Tokyopop To Cease North American Publishing
Merely a week after announcing plans to overhaul its official website, Tokyopop Senior Vice President Mike Kiley has confirmed that the 14 year old publisher will close its Los Angeles office and cease North American publishing on May 31. The company’s film production efforts will continue, and its Hamburg, Germany office will remain open to continue global acquisition, publishing, and distribution. A company spokesperson stated, “Tokyopop will announce the future of specific titles and other releases in the coming weeks.”
Tokyopop founder and CEO Stuart Levy has revealed plans to devote the next year to filming a documentary about the effects of the March 2011 Sendai earthquake and tsunami on Japan’s Miyagi Prefecture. Proceeds from the film will be contributed to relief efforts.
Levy founded “Mixx Entertainment” in 1996 with $500,000 in capital from Japan based Mitsui Venture Capital Corp. and Nippon Venture Capital Co. The company started business operations in 1997 and changed its name to “Tokyopop” in June 1999. In 2002 the company launched its “100% Authentic” publishing campaign to print manga in “unflipped” Japanese right-to-left format. Tokyopop lost its distribution rights to its catalog of Kodansha owned manga titles in 2009 when Kodansha announced plans to self-distribute its titles in America. Levy has also stated that the 2011 bankruptcy of the Borders Group bookstore chain had a significant impact on the publisher, causing several Tokyopop staff layoffs.
Related Posts
About The Author
john
Add a Comment
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Wow, this is a shocker. Regardless of how they’ve treated some of their licenses, this isn’t some niche distributor with a handful of (obscure?) titles we’re talking about- this is a few hundred titles that a good chunk of the English-speaking manga world is following, most of which won’t likely get rescued.
Come to think of it, I collect exactly two manga on a regular basis: Battle Angel Alita: Last Order, and Battle Vixens. The former likely met its end with Kishiro’s squabble with Shueisha, and I can only speculate on the future of the latter- a TP title.
Tokyopop has been fading for years; poor market evaluation, imbalanced corporate growth strategy and glutton for publicity, and the good ‘ol too-many-eggs-in-one-basket methodology contributed. Tokyopop gave up on renewing a majority of their manga titles several months ago… just follow the rhythm of domestic releases through the months (and the subsequent staff cuts Stateside), the numbers don’t lie.