Trouble Ahead #1: Toykopop
Oh boy are there a lot of rumors swirling around Tokyopop! At BEA everyone had one. We’re not going to repeat any until we’ve had a chance to follow up on some of them, but our email is full of tales of woe and horror from creators — some of them frankly quite surprising to us considering the public picture that has been presented. This story is going to bust loose sooner rather than later, and it ain’t gonna be pretty.
06/3/08 at 7:26 am
[…] Meanwhile, Heidi MacDonald drops a dire hint about Tokyopop at The Beat. […]
06/3/08 at 9:09 am
[…] [Publishing] More from last weekend’s BookExpo America in Los Angeles: Publishers Weekly’s Jim Milliot confirms that the turnout was down from the previous year; Boris Kachka caught up with Art Spiegelman, who’s reading more manga these days; and Heidi MacDonald heard awful rumors about Tokyopop, but she isn’t going to tell you. (MacDonald also has the latest gossip on DramaQueen and Platinum Studios, in case you’re interested.) […]
06/3/08 at 11:11 am
Wow, that is some tease. And even though I am now down to exactly one Tokyopop title (”Beck”), if things are as dire as they sound, that would be some very sad circumstances for this once-cool (now, unfortunately, not so much), once-trendsetting, once-visionary company.
06/3/08 at 1:06 pm
Tokyopop splits in 2, 39 employees laid off.
http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2008-06-03/tokyopop-to-restructure
Wowsers!
06/3/08 at 1:32 pm
Huh. Well, I can only hope that “Beck” is on the list of “successful continuing series”, though it was really on the bubble back in the days of Tokyopop’s big “web exclusive” scare, iirc.
My heart goes out to those laid-off, though. Here’s hoping they can quickly find new employment elsewhere.
06/3/08 at 5:25 pm
Interesting. I always imagined that you merged two companies into one to lay off 39 employees through redundancies. You learn something everyday.