Tokyopop Shutting Down US Publishing Division

[KnightRiderGirl]

http://www.comicsbeat.com/2011/04/15/end-of-an-era-tokyopop-shutting-down/

This, honestly, really makes me sad D:

I'm hoping to HELL some of their titles are picked up by other publishers

[Moritani]

Well, they had a few great series, but I never much cared for their translations. Still, they made a few of the only great original English language manga I've ever seen. So, this is a bit of a shame. I'm sure their more popular Japanese titles will get resurrected, though.

[Zicora]

They unfortunately had a lot of series they never finished translating. I too hope someone picks up these abandoned projects.

[Keyblade Prime]

Will their manga be imported form Germany for now on? If not that's very unfair.

[Knarpulous]

Well I guess thats the result of too many people reading scanlations and not buying the manga. Although to be fair a good portion of Tokyopop's library was lacking inthe quality department.

[Xen]

Thats really sad, I wish that had stated an actual reason though.

[PatrickD]

Well I guess thats the result of too many people reading scanlations and not buying the manga. Although to be fair a good portion of Tokyopop's library was lacking inthe quality department.

My guess would be a little of both.  Next time you're at the bookstore, look at all the people ("manga cows") grazing on the manga and not actually buying it.  This is a problem all over the country.

[AGiganticPanda]

I'll be the first to say that it's not a surprise that this happened.  Scanlations are just better in almost everyway (besides being on legal shakey ground).  Period.  They needed to work in JP publishers to work on the type of schedule that scanlators do and put out a quality product in a digital format that you could pusblish to kindles or ipads.

You can have complaints from the industry all you want, but when you have a product you're competing with that's earlier, usually better, free and easily accessable... change the business or die.  It's obvious what happened here.

[Archimer]

The "Blame Tokyopop for Bad Translations and Deserved To Go Under For It" crowd confuses me a bit, because Viz survived this, guys. <i>Viz</i>.

Borders was probably Tokyopop's biggest distributor, and I don't think that it's a coincidence that they're having problems, too. This, added to the aforementioned Scanlation and "Grazing" issues, made for a recipe for death.

Price points didn't help, either. At a relatively reasonable $10 per volume, and 20+ volumes per series, things get pricey quick. I'm not entirely sure that there's much that publishers can do to reduce this cost.

Perhaps it would behoove somebody to look at things differently and explore a monthly subscription-style Manga service in the US and hire on some of those Scanlators.

[jenfuu]

i think they should also make manga for e-readers. That would be awesome...I mean they already have e-books...why not e-manga???

[Archimer]

^ THIS. Somebody needs to jump on this idea like whoa.

[Zicora]

i think they should also make manga for e-readers. That would be awesome...I mean they already have e-books...why not e-manga???

Actually, there is some. When my mom got her e-reader I looked at the manga section, however there were only 12 books. 

I actually don't like reading manga scans. The only reason I do for some series is that they stopped translating the series (as has been frequently done by tokyopop). Also, do e-readers come in color?

[jenfuu]

Actually, there is some. When my mom got her e-reader I looked at the manga section, however there were only 12 books. 

I actually don't like reading manga scans. The only reason I do for some series is that they stopped translating the series (as has been frequently done by tokyopop). Also, do e-readers come in color?

They do come in color, however it defeats the purpose, because back lit screens are bad for your eyes..

And currently on my nook there isn't any really manga...

[nik the foamsmith]

marvel is already doing a lot of digital comics.  come on japan catch up or market books as old school and trendy

[atemulover]

Well then better start cracking on making your own manga then.