Comments on: How Mighty Publishers Have Fallen: More on Tokyopop

By: Vanessa

Vanessa — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 04:58:10 +0000

I worked at a Walden books, the sister company of Borders, for four years until it’s close in January of 2010. Prior to that I was an avid manga consumer and really didn’t notice a significant increase of Tokyopop titles pulled at any time and when there was an increase of pulled titles they were for all publishers. I figured Tokyopop would close long before now. As a manga fan who runs a Manga Library at her local conventions and used to work in a book store, I can tell you a lot about the trends in both the purchase of books and the popularity of a publisher. It wasn’t so much the oel Manga that killed them because i am the first to admit my favorite manga isn’t even Japanese it is a wonderful series called Dramacon which as much as i have grown to dislike Tokyopop is still one of their titles. There mistake was taking there fans for granted and that was what started their downward spiral. Dependability is the catch phrase of most serious and even semi serious manga collector. We all ask ourselves can we count on them to put it out when they say they will and for a very long time the answer to that for tokyopop has been no, no i can’t. The less i can depend on you the more I pull away from purchasing from you and the more I warn other fans to do so also. I can live without purchasing a manga but i can’t live with the frustration of you dropping a series on me mid way or horrors of horrors with but one volume left to go. The final death blow had to be the price hike, they might have gotten away with it and had us still purchasing from them but did they think fans weren’t going to notice that they were now paying 10.99 for a manga that was of poorer quality as well? Yes, yes I did notice that some of those new volumes had thinner paper used for covers then some other publishers use for pages. And Yes I did notice that the quality of the pages went way down too. I wouldn’t buy them anymore at that price and i was getting a REALLY GOOD discount. By the time the returned to a reasonable quality product, still not up to par especially for the asking price, it was to little to late. Manga collectors are geeks, geeks work in bookstores and talk to other geeks, you start disappointing your fans and they talk to each other and warn others to stave of disappointing the new generations of geeky fans.

By: MCM BUZZ – Movies, TV, Comics, Gaming, Anime, Cosplay News & Reviews » Tokyopop Closes US Publishing Office

Sun, 17 Apr 2011 19:15:16 +0000

[...] happened, the signs appeared to be there, going as far back as the summer of 2008, after Borders supposedly removed all Tokyopop titles from their shelves. A ‘restructuring’ of the publishing company resulted in [...]

By: Tokyopop Stops Publishing: And Then There Were …? » Comics Worth Reading

Sat, 16 Apr 2011 13:36:35 +0000

[...] story (and cut adaptation costs, since all that art didn’t have to be processed). Although rumors of their demise were circulating as early as 2008, and they went through a difficult patch in early 2009, [...]

By: Tokyopop Brings Back Some OEL Manga Online; Kat & Mouse Publish Date » Manga Worth Reading

Fri, 14 Aug 2009 01:56:58 +0000

[...] Tokyopop reorganized in June of last year, word leaked out that they would not be printing any more of their OEL (original English language) manga, instead releasing them [...]

By: Oliver

Oliver — Mon, 11 May 2009 16:10:48 +0000

Their marketing strategy is puzzling. They seem to be using many marketing tactics, but it doesn’t do enough for them. I think their problem was they licensed too many titles and the consumers couldn’t keep up which was why they were seeing small sales numbers across the board. Their covers are pretty appealing, though.

By: U.N. Owen

U.N. Owen — Sat, 09 May 2009 00:55:10 +0000

I blame this on their marketing strategy. Their site has been over-embellished that you can barely find any information on releases and it has become another MySpace when it comes to user-generated content.

By: Oliver

Oliver — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 23:53:24 +0000

Being a manga customer who’s out-of-the-loop, I am a bit shocked to hear T-pop’s going downhill fast. It’s true that the cream of the crop is being licensed by Viz and Del Rey, and T-pop is left with the rest.

With Tokyopop, I am just trying to snatch up the available CLAMP titles, in case they go out of print like the other CLAMP titles from T-pop. Once I’m satisfied, I don’t have to worry and can therefore purchase titles from other companies.

By: Distant Smoke

Distant Smoke — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 01:37:18 +0000

I’m glad I found your site. I have been reading manga for several years. I found the stories very interesting and surpringly deep (in some instances).

I actually became dissatisfied with Tokyopop about 2 years ago (or so). I wrote to them at the time, telling them that “in my opinion” they were making some mistakes, which I detailed for them. Going in the direction of digital media was one of the things I didn’t like about the changes they made at the time. (I hate their new website).

Because I can afford them, the 10$ price tag didn’t bother me so much. But when the new manga they were adding to their lineup weren’t ones I was interested in, coupled with the focus on digital media, coupled with the the price tag became the new “norm” for Tokyopop, I found myself looking for their titles less and less. Previously I had sought out Tokyopop like a starving man looking for the free lunch buffet.

I have been consistantly disappointed by American Manga publishers, who all too often drop a beloved series before finishing it, leaving fans hanging. It’s like buying a novel that was published in two parts, and the second part was never published. The disappointment and anger end up being directed at the publisher.

I started learning Japanese about 5 years ago, because that was the only way I could be sure I could read a steady supply of Japanese manga. I’m not completely fluent yet (I still work fulltime), but now I buy the series I want in Japanese from Amazon.jp. If it’s translated in English and available, I might buy it, but the American manga publishers have made me too leary to count on them.

By: More on ADV’s Existence, Tokyopop OEL » Comics Worth Reading

More on ADV’s Existence, Tokyopop OEL » Comics Worth Reading — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 03:52:03 +0000

[...] had a bunch of bad news and changed plans; now Newsarama runs down the status of the existing OEL titles. Of the ones I cared about that [...]

By: Brigid

Brigid — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 00:33:47 +0000

I was in Borders on Wednesday and there were quite a few Tokyopop series still on the shelves, including +Anima and Gravitation. And the store employee I spoke to knew nothing about Tokyopop having any problems, although she admitted their books don’t fly off the shelves (except Gravitation).

By: jeremy4sunaka

jeremy4sunaka — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 16:47:07 +0000

wow.. and inside that there, there is a comic book.