It’s not fair, as the timing couldn’t have been planned, but I have to chuckle at the simultaneous arrival of the uproar over Tokyopop’s on-line exclusives initiative and the gushy profile of Stuart Levy in yesterday’s PWCW. (David Taylor has a balanced run-down of the piece at Love Manga. At Dangerous Beauty, Lea Hernandez takes a skeptical view of the warm fuzzies.)
And yes, I bitch probably to excess over the mutual love between Publishers Weekly and Tokyopop, but look at some of these excerpts:
- “So you’re the prophet.”
- “Tokyopop and manga have changed the bookstore environment completely.”
- “Is Tokyopop still growing?”
- “One thing about manga, and the American book market in general, is that people love to say something is impossible to do, until someone does it.”
And those are from the questions. Now, I’ve lobbed softballs in my time, but wow.
I was talking to a friend about the whole on-line exclusives deal, and we were wondering if (when?) Tokyopop might add a title that’s actually selling into this sales category. We couldn’t really think of any negative reaction that might prevent it, because they’re certainly getting plenty of negative reaction now, so why not try a book that might be more likely to turn a profit?
Kevin Melrose at Blog@Newsarama does a fine job collecting links to reaction to the initiative.