Tokyopop not evil? Gasp!
June 17th, 2008 by Lianne
Since Tokyopop is still all over the news, I thought it was time to share a story. When I was 17 years old, I read in the now-long-gone Smile magazine that Tokyopop was going to publish children’s novels based on the Sailor Moon anime. The prose snippet in the ad was pretty bland, and being a serious Sailor Moon fanfic writer (please stop laughing) at the time, I wrote Tokyopop a long, angry e-mail about how the Sailor Moon fandom had become very sophisticated and that these novels would be a time to reach out to the fans, not, uh, spurn them. Stu Levy wrote back, asking if I wanted to apply for the job myself. Surprised, I did so, which is when he found out how old I actually was. And then he hired me anyway. For the past 9 years, Stu Levy and the Tokyopop editors have given me novels to write, manga to edit, prose to adapt. They’ve been friendly and helpful and kind, and Stu signs my New Year’s Card every year and asks me to pass a “hello” onto my parents every time I write him. And the first time I talked to him was through an e-mail that said, essentially, “I hate you and you suck.”
So please, please remember that even though the layoffs blow, even though some of the contracts are bad, even though Tokyopop has made some decisions that many people (including myself) don’t agree with, they are not the pure evil some people want to paint them as. I love Tokyopop. Stu Levy has personally been so good to me. And look what Tokyopop is doing after all this. Look what they did another time people were pissed at them. Yes, they actually change policies. So even if they do something you don’t agree with, don’t assume their policy will stick. They’re not out there actively trying to screw everybody over. I honestly believe that.
I know I’m biased, but I wanted a good opinion of Tokyopop to get out on the Internet. Especially considering everything that’s happened.
I’ll be back later this week. This place is sorely lacking in recent reviews.
So because Tpop has been good to you so far, people should give them a break?
Personally, I don’t think they’re evil.
I don’t think Stu Levy kills puppies or locks his grandmother in the basement. However, I do think they have done OEL manga creators a great disservice and have harmed the image of OEL manga in general with their appalling and cynical marketing practices.
Sending out cute Xmas cards is standard practice in business and doesn’t mean he’s a nice guy, he certainly hasn’t been nice to a heap of his creators and editors.
Is there any suprise that Princess Ai hasn’t been dropped? Sorry, I really can’t respect this company anymore. They deserve the scorn they are getting. I can only imagine what the axed creators must be going through right now.
[…] Sleep Is For the Week, Lianne Sentar, a longtime Tokyopop freelancer, puts in a few good words for Stu and his […]
Blue,
I tried to show a few of the questionable business practices they’ve rectified so that there’s more reason to give them a break than just the fact that they treat some of their employees very well (myself included). And yes, I think those are all reasons to cut the company a break. You still don’t have to like them, but I think they deserve a break.
Regarding OEL: I would challenge you to poll a fair segment of the OEL creators and ask them if publishing their book(s) through Tokyopop was overall a good or a bad experience for them. Even though a lot of the contracts weren’t good, the company still gave them a chance at national publishing when no one else would. And some of the ones who really succeeded, such as Svetlana (Dramacon), moved on to bigger and better things as soon as the Tokyopop contract ran out. There is NO DOUBT IN MY MIND that the other major manga companies are going to start publishing OEL, offering better contracts and picking up the more seasoned creators and, in general, learning from Tokyopop’s mistakes in order to do something better and more discerning. This is the way the manga industry largely works. Tokyopop stakes a huge amount of money on pushing a relatively new experiment, and then the other companies learn from Tokyopop’s mistakes and follow suit. The reason manga is $10, in its current size, and unflipped is because Tokyopop was willing to do a huge marketing push to do their manga that way (not that they invented the ideas–they just did them wide-scale).
So these days, AND in the future, when creators get better contracts elsewhere and people are complaining about “how crappy Tokyopop was to OEL,” ask yourself: would there be more than a tiny niche market for OEL at all if not for Tokyopop? Tokyopop is the reason the OEL market EXISTS as more than a handful of titles.
And Princess Ai is practically the crux of Tokyopop’s licensing business. It’s published in a Japanese magazine before it comes here, and they’ve been talking about doing all sorts of visual media with it. It also sold a ton of books. The fact that some people thought Tokyopop would drop it is nothing short of ridiculous. You don’t have to like Princess Ai to realize how important it is to the company. Sorry, but the fact that they didn’t drop it only proves that they’re not stupid or going bankrupt. Princess Ai is never going anywhere, and for good reason.
I have ALL of the Sailor Moon novels and I love them. I bought them when they originally came out many years ago.
Mixx’s Sailor Moon manga was the first manga I ever bought back in 1998-2000.
I remember when Tokyopop released some of the first Authentic Manga like Cowboy Bebop, GTO, Samurai Girl, etc. It really made the manga market change things at the time. They truly are innovators.
Despite all this recent news, I still have happy memories of buying my first manga, reading novels of my favorite anime, and being moved to tears while reading my favorite manga - all thanks to Tokyopop.
Lianne, thanks for that nice post.
I’ll cosign this post. Stu Levy is a good dude in my experience. I’ve known him since 99 when he was still running the company out of a dorm at USC. He took a chance on my artwork and got me national exposure.
Like everything in life, getting published is a learning experience. Not everyone is gonna come out the gates with a smash. It takes time and effort to achieve real success in this business.
Contracts are made to be negotiated.. if you don’t like the deal then don’t sign them. Nobody is putting a gun to your head.