There has been a lot of talk going around the mangasphere about what people are calling the "implosion" of Tokyopop.  Two weeks ago, Tokyopop announced it's intentions to restructure the company, splitting it in two.  The new company, Tokyopop Media, LLC will become the digital and film rights arm of the company, developing comics for movies.  The publishing side would continue on, with a reduction of books released and staff.

A lot of people started speculating what happened, of course (me included).  But, you can't look for a simple answer to this.  Tokyopop has been publishing manga successfully for 10 years.  It started the "Manga Revolution" by publishing their books in their original right-to-left orientation, and dropping the price to $9.99, the industry standard now.  How can ONE thing have been the reason for this company's "downfall"?

Online manga, their OEL line, losing licenses from Kodansha, and a glutted market are contributing factors, but you can't pin just one down as the reason.  Online manga, while thought to take sales away from print, doesn't.  Having unauthorized sites running scans might lose some sales, but this is not the only way people can read manga for free.  Libraries carry manga, and for heavens sake, bookstores let kids sit in the manga aisle and read them to their hearts content!  Online manga has actually been shown to increase manga sales, something that Tokyopop has said, and has started really endorsing with the running of Saiyuki, Tarot Cafe, and even Manga Sutra.  If Tokyopop didn't want their manga online, they wouldn't host it themselves.

Tokyopop's OEL line of books wasn't the bad idea that everyone thought it to be.  There were a lot of titles that were good, and had potential.  Their strong marketing of the books couldn't overcome the poor editing and guidance many (if not all) of the creators had in the making of their books.  Here, it was more poor management of the stories that made them fall flat than it being from an American creator.  While the mangasphere was very vocal about the "If it's not from Japan, it's not worth it", there were probably plenty of casual readers that looked at the manga and just thought it was bad.

The loss of Kodansha as their primary licensor is probably one of the strongest cases one could make for Tokyopop's decline.  A lot of their best selling books came from this publisher, but that shouldn't mean that without them or Shueisha that there was suddenly no more good manga to be had.  It just meant that Tokyopop should have been more careful with the licenses they did choice.  One good move they did was to "rescue" some titles from ADV such as Peace Keeper Kurogane, and Tactics.  But, for the most part, they went in the opposite direction.  They picked up just about anything they thought they could sell.  With a bloated release list of 20 books a week, two weeks a month meant they were putting out a lot of books of mediocre to questionable quality that might find a tiny niche, but nothing really substantial.  This quantity over quality flood of titles leads us to the last probable cause.

The manga market has been growing by leaps and bounds every year, with new companies joining the fray, and big publishers wanting to pair up with a manga publisher to cash in.  Of course, this leads to a problem of competition for shelf space at direct market and retail book stores.  Just Tokyopop by themselves were already causing a flood, but add to that Viz Media, Del Rey, DR Masters, Dark Horse and Yen Press (to name the biggest), and you've got an elbow match.  So of course it makes sense for the retailers to shelve only the most popular books.  Unfortunately for Tokyopop, that isn't most of their titles, Import or OEL.  With retail still being the place where most manga sales happen, losing shelf space is like the kiss of death.  Tokyopop has the most to lose with the most individual titles at risk.  Add this to a faltering US economy, and you have the final nail in Tokyopop's coffin.

Or is it?  I don't believe that this will be the end of Tokyopop.  They are doing the things that need to be done to survive in both a tough market and economy.  Separating out their multimedia from their publishing was the first smart move.  The digital works distracted from the publishing, so neither side could get the time and attention they needed to succeed.  They are cutting down the number of books they publish by half.  They should have done this a long time ago.  And yes, I know this will mean a lot of titles will not be finished.  I already know about one, My Cat Loki, an OEL will never finish, and I am fearful for others that I read that I know weren't big sellers, such as Dragon Voice, Kindaichi Case Files, and Mobile Suit Gundam Ecole du Ciel.  These will probably not make the cut.  But, I would rather that Tokyopop survive and keep putting out the good manga they have than disappear.  The reduction in books should also give the editors more time to put into their titles and make their quality better.  Better management will make better books, and better books should make more sales.

So, the next time you see a blog or forum post that proclaims "this ONE REASON is why Tokyopop crashed", remember that there can be a straw that breaks the camel's back, but it's never just one.

Lori Henderson