Forum - View topicNEWS: Interview on ICv2
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Gage
Posts: 480 Location: United States |
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Bah, I sent this to ANN Newsroom but it was never transferred to the site but oh well. I suppose I could post it somewhere now couldn't I?
ICv2 had the chance to sit down with Mike Kiley, Tokyopop publisher, about the topic that exclusive manga would be available through their "new" site. Which is nothing new, only new features added to Tokyopop's original website. Now, the interview is in two parts, k? Part one deals with how Tokyopop chose the titles to be distributed through the Webpage and part two is more about their goals through this. Below is a quote directly from ICv2 just to give you an idea of both parts. Yes, this will be a long post. Are the books that are going to be published and sold exclusively through the Website going to be in the same format as your other manga titles? Yes, they're all the identical trim, the identical format and production quality. They will be essentially indistinguishable from any other book we've ever published. There are some titles that are new that haven't been released in the States before, and then there are some titles that are ongoing series which are now being moved into this Web-exclusive program. How are you choosing which titles to put into the Web- exclusive program? I wish I were smart enough to be able to give you that magic formula. I'm going to give you my take on the genesis of this program as the guy ultimately responsible for it. It's kind of an experiment to be honest with you. We've recognized a couple of really important trends recently. The most important one is that the launch of our new site and the size of the new audience and the way people are interacting with our site, we really believe there is an ability to put things in front of those people in a more creative, featured way to draw attention to books that haven't been getting as much exposure as they should through the normal channels of distribution. We're looking for things that we think are quirky and interesting in some offbeat way. It's not that the things we don't choose to put into that program are very mainstream and vanilla, because most of the things that we publish, like a lot of manga in general, are pretty weird to begin with. I would actually be kidding you if I told you there was a firm magic formula about what to put into the program. We just want to take advantage of this new audience we have online, in acknowledgement of the competition for shelf space at retail. This is a way that made sense to us to try in terms of, 'Can we help find a bigger audience for particular books using a slightly different platform?' I don't know if it's going to be successful or not, to be honest with you. I really hope it will, and I think it will. I think it will take some time. Obviously we've got a lot of people using our site and signing up and having fun on it. How quickly that translates into a lot of e-commerce customers, a lot of people who are willing to come online and actually place orders, that's certainly an unknown at the moment. It feels like a reasonable thing to try. - Question from Part I Part 2: "Do you expect to sell the same or more through the Web exclusives or sell fewer but at higher margins? I can't imagine that at the beginning of the program, even for books that have been performing rather modestly out in the trade, that we'll be able to duplicate those numbers with this online program. I think it's just a program that's going to take time to build. It's a new thing. I think it's totally unrealistic to expect those same results. Over time, I honestly don't know. I believe with the direction that our Website is heading in, and the way people are indicating they're willing to interact with a lot of the new stuff we're doing, I believe there's every reason to expect that the program could deliver very comparable results to the more traditional distribution channels over time. Does that take three months? Does it take 12 months, does it take two years? I'm honestly not sure. I guess the only real definitive thing I can say is that I don't think out of the box that the results are going to be immediately comparable." - Quote, P II. Yes, you get the idea. Visit ICv2 for more information if you would like. |
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