Forum - View topicTP's Lillian DP explains how you can help hiatused manga!
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Paploo
Posts: 1875 |
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http://www.tokyopop.com/TPHenshu/tp_article/3180353.html
This article has gotten linked a few places, surprised it wasn't posted on ANN yet. Lillian explains things fairly honestly, such as why titles might go on hiatus, how bookstore orders affect things, how they determine to bring series back off hiatus and why you should purchase your fave manga ASAP. http://comics212.net/2011/02/25/how-to-buy-manga-right-now/ retailer Chris Butcher got a little cranky over the article, but Lillian [who fyi is one of the nicest people I've corresponded with in the manga community] explains it in the comments of his post pretty well why she wrote the article. It's all stuff TP's editors [and reps at other companies for that matter] used to repeat endlessly on their forums and other places, but never hurts hearing again, as there's lots of people new to manga or who aren't dedicatedly following manga blog's and publisher forums who have no idea why their fave manga's so slowly released. Really fascinating stuff. I know that personally, I've had several series from TP I was following that suddenly went off hiatus and it was quite nice- it seems like they're making an effort to bring back titles where they fit into the schedule, so it's good to know the reasoning behind things.... |
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RAmmsoldat
 Posts: 1261 Location: North wales coast |
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as bad as TP can be I've a;lways gave them credit for having their heart in the right place and at the very least they are more talkative then viz are. any word on reborn! yet?
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Paploo
Posts: 1875 |
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It's not that VIZ isn't talkative- columns from VIZ editors on assorted comics blogs have talked about this kind of stuff in the past [just read through Jason Thompson's House of Manga here on ANN for example]. Generally though, much like with other pubs, they can only say so much about specific titles and have to talk more broadly. I assume Reborn's on hiatus, and will resume publication whenever it's possible/plausible. Until then, keep buying the other titles you like |
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RAmmsoldat
Posts: 1261 Location: North wales coast |
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well i got alot of catching up to do with reborn anyway so seeing as there was no official announcement about it being canceled (and it seems to be pretty popular too) my plan was to buy the volumes that are already out and see what happens.
Currently im head hunting the rarer volums of stuff I've missed but once I've got that sorted i can focus all my attention at other titles. |
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Jaymie
Posts: 915 |
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I don't disagree with her, but I don't agree with her either. She's placing 100% of the blame on the fans, but Tokyopop is also to blame for having an abominable track record. At least a third of their titles are on "hiatus", canceled by Kodansha, or completely Out of Print.
Viz is at risk of ending up like Tokyopop, as well. They refuse to comment on Strawberry 100% or Reborn!, and neither series has had a new volume solicited in over a year now. 
I watched "America's Greatest Otaku", and it's disturbing that a manga publisher would rather produce that garbage than to actually publish manga. Stu Levy is just a malignant tumor at this point, and Tokyopop would be better off without him. |
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Tamaria
 Posts: 1512 Location: De Achterhoek |
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Exactly. It's so hard to trust Tokyopop these past few years. Half of the Tokyopop series I really like ended up canceled or on hiatus. Even ones that were only one volume away from completing! Also, how am I supposed to take a liking to their current series if I don't know what the hell they're publishing? The anime/manga magazine I write for sends subscribers a free manga every year. We always pick the first volume of series we think our readers might like. Every year, we pick 24-36 titles this way. It's a nice present that can get people hooked on series they would have ignored otherwise. Now here's the thing, we have to order these well in advance and often have to rely on the information from the publisher (genre, demographic, age rating). Unlike, say, Vertical, Tokyopop does very little to promote its new series. More often than not we only have a title and author to go on. So it's no surprise we prefer books from publishers who don't make us guess what the hell we're sending our readers. (Things were easier when CMX was still around. They had a whole lot of 'safe' series. There where times when two or three of the eight books we picked were from CMX. SigIkki was another fave (yeah, of course they're still around, but we won't see any new series from them for a while), because we could read part of the series in advance. They also had books that appealed to older readers without crossing our 16+ line.) Last edited by Tamaria on Mon Feb 28, 2011 7:49 am; edited 1 time in total |
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RAmmsoldat
Posts: 1261 Location: North wales coast |
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i wouldnt go near cmx after the tenten thing. i dont like companies that solicit titles and then chop them up to pander to a larger audience, may as well have called themselves 4kids entertainment.
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Tamaria
Posts: 1512 Location: De Achterhoek |
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With that attitude you shouldn't be buying manga from... wel.. nearly every American publisher?
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RAmmsoldat
Posts: 1261 Location: North wales coast |
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cept for dark horse because they usually do a great job.
theres varying degrees, it still sticks in my craw that viz cant spell the name ZORO and dance arount "okama way" and i still buy one piece but i have to draw the line somwhere. besides i do my fair share of supporting the industry so if i choose to not buy somthing for whatever reason then so be it, viz are gonna put out tenten anyway without the major edits so i plan to get it then. |
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Tamaria
Posts: 1512 Location: De Achterhoek |
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Dark Horse is not exactly innocent, you know... Within three posts, someone will complain about Narutaru or another series from SMB
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RAmmsoldat
Posts: 1261 Location: North wales coast |
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theres no good and evil just shades of grey, tis the way of the world some things i'll let slide and others i'll dwell on, took me ages to get aroud to buying one pice cos of the little name change wich is daft considering i never had a problem buying battle angel alita
let it be known i'll never claim to be a totally rational person |
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ZepysGirl
 Posts: 470 Location: NY, NY |
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...name change? o.o Didn't Oda approve all of the names used in the American adaption? (Isn't that how it normally is?)
