Tokyopop Shutting Down note that the article is not dated April 1.
Quoting the first bit of the article...
Quote:The comics publishing culling of 2011 claimed its most prominent victim
as it was announced today that Tokyopop is shutting down its US
operations, as of May 31. The German office will stay open to handle
publishing rights and the film division will continue.
One question that seems to be unanswered so far is what will happen with the rights for new works that were published through Tokyopop. Or at least any of the creators I've spotted online wondering that haven't reported getting an answer yet. Comes down to contracts, and probably in part whether they expect to ever want to reprint something (if the contract says they don't have to revert rights yet, and they do without a fight, either they really like you or they really don't care about the work :/).
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Will the transhumanist future have catgirls? Does Japan still exist? Well, there is your answer.
Considering it's the lack of profitability of the new works that's most likely causing this move, I suspect most of those rights will sit idle.
I want to know what's going to happen to the English translations of the manga they've picked up but haven't finished translating. (I want to read all of Aria...) I believe we'll find that out in a month or so.
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."
- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012
And this is the end result of buying up a bunch of junk.
- Grumpy Uncle Gearhead
Now I'm wishing I'd picked up a bunch of stuff while I could.
Like the Full Metal Panic novels.
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make
anything explode.
(Looks at link, reads page......)
Ah crap.
_____________
Veni, vidi, vici. [I came, I saw, I conquered
Quote from Julius Caesar
I wondered why I hadn't heard any more from Wil Wheaton lately about stories in their Star Trek Manga. Now I know. *cries*
--
"You know how parents tell you everything's going to fine, but you know they're lying to make you feel better? Everything's going to be fine." - The Doctor
I began suspecting something like this will happen when they lost the rights to a bunch of Kodansha owned titles a year or two back. Which means someone's sitting on the english translations of the Sakura Taisen manga, including the last two unpublished volumes.
In a ways I think this is a good thing in the long run. The industry is taking a round-turn on how it does things and we'll most likely never see another glut on licenses like this again - meaning that Fansub and Scanlating groups can once again do what they do best with more freedom. (Man, that shit would piss me off when they would license an anime before episode 01 would even air in Japan!)
This will also mean that mostly the Good Stuff makes it over to the US, and with more funds allocated to better voice actors and translators.
As for the stuff that they simply 'drop'... If it's not profitable enough for them to continue producing, then I seriously doubt they'll bother with the legal expense of chasing down sub/scan groups that localize them.
Perhaps I'm confused. I don't follow the anime/manga licensing scene, nor do I seek out scanlations and fansubs. Don't get me wrong, I like anime and manga -- a lot.
I'd been given to understand that one of, if not the, biggest reasons why these companies are failing is because there *are* scanlations and fansubs. Granted, they're supposedly often of better quality (I don't doubt that), but that doesn't change the fact that one is free and the other is not, and given the choice, almost everyone will go for the free.
Which means the company can't stay in business. Simple math.
I'm not sure how you see it as a good thing, assuming I'm correct in my understanding. I don't see how the "good stuff" will ever make it when the creator's experience with it is that nobody buys it.
--sofaspud
--"Listening to your kid is the audio equivalent of a Salvador Dali painting, Spud." --OpMegs
blackaeronaut Wrote:In a ways I think this is a good thing in the long run. The industry is taking a round-turn on how it does things and we'll most likely never see another glut on licenses like this again - meaning that Fansub and Scanlating groups can once again do what they do best with more freedom. (Man, that shit would piss me off when they would license an anime before episode 01 would even air in Japan!)
(snort) Like legal rights every stopped fansubbers and scanlators. It's not like shutting down Onemanga had any effect on Mangafox or the dozen other illegal download sites on the internet.
Also, this only effects manga publishing so far. Anime liscensing is still a going concern for the company.
And frankly, if purchasing distribution rights means more stuff like Funimation releasing legally available subs of Fullmetal Alchemist within a week or two of the Japanese release I'm all for it.
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Epsilon
The biggest failing isn't that there are scanlations and fansubs, studies have been made of the impact of downloads that reveal that they actually boost sales (they do, however, hurt rentals). Companies like Tokyopop have, however, been investing very heavily in poorly received titles and poor management for quite some time now. For every good series that makes it into English, a dozen are overlooked in favor of knockoffs and B-list stuff.
The Korean market is also completely overlooked. (I firmly believe that if someone picked up titles like Immortal Regis, Cavalier of the Abyss and Veritas they would sell like HOTCAKES in the States.)
- Grumpy Uncle Gearhead
Dunno where you heard that from, Spud, but like everyone else has said, that's total bunk. For every person that downloads a manga, someone buys one. (And half the time it's the same person that DLed it because it's nice having it in dead tree format.)
As for One Manga... Surprise! They're still up! From what I can tell, they're still distributing manga, but I don't know how yet as you have to register on their site now.
I'll make one post on this because it's a serious sore spot for me, as certain people know, and I'd rather not turn the whole thread into something that needs to be on Politics.
