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Pop talk

September 6, 2006 by

So what does everyone think about Publishers Weekly Comics Week’s coverage of retailer reaction to Tokyopop’s on-line exclusives?

As for myself, I think Calvin Reid did as well as can be expected. Short of developing telepathic powers or placing a mole inside Tokyopop, these seem to be the answers that the publisher is going to provide no matter who asks them or how often.

I do tend to agree with everyone who suggested that avoiding discounts isn’t a good way to get a realistic picture of what on-line sales will be. I’ve hardly ever purchased a graphic novel at full price from an on-line outlet, unless I didn’t have any other… HEY!

And I think that this quote from Mike Kiley…

“’It’s interesting that people are so fascinated in about 20 books out of the 500 we publish each year,’ says Kiley. ‘It’s not like we’re talking about Fruits Basket or Kingdom Hearts.”

… is not especially helpful. My first reaction to it was, “500 titles? No wonder there’s a problem with shelf space!” Because seriously, I don’t think I’ve ever been to a retail outlet, direct market or chain bookstore, that had room for 500 titles total, much less 500 titles from Tokyopop. And when you factor in the books that always seem to have a complete run available (the really popular ones), the problem compounds. (I vote for “Less is more” as the next big publishing theme.)

No direct quotes or attribution were available for this paragraph:

“While general trade bookstores are not quite as adamant as the direct market, several trade book retailers contacted by PWCW are nevertheless critical of any publisher selling direct to consumers.”

But I did get an anonymous comment from someone claiming to be a Borders employee who’s far from overjoyed.

Filed under: Linkblogging, Media, Sales, Tokyopop 2 Comments

How to win friends or influence people

August 31, 2006 by

Retailers seem to be lining up at ICv2 to voice their displeasure with Tokyopop’s on-line exclusives:

Ed Sherman of Rising Sun Creations:

“It doesn’t make sense to pursue promoting poorer-selling titles online when there are so many hot Tokyopop titles that have been out of print for so long. I cannot get copies of Kingdom Hearts #1-3, Loveless #1, or Battle Club #1, just to name a few. These are all strong selling books that have been out of stock for months.”

(David Taylor offers his thoughts on Sherman’s comments at Love Manga.)

J. Carmody of Serenity Studios:

“Tokyopop was my first choice for the manga lines, however with their recent news, I will continue to promote and sell Tokyopop product but I will be selecting a different publisher to use as the flagship publisher in my advertising decisions for manga-related product from now on.”

Any volunteers?

Robert Brown of The Anime Corner:

“Holding titles hostage from the retail channel to force manga readers to come to their Website will resonate with fans as a form of coercion, and will not be well received.”

Brown also mentioned the difficulty in restocking popular titles, which seems to be coming up fairly often in reaction to this initiative. I don’t know if bookstore chains are having the same problem, but it seems… I don’t know… anecdotally common among Direct Market retailers.

Recovering retailer and veteran blogger Dorian looks at it from the perspective of someone who helps a shop fill out their monthly manga order:

“My first impulse, honestly, is to simply stop ordering any Tokyopop titles outside of what we need to fill pull-lists. Why should I take a chance on ordering a new series from Tokyopop if, two or three volumes later, they might decide that it isn’t selling what they think it should be and make it an online exclusive item? Why should I attempt to build an audience for a title in the store if Tokyopop could decide that they’d rather cut out the middle-man and sell the title direct themselves? And what do I tell customers already buying a title when Tokyopop decides to take it exclusive?”

Good questions, I think.

And of course, there are the comments on this post at Chris Butcher’s blog, which include more reaction from Chris and this one from Jim Cosmicki:

“Unless these are print to order, they could EASILY still solicit these through Diamond as well as being online. Just don’t send them through the bookstore distribution chain. But Tokyopop has a badly designed new webpage to justify, so they go for the cliched ‘web exclusive’ tag instead.”

Update: Dirk Deppy rounds up all this stuff and more and offers his own commentary in today’s entry at ¡journalista!.

Update 2: Brigid at MangaBlog takes a trip around the blogsplosion and provides commentary as well.

