Barring Actual News, The Last Tokyopop Web Exclusive Manga Plan Update

* PWCW covers the story of Tokyopop moving several books including existing series to web-only sales through their web site. Though I risk being told to bite someone, I have to say for a magazine of record a lot of it is maddeningly vague: "several trade book retailers" and "many retailers" are among those cited. But there are further quotes from Tokyopop's Mike Kiley and new quotes from two Direct Market retailers: Carr D'Angelo and Beguiling Manager Chris Butcher, so it's definitely worth a read for anyone tracking the story.

* D'Angelo citing criticism aimed at Top Shelf and Fantagraphics for selling direct in the PWCW piece actually works to the detriment of his position -- neither Top Shelf nor Fantagraphics would be around anymore if they hadn't at one point sold direct, nor have they suffered in any measurable way from retailer scorn for this practice. This speaks against the Direct Market's general ability to invest in anything other than American mainstream comic books, and calls into question their ability to punish publishers that instigate policies that retailers dislike. And, of course, Tokyopop has long sold direct, just non-exclusively.

* Chris Butcher's arguments are the most cogent in the PWCW piece, and at his site he provides an even more eloquently phrased "open letter" to Tokyopop. There he gives the best argument thus far against Tokyopop's plan: Fans buying the series switched to web-exclusive midstream will be disappointed with having their supply of books cut off and moved to a more expensive, harder to access source. Retailers are not in the customer-disappointing business, and will therefore back off stocking and providing customer service support for a lot of titles they feel might be taken away from them, a possibility that Tokyopop has left open. This is more convincing to me than the promise of vague retailer anger, particularly as Butcher notes how he has already started doing this.

* It's probably worth pointing out that one of the problems that the Chris Butchers of the retailing world have when they make rational arguments like those above is that The Beguiling is an atypical store. Butcher can't argue for a massive international retail community; he can only argue for the 30-40 stores that are like The Beguiling. How far publishers should go to serve those few, great accounts by working with a system that's largely characterized by indifference to outright hostility regarding their books is how this issue connects to other, similar publisher/retailer issues that pop up in the Direct Market.

* As I don't think we'd see the same complaints if Tokyopop cancelled outright titles they felt didn't sell enough, it's worth emphasizing one underlying argument that peeks its head out on occasion: DM retailers don't seem to trust Tokyopop's appraisal of what qualifies as not selling enough to move to his web-exclusive program, nor do they feel the publisher will resist the temptation to add successful titles to the don't-sell-enough list. Some people have wondered out loud about the value of authoritative sales numbers in the comics industry beyond morbid fan curiosity -- well, here's one.

* I guess what this comes down to is whether Tokyopop benefits from web exclusives more than they lose 1) potential sales from fans that will decline to engage the on-line sales mechanisms and added costs, 2) established sales that don't follow the company on-line, 3) diminished retailer confidence in books up and down their line and 4) general retailer resentment against the company including several great accounts. I'm reluctant to backseat drive companies that have made hundreds of millions of dollars, but hopefully the last several days of chatter have given Tokyopop officials a wider apprecation of what's at risk.

* I would personally love to see them drop the plan entirely, or dump the exisiting series component, or find some way to grandfather in supportive accounts, or establish a retailer backdoor to buy into the program, or create an on-line syndication program that could bring stores in, or at least a way to hammer out in explicit terms what will qualify for the program and what won't in a way that would allow retailers to know where to give their support. I'm not concerned with their rhetoric as much as I'd like to see Tokyopop be as creative and forceful and responsive with all of their markets as they are with this on-line program.
 
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