Free downloads do not generally boost sales. They do boost sales for certain groups that can benefit from it - most notably "indie" acts that get exposure this way they wouldn't through traditional formats, and groups that have high brand loyalty can also get sales (maybe less, maybe more, depending on how their loyalty is built). But an industry as a whole, which is not made primarily of either of those groups, does not benefit from piracy. As you quite correctly pointed out, Spud, people do not generally buy what they can get for free.
Quite a lot of people argue that downloading helps sales. Coincidentally, it is usually the same people who benefit from them (the downloaders), whereas the vast, vast, overwhelming majority of people who sell the product (and would thus be financially rewarded if downloading actually helped sales) are against them and try to stop them. One has the luxury of believing in the economic theories of a bunch of guys on the internet who think their downloading free stuff helps the industry, or the economic theories of the actual industry, who make their living selling these things. This is not limited to manga, but definitely includes it, on both sides of the Pacific (indeed, the Japanese are far more anti-piracy than the US companies).
Piracy has never, not even once, had a beneficial effect on an entire industry. Indeed, every single industry, without exception, that has been affected by piracy has shrunk in total sales and had major corporations go out of business during the time period it was so affected. Those time periods do not overlap or correspond with any given economic recession, given the fact that, e.g., music was widely pirated long before movies were due to differing bandwidth requirements. In places where copyright law is virtually never enforced, such as China (1/6 of the human population and thus a pretty good test market), the market for legitimate sales has completely collapsed. However, things that cannot be reasonably pirated (in China, a good example is MMOs) continue to sell healthily even while nothing else in the same market does.
Plenty of people will tell you downloading boosts sales. They will point to anecdotal evidence (and yes, some people do buy after trying, which I have no issue with), and they will point to certain individual artists who benefitted. They will link to studies, which all have various unacknowledged flaws (often in the control group - one highly-touted study I was linked to compared the music-buying habits of people who download music versus those who don't, but had no information as to whether the non-downloading control group actually liked music), at least so far as I've seen, though obviously you should judge that yourself. And they will never, ever be able to say "The X industry is so much healthier now that piracy is commonplace!" because that never actually happens.
Edit: Breaking my own rule for quick clarity - I am saying that it does hurt sales, it always hurts sales, and that this is easily observable through marketplace performance when piracy is commonplace (the music industry having taken a massive hit in total sales even when you factor in Itunes, the Chinese and Taiwanese markets, etc.). I will also addend that I think this problem is somewhat less bad for manga scanlations (mostly because they are not identical to the legitimate product, which has some advantages in ease of rereading, etc.), but that this does not mean it isn't a problem or isn't detrimental to overall sales.
I never really said that it helps boost sales. But it certainly doesn't hurt sales anywhere nearly as much as some may have you believe. There's always extremists on both sides of the fence, after all.
Ayiekie Wrote:One has the luxury of believing in the economic theories of a bunch of guys on the internet who think their downloading free stuff helps the industry, or the economic theories of the actual industry, who make their living selling these things. This is not limited to manga, but definitely includes it, on both sides of the Pacific (indeed, the Japanese are far more anti-piracy than the US companies).
I'm inclined to listen to the economists running the studies, as opposed to the publishers who are getting called on the carpet by their own artists for mismanagement.
There's a reason Ken Akamatsu is getting into the downloadable manga business.
- Grumpy Uncle Gearhead
I will quickly jump in and say that scanlating/fansubbing is not the same thing as piracy.
That does not make it right, but it does make it different. They are providing high quality translations to a market that will probably never be served by the rights holder.
I don't see scanlating/fansubbing ever going away (especially given that they often do higher quality work than the official releases). The smart rights holders will use the marketing info that can be gathered from this practice to help determine where they should do translations. (i remember reading that the fansubbing comunity was part of the reason that the US got naruto).
It is an entirely different (and complicated) discussion to ask if such an increase in potential market is worth it in terms of sales at the end of the day. And I'm sure there are cases that fall on both sides if the fence.
-Terry
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"so listen up boy, or pornography starring your mother will be the second worst thing to happen to you today"
TF2: Spy
There was a report on the radio (CBC-1, the national "serious news" channel) today that a recent scientific study indicates "pirating" of O'Reilly's technical manuals
increased the sale of those manuals. (The digital versions were made availble legally months after the print versions were made available; the books that had their digital versions pirated showed an increase in sales after the piracy started, compared to both the pre-piracy sales of the books and the sales of books that hadn't been pirated.) O'Reilly sells somewhat-expensive technical books. I'll see whether I can find a link to the study.
Edit: http://oreilly.com/catalog/978059615788 ... ary-piracy]Found it - but they want $99.99 for a digital copy.
I suspect that scanlations only hurt the sales of crap titles - the good stories benefit from the publicity. The problem is that there are so many crap titles being licensed nowadays.
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."
- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012
Piracy increases the Darwin Factor? I can dig it.
