Tokyopop, in response to reader complaints, is moving to thicker paper, and while the cover price is $10.99, I see them available online at a discount that puts them at 8-something. Meanwhile, Viz is moving all of its manga to the $9.99 price point later this year. I enjoy more of Viz’s titles, myself, but both are making changes to keep their companies viable.

The new TP books are priced at $10.99 and have thinner paper and thinner covers which look VERY tacky and cheap.

VIZ has always kept prices low (Shonen Jump titles $7.99) or (Shojo Beat titles $8.99) and have very professional covers and are good quality books well worth the price.

Viz wins hands down. Del Rey I don’t think will even liscence popular manga and think they just got lucky with Tsubasa and XXXholic.

It does look to me that Viz is the top performer here, but Tokyopop never had the chance to license ultra popular manga like Naruto and Death Note anyways.

On the other hand, being a poor boy, I do like the Shonen Jump price point of $7.99 and therefore scold TP for not having competitive pricing. Del Rey books are too expensive sitting at $10.99. I don’t care whether it’s CLAMP, or not. Being a dollar extra makes your manga less accessible for me to enjoy.

I’m starting to think it’s time for Tokyopop to rethink their strategies again. Their ‘flood the market’ strategy seems like a bad idea without titles with a built-in fanbase, especially the OEL initiatives. It’s time to think putting more marketing muscle behind their titles.

Based on current relationships, it can’t happen in the forseeable future as 1) Shueisha and Shogakukan are each on par or bigger than Kodansha in the manga category; 2) Shueisha dominates the teen boy market, which is what drives the ultra-mainstream; 3) Kodansha’s going through a bit of a hit dry-spell– with most of their teen-friendly hit titles licensed already. (This could change fairly quicly, as about 6 years ago Kodansha hit a hot streak) 4) (as David Suggested) Viz Media is also the rights manager for their properties so they can fully exploit a license– Del Rey is a Licensee only. 5) Viz has a precident of working with additional licensors– Hakusensha (part of the Shueisha/Shogakukan family), Square-Enix, Kadokawa and, until last year at least, even Kodansha. Del Rey has yet to announce licenses beyond its single licensor (Dallas has stated at cons that Del Rey can and likely would work with other licensors)

I wish Del Rey’s titles had a better strike rate with me — there’s only one I follow, and with so much I’m already reading, not much reason to seek out new ones.

For me that wasn’t the point really, we know that Del Rey is chummy with Kodansha and that Viz Media is owned by Shueisha and Shogakukan and consequently both have a rather unique position in the translated manga scene, but these are established relationships, not something that has occurred throughout 2005 (apart from ShoPro).

If you had asked someone at the beginning of 2005 for two Manga publishers I’m pretty sure that either Viz or Tokyopop would have come out top and subsequently fits the “neat” concept of the “big two”. Whereas I felt that if you took the beginning of this year the emphasis has shifted away from Tokyopop and sits squarely with Viz Media. But your right there are a how plethora of reasons in the background none much bigger then the relationship with the Japanese publishers, which was why I was careful not to offer up an opinion but rather just highlight an observation

Of course, and entirely different question could be, how long will it take before a “big two” analogy fits Viz Media and Del Rey, or is that even possible? For me that partly hinges on seeing what titles they license outside of Kodansha; 25 titles in and they’ve no reason to look elsewhere yet.

The “Big Two” analogy works in Japan where you have Shueisha and Shogakukan (who are part of the same business family) and Kodansha. The Big S’s have more manga, but Kodansha is a bigger trade publisher in general. Comapring Tpop to Viz at this point is like comparing Oranges to Apple Jacks.

Of course, both approaches are better than DC/CMX, which seems to be completely random…