Tokyopop to split into two companies.

[Draneor]

[I accidentally deleted this post; I apologize]

[ronq]

Wow. I know a lot of folks over there personally.
My heart goes out to them.

[chloes_fork]

Originally Posted by Draneor

Along with that, thirty-nine staff will be laid off and publication will be cut back by 50%.

Ungood. Double-plus-ungood.

[Kira Cyana]

Hoo boy. That's not a good sign. Now I'm worried about nearly everything I'm collecting from them, save Fruits Basket.

[jlazar]

Hmmm, sorry to hear about the layoffs.

I wonder if we'll get any idea what titles are most affected? Besides looking at release information from TP in the months to come, of course.

I'm assuming low sellers will get delayed or canceled outright. Considering the number of titles I buy from TP, I'm assuming at least a few will be impacted.

[monkeebiz]

There go the Kyo Kara Maoh novels I was looking forward to. Oh, well....

[Jarred]

An interesting spin on what is ultimately a company that is struggling to capture a significant piece of the market it helped create. "Progressive Reorganization"?? Always amazed how companies try to spin layoffs and hemorrhaging.

I'm still confused as to what Tokyopop Media does, other than bad flash-animation fan videos on their YouTube channel. I mean, they've been talking about this comics-to-movie business for a long time now and I have yet to see anything really progress out of it. So I'm surprised that's sticking around if there are money problems.

So 470 books a year down to ~225? Will be interesting to see what makes the cut.

[Lego]

For someone as ambitious as Tokyopop has been, like it or not (I'm in the latter), it's surprising as a casual manga follower that they'd have to split. While I can't blame them they never seemed to be satisfied with just releasing manga, they wanted to turn it into a movie and music enterprise as well.

[The Great Bear]

Yeah, this is not a good sign. But for the long term health of the market, it is probably necessary to cut down on the number of titles being published, or else face retailer backlash at some point, since not everything is flying off the shelves.

[jlazar]

Originally Posted by Jarred

I'm still confused as to what Tokyopop Media does, other than bad flash-animation fan videos on their YouTube channel. I mean, they've been talking about this comics-to-movie business for a long time now and I have yet to see anything really progress out of it. So I'm surprised that's sticking around if there are money problems.

Well, that would be one reason for the split. If the media company tanks, it doesn't bring down the publishing side with it.

So 470 books a year down to ~225? Will be interesting to see what makes the cut.

Might be self-centered of me, but I wouldn't mind seeing some OEL books get sacrificed to keep more Japanese manga on the store shelves.