Anime-Beta TNG

I just heard that Tokyopop is shutting down??!!

Please someone tell me I was misinformed!!

I'm too dismayed for words.

No you are not mistaken
http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/20 ... g-division

What we are seeing is the aftermath of Borders going bellyup and leaving most publishers like Tokyopop unpaid for a ton of inventory.

This is simular to what happened to ADV and other companies when Musicland/Suncoast went under.

The good manga selection is the main thing that kept me loyally supporting Borders over other book stores in my area...

This is literally devastating to me. I don't really watch new anime series, I'm primarily invested in reading manga. Tokyopop published about 90% or what I've been reading. And my favorite series aren't popular enough for another publisher to be likely to pick up. I could cry. Holy heck, I'm seriously beside myself right now.

Sky Rat wrote:The good manga selection is the main thing that kept me loyally supporting Borders over other book stores in my area...

This is literally devastating to me. I don't really watch new anime series, I'm primarily invested in reading manga. Tokyopop published about 90% or what I've been reading. And my favorite series aren't popular enough for another publisher to be likely to pick up. I could cry. Holy heck, I'm seriously beside myself right now.

And they wonder people use scanalation sites.

I myself have tried to stay away from Tokyopop titles after having a couple of series discontinued with less than 3 issues left in the run. Tsukuyomi Moon Phase being one I was really ticked about. It is very hard to trust a company that will do that after they have already gotten $125+ investment from you.
I look at the vacant never to be filled spots on my bookcase in sadness.

JWR wrote:I myself have tried to stay away from Tokyopop titles after having a couple of series discontinued with less than 3 issues left in the run. Tsukuyomi Moon Phase being one I was really ticked about. It is very hard to trust a company that will do that after they have already gotten $125+ investment from you.
I look at the vacant never to be filled spots on my bookcase in sadness.

Ah! so that's what happened to Moonphase. I guess I'll have to get the remaining japanese tankobon issues at Bookoff or Mandarake when I am in Japan later this summer.

It's a bummer because I too buy mostly from Tokyopop...it sucks big time
that a lot of the series I collect has stopped completely. Just to name a
few: Saiyuki Reload, Momo Tama, and Vassalord

I follow about 15 manga titles and half are published by TokyoPop. Really not happy with this!

To be honest, I was only mildly surprised to hear of Tokyopop's (TP)decision to close-up it's Publishing division; in my continuing Postgrad.studies one of the main topics is devoted to Higher-level management, namely how to best run & optimize your business, especially under frequently changing consumer demands; Apple being a good example of how it can be successfully achieved.
But I was surprised to find "Tokyopop" as being listed as one of the 'main' examples of how NOT to run a business. The text lists how TP effectively controlled a growing niche-market (a desirable outcome for any business) in the late 90s & early 2000s but then lost that control & market-share around 2004-06 through poor management and ultimately through frequently poor & hasty, re-active decision making. As pointed out by JWR, on numerous occasions TP would suddenly drop a series, even though it's consumers had already invested quite a bit of money already or change/alter the dates of certain releases without any explanation or apology; thus alienating & confusing the "loyal" following the TP brand had created in its early days - which in any Business acumen is a huge Cardinal sin! They lost perspective & treated their consumers with disrespect, so much so that the brand-name of TP was untrusted at one point!
The text, which surprisingly is Aussie co-authored but borrows sections/chapters from a US counter-part, printed in 2009 lists other examples but I will not go to in depth, needless to say, it was not very flattering.
As any successful Business owner can attest to, leaving your Balance Sheet exposed to a single bad debtor is poor financial management - you never try to put yourself in that position simply for the fact that that debtor may turn into a Borders - which will leave you with a huge hole in your cash-flow & little chance of ever seeing that money come through and endangering your own Business, which clearly has happened here.

I say RIP Tokyopop and here's hoping that another company steps in to the void & learns from TP's mistakes, allowing all those people who have lost their jobs with TP to find new work and also so that the consumers know that if we pick-up & start to read a series, we know it will be carried all the way through to the very end & not be thinking "will this latest volume be the last?"