I broke that Manga Pilots story, the Intertubes went "Foof!" at a satisfying volume, and now the hits keep coming.
First, I want to say that I am not happy about how many people are getting screwed by TP's apparent sinking. It happened about three years later than I predicted, but it's happening just the same.
I learned the hard lesson the TP staff and OELer's are learning now, myself. I was poor to the point of eviction and without a phone. Luckily, I hadn't handed over IP to my own work for a leg up.
I rolled pennies to buy ramen, and that is the truth, and I got there by going with a company called Eclipse. I was told over and over again were shady. Like the OELers and ROSM contestants, I wanted my work published. Unlike them, I held out for a publisher where I kept my rights. I also should've held out for a publisher that
paid on time, and didn't engage in happy horseshit by telling me one thing and my editor another and setting us off against one another until my editor dissolved into tears and begged me not to ask where my check was.
A line from Rumble Girls: Silky Warrior Tansie: "Give me a hint of rape." That was a directive from my editor at Eclipse. How prophetic.
A lot of OELers, and now TP employees, have been royally screwed. As
Ian, a former TP editor employee, said at Bags and Boards at Variety,
"I was one of the 39 laid off, to say the least, it was one of the most unprofessional and downright humiliating things I have ever seen a corporation do in my lifetime. Tokyopop has no sense of professional responsibility, fiscal responsibility, or ethics whatsoever. They gave no warning and no support to any of the employees laid off, just a goodbye and good luck, and in some cases after years of dedicated service."
What is happening now with TP is an unfolding, immediate example for you creators considering swapping lousy deals for a break. (I'm also looking at you, Zuda contestants.) When the deal goes south, you will find sympathy most readily in a dictionary between "shit" and "syphillis." That's where I found it after I left Eclipse, so broke I was eating jelly sandwhiches and using pay phones to call people to read me my email.
LEARN.
On to the links!
Publisher's Weekly says TP restructures, gives layoff numbers, and somehow PW manages to not to throw Stu Levy softball questions, although Levy still manages to sound like he's assembling his quotes from the "Oily Hollywood Type" fridge magnet set:
http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6566607.html?nid=2789"Tokyopop has pulled out of San Diego, and is rumored to be pulling out of Anime Expo as well. Yet another sign of cost-cutting."
More on the restructuring at The Beat, including quotes from and links to bloggers:
http://pwbeat.publishersweekly.com/blog/2008/06/04/update-tokyopop/"it was one of the most unprofessional and downright humiliating things I have ever seen a corporation do in my lifetime. Tokyopop has no sense of professional responsibility, fiscal responsibility, or ethics whatsoever."
Former TP employee Ian at the Variety Bags and Boards blog:
http://weblogs.variety.com/bags_and_boards/2008/06/tokyopop-restru.htmlLayoffs (including the poor souls elected to bell the cat by defend the Manga Pilots deal by using red-flag words like "progressive"):
http://pwbeat.publishersweekly.com/blog/2008/06/04/tokyopop-layoff-update/"As Tokyopop isn’t a publicly traded company (and doesn’t have to play these investor games if they don’t want to), I have to wonder why bother with a reorganisation at all, unless of course one expects a part of the business to tank, tank hard, and tank soon."
Matt Blind tries to mount a defence of TP, and finds he's got nothin':
http://comicsnob.com/2008/06/03/i-was-about-to-defend-tokyopop-but"By the way, Stu, back then you wanted to “bump” and “b-ball” with the employees, and wanted to “deejay” with them, but really you were just plain creepy."
Mochiazn, who knew Stu L3vy back at UCLA in the '90's, takes apart his image at The Beat, calls Stu Levy "creepy" no less than three times, and lays bare business practices that formed Mixx Entertainment and continue to this day:
http://pwbeat.publishersweekly.com/blog/2008/06/04/tokyopop-layoff-update/#comment-1690315"In fact, you could look at Tokyopop as another specialty publisher having to make changes or risk dying off altogether, and not much of a unique news story at all."
My admiration from Tom Spurgeon continues unabated:
http://www.comicsreporter.com/index.php/more_on_tokyopop_re_structuring/(I see the story as unique because, unlike Tom's example of Fantagraphics, TP owns creator copyright.)
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
kynn's characters from "Wandering Monsters High School" and beat it into shape.
