Tokyopop Returns… Again. Sort Of.

The Tokyopop website is up again. The domain was previously redirected to Facebook a little under two years ago. Now, it’s a way to promote sales of their titles through RightStuf.com, their print-on-demand partner, as well as logo merchandise hosted on CafePress.

The sales links caused some confusion, since they list an awful lot of Tokyopop’s OEL titles, plus Hetalia, the one license Stu Levy managed to keep. (Some random thoughts on the entire list: I had no idea Tokyopop put out so much non-manga manga, including many titles I’d never heard of. Plus, they’re putting them up with list prices attached, but RightStuf is selling them at less. Sometimes, much less.)

The Tokyopop Twitter account had to clarify last week,

It has come to my attention (thanks to @kuriousity) that some creators think we are publishing their books as POD without their consent.

— TOKYOPOP Manga (@TOKYOPOPManga) January 16, 2013

I would like to take the chance to explain that this is not true. We only have three titles up for POD: Hetalia, Bizenghast and PsyComm.

— TOKYOPOP Manga (@TOKYOPOPManga) January 16, 2013

I hope that puts some of your minds at rest. We won’t do your books POD without your full consent first. Feel free to ask me questions. :)

— TOKYOPOP Manga (@TOKYOPOPManga) January 16, 2013

Smiley face aside, Tokyopop’s promises in relation to the rights of the OEL creators in the past have been sketchy, so some might understand why creators would jump to negative conclusions. Six months ago, as discussed in that link, the publisher was saying that he’d negotiate for the return of OEL property rights, only to have some creators say when they asked, the answer was a flat “no”.

C. Lijewski, author of Re:Play, posted a plea on DeviantArt for her readers not to buy the books from Tokyopop. (She’s “lucyseven” on Twitter.)

Please don’t buy them. Buying them won’t help me at all, I won’t see a dime from them and any sales will just make my property seem like it has some money in it which will make it ever harder to ever get my property back.

That led to another Twitter exchange from the publisher’s official voice:

@lucyseven @debaoki The website is just promoting the sale of your books on RightStuf, which still has them in stock.

— Daniella O.G. (@allaboutmanga) January 16, 2013

In response to which the artist pointed out that she was still owed recompense from Tokyopop that they didn’t provide:

@allaboutmanga @debaoki really! Wow they owe me comp copies of three but said there were no print copies left, that’s kinda worse!

— MeowMixxx (@LucySeven) January 17, 2013

@spacedrakecf @debaoki the sell thru required for royalties was so high Ill probably never see any money #liveandlearn

— MeowMixxx (@LucySeven) January 7, 2013

However, another creator apparently did successfully reclaim her rights. Jen Lee Quick, author of Off*Beat, has announced plans to reprint books 1 and 2 and eventually publish the never-seen book 3, as she discussed in November 2011.

For more on Tokyopop’s future as a “virtual company”, read this panel liveblog by Mike Huang. Depending on your view of the company, the news that Japanese manga publishers are “reluctant” to license rights to a company using print-on-demand may be seen as a good or bad thing. Hetalia books 4 and 5 are still under negotiation. Tokyopop is looking into Kickstarter and potential TV/movie adaptations of OEL manga, since they still own the rights to those.