The problem is that publishing costs money. If the publishing house produces a product that makes no money, then that publishing house lost money. That means that the money is gone and can't be spent on good anime. The simple fact is that since the ratio of good anime to bad anime is so low and the ability to predict what will be good and what will be bad is effectively impossible that means that less and less money will be spent on any new projects at all.
This is why in areas where there is no copyright protections or very weak ones, the industries quickly collapses (like in China, Taiwan and so on).
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Epsilon
It doesn't take a genius to realize that something like
http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclo ... p?id=12432]Pretty Rhythm Aurora Dream isn't going to do well here... but there's a good chance it'll be licensed anyway. Why throw money away on something that will probably never make that money back?
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."
- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012
As I note, I have no doubt that some of the pirated copies would be sales if the product were more available, or the "freebie" wasn't available.
What I've had the issue with is the whole idea that it's a one for one ratio. There are some who pirate just because they can get away with it, and would buy it if they had no option to pirate it. But there are the ones that won't buy, either because they literally can't afford it, or because they're only in it "for the freebies".
I tend to not do the fansub/fanlation stuff, I did it a few times way back in the dark days of early anime fandom, but most often, I'd rather just do without if it comes to pirating it.
--
"You know how parents tell you everything's going to fine, but you know they're lying to make you feel better? Everything's going to be fine." - The Doctor
Epsilon, what Rob said. That, and the response of the Japanese is a pretty good gauge to go by, despite the cultural differences between East and West.
If a company fails to do even this much for research, then they deserve to lose that money. (Maybe the company the licensed the anime/manga from can use the royalty fees to make better stories.)
Yes, production fees are expensive, but I reiterate: what do you expect when you reproduce crap?
The perceived value of a license ("it's utter crap!" vs "must have now!") has no bearing on whether or not scanlations/fansubs -- which may or may not constitute piracy, that's a tough knot to unravel -- hurt long-term sales, though.
Or, alternately: whether it's crap or not will be borne out by the market. If it doesn't even make it TO the market because the company has lost their shirts due to alternate (read: free) providers, then it's a moot point as to its quality.
I'm not an economist, I'm just this guy, y'know? But I've run my own business before and I've been undercut by someone offering what I had to offer (entertainment, in this case) for free. I couldn't compete, even though by all accounts what my wife and I provided was much, much better than what the other guy was offering. It's not a perfect parallel, because he was deliberately setting out to ruin our business and take it for himself (he raised prices after we folded), but the effect is the same.
So yeah, I get that scanlations and such provide a useful service. But I can't imagine a world in which they do, in fact, boost sales. Because people like "free" a lot better than they like "fair value".
Can anyone point at legitimate sources that indicate fansubbing and scanlations have helped anything? A quick Google reveals... um, a lot of bickering on both sides of the fence and very little data. Although I did find an article -- Q&A session, really -- from a publisher who doesn't mind responsible scanlation but notes, even so, that they have the same effect on the market as pirates.
Which I find telling.
--sofaspud
--"Listening to your kid is the audio equivalent of a Salvador Dali painting, Spud." --OpMegs
blackaeronaut Wrote:Epsilon, what Rob said. That, and the response of the Japanese is a pretty good gauge to go by, despite the cultural differences between East and West.
If a company fails to do even this much for research, then they deserve to lose that money. (Maybe the company the licensed the anime/manga from can use the royalty fees to make better stories.)
So on the one hand you say that fansubing is great because it gives you access to obscure titles and on the other you say that anime translators shouldn't bother to try and bring over unpopular stuff because its not going to be profitable. Well, that's certainly a convenient system for the fansubbers, I'll agree. The trick being, that guessing which stories are going to be popular and profitable and which ones are going to sink like stones is hard work, often impossible work. Sure you can safely assume that really high sales stuff from Japan like Naruto or Bleach are going to sell over here, but even then there have been surefire hits from Japan that have crashed and burned in the North American market.
Not that a series being popular stops the fansubers, of course. Quite the opposite.
Quote:Yes, production fees are expensive, but I reiterate: what do you expect when you reproduce crap?
So, how do you tell the difference between the next regurgitated crap and the next Haruhi Suzimiya (or whatever anime you want to put in there)? Lots of anime/manga looks terrible when you consider the premise. Fuck, premise has nothing to do with it. It's all in the execution. The most cliched, ridiculous story can be the greatest story ever told depending on how well its elements are used. The most original, creative story can be sheer crap.
You can't have it both ways people. Either you can't produce good art by commitee in which case you just have to accept all the crap that comes out, or you can and in that case why do you complain so much about all the commitee produced stuff? The only way to produce art is a scattergun approach. Throw enough of it at the wall, see what sticks.
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Epsilon
The biggest problem with production right now being that there is no scattergun approach being used on the content creation level. It's all about trying to recreate a specific form of success through derivative work and refinement. It's something that has been brought up in the past as being really dangerous for the industry. It's also really rough on US licensing because it's HARD for a derivative work to make lightning strike twice.
The Japanese market strategy right now is to appeal to a small base which will buy anything thrown at it. This doesn't really fly in the US.
- Grumpy Uncle Gearhead