Forum - View topicNEWS: Tokyopop to Restructure
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The Xenos
 Posts: 1519 Location: Boston |
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Ha. Now that you mention it, I have heard that. That reminds me of a couple things.
A certain comic shop that shall remain nameless did this with some random manga that wasn't selling, mainly later volumes. Actually, I remember hearing some cases where books were accidentally shipped to him so to save money on shipping, he would just tear off the covers. and ship them back. So he would take these coverless manga and destroy them. And by destroyed I mean he gave them to me for nothing and they're sitting back at my parent's house in a storage room in a box collecting dust. Shhhh. I also have a bunch of old magazines. Some covers ripped, some just old stuff he never sold or got a refund on. I think most of them are going into the recycling bin once I clean out my house some more anyway. Another story is when a friend worked for a Barnes and Noble. He said it's a terrible job for a bibliophile because sometimes you have to spend an afternoon ripping covers off books and sending the remains of the books to be pulped. Meanwhile, back to the comic shop, the main and only distributor for comics is Diamond. (Helloooo Monopoly!) I'm pretty sure a number of titles are contracted as non-refundable, especially periodicals like comic book magazines. Manga on the other hand is a book. I believe this also means they're taxed, unlike periodicals like comics. Well, at least in this state. Yet I've heard of another shop in the area that got fed up with Diamond's delays on manga. They switched to the major book chain's distributor because stuff like Borders would be getting stuff weeks before Diamond's late shipments and it was hurting the store's business. So actually it's not even just the publisher for returns. There's also the middleman of the book distribution company. Not sure how many are out there for manga. Clearly there's Diamond who's the only major comics distributor. Yet there's also at least another distributor dealing with manga that sells to book chains. Right now, it's a shitty time to be a small comic book store or any independent book store. Despite the manga boom or the popularity of comics to film, most of the sales are going to big chain stores and their asses are better covered by return polices and they have larger staff and overhead to work returns. I fear the extinction of the 'mom & pop' book store. Of course TokyoPop never gave two shits about them anyway. Stu Levy himself said he could care less about them. He's more interested in the glorious American uber-mall culture. Remember, as Bill Hicks said, some day we will evolve into creatures that are born, raised, shop, breed, and die in a giant interconnected chain of malls across the country.
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