Filed under: On-line shopping, Tokyopop 2 Comments

The shop around the corner

August 29, 2006 by

Brigid at MangaBlog, Kevin Melrose at Blog@Newsarama, and David Taylor at Love Manga have already covered ICv2’s interview with Tokyopop’s Mike Kiley, so I’ll limit myself to just one reaction: I have to go to their web site to buy Dragon Head?

Oh, hell.

Between that and my somewhat belated realization that DMP has put Bambi and Her Pink Gun on hiatus, it looks like I’m going to have to find some new twisted and violent manga to fill that reading niche. At least I still have Eden and Anne Freaks, the latter of which releases a new volume this week.

Aside from that (and Anne Freaks doesn’t seem to be shipping to my shop of choice this week anyways), there isn’t really any reason for me to hit the LCS on Wednesday. That probably should depress me at least a little bit, but construction, traffic and parking are all so horrible in town at the moment that I’m really, really relieved.

I’ll head over to the bookstore instead and pick up some recommended titles. And I have a coupon!

Filed under: ComicList, Linkblogging, On-line shopping, Tokyopop 6 Comments

The revolution will be downloadable

August 29, 2006 by

Bill Flanagan has some thoughts on just why Tokyopop might be offering on-line exclusives over at Sensei’s Ramblings. It’s an interesting look at the costs and perils of getting a book onto the shelves, and Flanagan ends it on an optimistic note:

“If a publisher can sell weird and off-beat manga from their site and still make a profit, it means that there is a viable avenue for things like more Josei manga, more quirky seinen manga, more older manga, and more of any other genre that doesn’t do well in retail by giving them a way of succeeding on fewer units sold.”

Flangan’s piece does make me wonder if the possibility of a sleeper manga hit – a title that builds an audience slowly but surely over time – really exists in manga publishing. How many titles are on the shelves at all because they’re being subsidized by their publisher’s hit books?

Speaking of Tokyopop, there’s an interview with CEO Stuart Levy in this week’s Publishers Weekly Comics Week. It’s pretty much what you’d expect, only more so. Like… cubed.

Filed under: Linkblogging, On-line shopping, Tokyopop 4 Comments

From the manga stack: PLANETES Vol. 1

July 2, 2004 by

“A Stardust Sky,” the first chapter or “phase” of PLANETES Vol. 1, is one of the most stunning things I’ve ever read. Haunting, mournful, romantic, tense, funny… it’s a story so complete and so precise in its control of tone and mood that it’s bound to make you wonder if creator Makoto Yukimura can maintain that level of quality for the rest of the collection.

Yukimura can and does. Juxtaposing small, human stories against the vast, empty backdrop of space, PLANETES is utterly its own creation. It isn’t just a patchwork of genres like science fiction and drama and comedy. It somehow transcends those labels. There’s clearly a very humanist vision behind this manga, and it finds wonder wherever it looks.

It’s about orbital garbage collectors, snagging debris and derelict satellites from Earth’s orbit. The job is grueling and risky and unglamorous, but it’s vital. As Earth’s population expands outwards (partly in search of resources to replace the one’s they’ve depleted), space junk poses life-and-death risks. It’s grunt work, done in a setting that inspires awe.

On first glance, the crew sounds like a collection of stock characters: ambitious optimist Hachimaki, hard case Fee, and haunted veteran Yuri. But Yukimura makes them indelible. Hachimaki may be an optimist, but he’s having a hard time holding onto his illusions of wonder and adventure as he hauls jetsam. (He’s also accident prone.) Fee smokes and swears, but she cares about her work and her crew-mates (even if that means slapping them upside the head). Yuri has endured a horrible loss, and it defines him in many ways, but it doesn’t isolate him. In fact, he seems determined to strike a balance between honoring his memories while forging new connections.

The art is amazing. Even in black and white, Yukimura manages to convey the scope and wonder and texture of space. At the same time, he doesn’t prettify the conditions for the people who live there. (If there’s a weakness in the art, actually, it’s the people. I noticed some slight inconsistencies, and some individual characters are a little indistinct visually. But those are quibbles.)

To say anything specific about the plots would be to take away some of the sense of discovery. And, while its characters aren’t explorers, discovery is the defining theme of PLANETES. It’s just a quieter kind of discovery that takes you from the mundane to the majestic and everywhere in between.

Filed under: From the stack, Tokyopop 2 Comments
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