Forum - View topicNEWS: Tokyopop CEO Cites Borders' Bankruptcy for Layoffs
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bayoab
Posts: 831 |
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Neither of those is a result of Borders. Both are a result of Random House and Kodansha restructuring how they are set up and Vertical is one of the few publishers who has been showing growth in recent years.
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nargun
Posts: 924 |
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It's not 50% of their revenue, because they were never paid. Sending books to people who will never pay you is not a profitable activity. |
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jsevakis
Former ANN Editor in Chief
 Posts: 1684 Location: Los Angeles, CA |
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As incharitably as many would (rightly) want to view Tokyopop's business dealings, they really were between a rock and a hard place with Borders. We've seen an identical pattern in home video as well:
The store responsible for more than 50% of your income is having trouble paying. You have 3 new series coming out that you spent a lot of money licensing and translating, and if you don't get them on store shelves, nobody even knows they exist. DO YOU: A) Keep shipping to your biggest customer, hoping they'll pay you someday? I mean, they always have in the past, even if it took a while. B) Stop shipping to your biggest customer, at which point they shrug because you're a small publisher, and risk the buyers taking you off their monthly planner and they never order anything from you again? That's over half your revenue. Since the money isn't coming, you'll have to cut your costs and lay a lot of people off, because you're not going to bounce back from a 50%+ cut in your revenue very quickly. Your shareholders will probably want to kill you, and if your customer ever rights itself and starts paying people again, you can rest assured you will be very low on the priority list. C) Sue them, even though the cost of suing them will be more than they owe you, and you'd probably go bankrupt paying the legal fees up front? And they'll never order from you again if they turn around. Yeah, NONE of those options are very good ones, but A is probably the least-awful option. It's the one everyone made with Musicland a few years ago. And just because nobody else has had (known) layoffs yet doesn't mean they won't occur or that they're not hurting badly. But the bigger publishers do have a lot more cushion simply by virtue of being way more diversified. TP has made a lot of terrible investments in the past, and they deserve ridicule for those, but this isn't one of them. Borders' bankruptcy is a Very Bad Thing for the manga business, and everyone is feeling it. Last edited by jsevakis on Sun Mar 06, 2011 5:05 pm; edited 2 times in total |
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jsevakis
Former ANN Editor in Chief
Posts: 1684 Location: Los Angeles, CA |
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You DO know the manga business didn't start yesterday, right? All the publishers have had a years-long relationship with Borders, who has been a very good and influential customer in years gone by, to the point where many publishers would have a hard time existing without them. For 15+ years, they have been paying their bills. |
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Paploo
Posts: 1875 |
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Justin's points are quite true- the Borders situation is something that was very complicated, and even though publishers saw it coming, it was difficult to work around it. There's a lot more going on than people think, outside the surface level.
Good point- the whole Kodansha thing has been underway for a number of years, kicking off with Kodansha putting several TP licenses on hold in 2008. The JapanTimes article about the restructuring http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nb20110305a1.html even mentioons that they started Kodansha USA in 2008. Ed Chavez has pointed out a few times, including in an article on CBR's Robot6, that Kodansha is an investor not an owner, and that this was planned for awhile. Another thing I just remembered- animenewsnetwork.com/news/2008-06-03/tokyopop-to-restructure Tokyopop became 2 companies 3 years ago. One to handle publishing, the other to handle "new media" and films. So all the wierd shenanigans of the Otaku Reality show are likely under a different company that's also handling their website, digital and film plans [Priest being underway], which was seperate from publishing. It might be that all that stuff doesn't affect publishing, and the issues they're experiencing might just be from publishing world issues like Borders. This is something to consider, though it's not terribly clear if it's the case. |
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Jaymie
Posts: 915 |
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I forgot about Priest. That's also going to be a big problem for Tokyopop. They're putting a lot of emphasis on Priest, even creating a brand new series (Priest: Purgatory) to help promote it.
The thing is, Priest is going to be a big-time box office flop. I doubt it'll even break even. Soooo... 
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Paploo
Posts: 1875 |
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A 4 issue comic book miniseries is pretty standard in the world of comic book marketing. Not really that unusual. I think they licensed his new series, and it looks to still be in print- it was generally a well selling series for them in the past [they even put out an Artbook for it]. How much it flopping affects TPop probably depends- it's not like the flop of the Astro Boy movie destroyed IDW and Dark Horse because they made products tied into the movie, or that Dragon Ball Evolution tanking hurt VIZ. Sometimes when a movie doesn't quite succeed to Hollywood standards, the hype and high profile is more than enough to draw readers into the books it's based on- the Scott Pilgrim movie sure lead a lot of people to those books this past year. It doesn't look like Tokyopop financed this themselves [like Marvel did with the IronMan movies], as Screen Gems [who made the Resident Evil franchise] are releasing it. But I dunno, I guess it's more fun to predict doom and gloom? On the bright side, it's nice to see all the discussions about buying books, finding books at places other than Borders, checking out overlooked series and other things that all this as caused. |
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mglittlerobin
 Posts: 1071 |
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There's a typo, it should say OUR retail customers, someone should fix that. I would have bought from Borders, had they not wanted me to pay retail price to order something online that I can find cheaper on Amazon.com. |
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zrdb
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I kinda feel sorry for them in a way-but it doesn't affect me one way or the other cause I don't read manga.
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asimpson2006
 Posts: 3151 Location: USA |
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That is also the reason why I for the most part stopped most things at B%M stores. If the B&M stores had better pricing to keep up with online stores I would probably buy more from B&M out of convenience. |
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Guardsman Bass
 Posts: 158 |
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Exactly. Moreover, even up to a couple of weeks ago, Borders was trying to work out some deal with their creditors that ultimately fell through. Tokyopop is simply screwed because they're a very small fish in a large pond full of creditors going after Borders, and the bigger fish are going to get paid first (if at all - my guess is that whatever company buys Borders will probably then go ahead and liquidate it). |
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CCSYueh
 Posts: 2707 Location: San Diego, CA |
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I was happy they were nice enough to finish out BTX. Mad Love Chase. Junjyo Romantica, Demon Sacred, Pet Shop of Horrors: Tokyo, their Blu yaoi line-I've had no problem finding titles of theirs to buy Isn't this a repeat of Sam Goody & CPM? Hopefully TP will fare better. |
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TsukasaElkKite
 Posts: 3950 |
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The Borders near my house is closing.
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njprogfan
 Collector Extraordinaire Posts: 1160 Location: A River Named Toms |
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Borders does have a free Borders Reward program where you get 25%, 30% to 40% off coupons emailed to you which helps immensely, (unless you buy many manga's at a time). I can't tell you how much money I've saved over the years, but it's been alot AND I didn't have to wait to get it in the mail. I'm not as voracious a reader as some people are, but I do have a nice collection and most have been purchased at B&M's at a discount, So don't write them off so easily. |
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matrixdude
Posts: 71 |
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Outch, they should be getting something from the remains of borders though. Won't be much at all, but it'll be something.
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