I've heard the "If you don't buy, we can't continue it" argument for a while. I understand the reasoning behind that. Doesn't keep me from getting pissed when they stop The Good Witch of the West 1 book from the end, though. The problem is that I HAVE bought a bunch of Tokyopop books I liked--- and they went on haitus anyway. It just kinda makes you lose faith in them as a company. I already bought my copies! What more can I do? Convince my friends to buy duplicates of what they know I'd gladly lend? I'm lucky enough when I get them to read my copies, instead of scanlations. -_- |
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RAmmsoldat
Posts: 1261 Location: North wales coast |
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i just read it as zoro anyway, i dunno why they changed it as it was zoro when they started it, just makes me laugh when they have a pic of bon clay and it says under the panel "translators note back says oh come my way" and im think "you little liar"
just sold a bunch of my anime today to finance some of my manga binge, if i get all the books i ordered i'll nearly have all of GTO again and some of the Out of print volumes of battle angel alita: last order and mushishi |
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Paploo
Posts: 1875 |
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TP does do different stuff, I think the thing is that online marketing makes it less obvious where you can find said stuff- their forums used to be really handy for info, but hardly anyone visited them, and now they use twitter and facebook to communicate with fans, and I think it's gotten a bit more widespread, but for fans who don't use either it's hard to reach them. Their website isn't run by their publishing division, but by the social media division that got seperated when they reorganized, so there's this massive pseudo-facebook for otaku section of their site that's made things hard to find for the past 5 or so years [TPop Germany's site is in TP's older site style, and much better to navigate for an example]. Recently, it got way easier to browse their catalogue though, and they have sample chapters for every new series on the catalogue too. People seem to miss that though, like the sample chapters on Shonen Jump and ShojoBeat's sites too. I think a lot of the problem is that with smaller staff nowadays, both TP and VIZ are spread thin, and spreading themselves all over the net is harder to do than it used to be- someone'ld have to make it a full time job just servicing forums alone, and they still wouldn't get everywhere. There's a lot of dedicated, nice people at these companies, and I hope people give them the benefit of the doubt. Also, be sure to check out Lillian's comments at comics212 ZepysGirl- "And part of the rationale behind that intro was to make it clear that it wasn’t scan-apologists, or the poor folks who have spent hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars collecting manga over the years who I was looking to reach—I just honestly wonder if there isn’t a particular segment of the fanbase who have never thought about things this way and have no sense of how their decisions can affect the continuation of series they care about. " She didn't mean to aim this at the hardcore scanlation fans who'll never buy, or at those like us who are dedicated manga buyers, but at the casual readers, the sort of folks who frequent TP's website [and social media stuff] who haven't already heard this from the manga blogosphere or from constant forum discussion etc. I shared both links here since ANN tends to get a lot of those folks too- I don't really think it's the case that she meant to hurt those of us who buy and preorder their books ASAP FYI---- CMX's acquisitions editor is working for TPop now, so if you liked the titles she selected for CMX, you might want to watch what TP picks up. |
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Paploo
Posts: 1875 |
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I bought every singel issue of SMB, and I know exactly what you mean [except since I bought all of SMB, I don't have to worry about how Club9 ended Though I do have to reread it.....].
But at the same time, I try to be realistic about it- let's face it, all those series had really niche audiences and it was at a time when DH was trying to rework itself for the newer manga market. They weren't exactly great sellers, and it's very rare you see someone lament them nowadays [I loved 3x3 Eyes, but it had 3 or 4 tries at a release, and no one's going to touch that sort of series now]. It's not like it's keeping me from checking out their other books. Also, wow, Toren Smith could see into the future in a scary way in 2005 http://mrcaxton.livejournal.com/3243.html But anyhoo, I think Lillian meant this all in an "empower the fans" sort of way- you purchases make a difference, and in a world where continuation depends on just a few hundred readers jumping on board early rather than waiting, your choices are more influential than you think. PS---- here's TP's twitter if you want an idea of what I meant by them regularly interacting with fans http://twitter.com/tokyopop looks like the top tweet is actually a positive reaction to the article so there you go. Their forums aren't as well maintained now, but I think that's due to the move to twitter/facebook and the stuff they continue to do on the TPop website- a lot of the editors post and interact on the blog system, which is where LDP posted the article linked to in the first post of this thread edit-- just as an example--- there's tweets from today answering people asking about why they don't put out any Kodansha titles, and it's been a few years now since most of their Kodasha titles were cancelled. News spreads extremely slowly on the internet, and ANN is an extremely informed island in it's vast ocean. |
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