arachne
 Posts: 35 Location: Charlotte |
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It's about time this happened.
After stuffing bookstore shelves full of Korean manhwa and horrendous OEL, maybe TP come to their senses before driving themselves out of business. And I say this as someone who worked at a Borders for 6 years, and had to constantly send back OEL crap that we couldn't pay people to take, just to make room for actual manga. I have seen plenty of customers pull out a new book, just to realize it reads left-to-right and then put it back on the shelf without even opening it. On a side note- I actually think that Korean manhwa does have a future here. I just think TP has done it a disservice by trying to market it as manga and by licensing some of the worst series (although that could also be said about anything TP is licensing lately). |
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darcerin
Posts: 330 |
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If we're going to point fingers, then point them first at the people who go in and read manga at the store, but don't buy (and I'm not talking one or two titles, I mean they do this EVERY chance they get).
I realize it's an economic downturn partially to blame, but when you're not vigilantly kicking loiterers out of your store, (I realize Borders and their like have seats and stuff to go read in; you know who I *am* referring to, though) unless they buy something, there's your potential future market and $$$ down the drain. You're reaching them with your work, but they're not paying you for it. And unfortunately it's not like Tokyopop even has the power to pressure Border and B &N and all the rest to keep kicking people out, because goodness forbid we offend them and they're loitering ways, and they never come back, and keep not spending money there. -_- |
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bluegreen
Posts: 29 |
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albanian
 Posts: 133 Location: UK |
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As with one or two others above, I am not so much concerned about the manga as the novel series. I have been sitting for some time on a single volume of Kino no Tabi as further volumes have been promised... and promised... and promised... and postponed... and postponed (etc etc).
The first volume was, as far as I can see, given universally glowing reviews, but I can only assume this has not been echoed in the sales figures - in the same way that the critically acclaimed anime based on the novels has never garnered the popularity of more in-your-face products. It seems a sad fact that genuine quality has to work twice as hard to even hang on to the coat-tails of undemanding crowd-pleasers - but wasn't it ever thus? |
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Sheleigha
Posts: 1673 |
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Yeah I have heard of this too, and these peoples' comments tend to be proud of themselves -_-; I read people saying 'i r smart! i read books without paying! why buy when yu can sit and read IN the store?!' No way can I go into a bookstore and casually READ a whole book to myself there without buying it. This it what libraries are for. Not that there's any illegal threads attached but it's just... wrong... Heh, might as well set up seats in front of movies being displayed in stores so people could watch them and not buy the movie that is for sale there. Thinking on scanlations in relation, I used to read them, but couldn't stand the loading time etc (flipping pages is quicker >_>). I'm also guilty of 'previewing online before buying' and yes in most cases once licensed I DO buy it (now I'm smart and wait for thinpacks though). Somewhat hypocritical I suppose, but I'm always trying to support the product when I can. >_> |
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