Tokyopop U.K. Suffers An Unkind Cut
In order to combat some brutal competition, the newly-installed head of sales for Tokyopop in the UK prepares to sacrifice some manga titles.
The BookSeller reports that the UK division of mega Manga publisher Tokyopop is doing some significant belt-tightening, beginning with a 20% cut in number of titles produced.
"We are now sharing space and market share more than ever before," said new UK sales and marketing manager Andrew Whelan. "In the past, we have had 80–90% of the market; now it’s about 50/50."
Tokyopop's year-to-date UK manga market sales have experienced a 4.1% by volume drop in the year to 19th April, despite a 40.2% rise in the UK graphic novels market over the same period.
Whelan's plan is to trim his output from 25 to 20 titles per month. "If you keep churning out stuff, eventually you reach saturation point, [so] in a way not printing as much is a good option. But we are only going to drop series that don’t sell. Essentially, we only do the best of the best."
[Thanks to JARROD SARAFIN at Mania.]