… but you can’t slice a tomato with your foot! Splat! It’s been at least 20 years since I saw those Ginsu knife ads, but I can still repeat them word for word. Now that’s a great marketing campaign! Simon Jones, who can always be counted on for some lucid commentary from the publisher’s point if view, compares Tokyopop’s online exclusives to the Ginsu knife, which was one of the first products to be directly marketed via TV (“Hurry, send money now! Wait six weeks for delivery!”)
It worked because it had a great marketing campaign; they weren’t competing for shelf space; and TVs had become ubiquitous in the American household, ensuring that many people received their message. By shunning retail, they turned a flop into a best-seller.
Thirty years later, Tokyopop is trying to do the same thing online. They’re betting that the internet has become ubiquitous enough that they can reach a majority of their potential customers. They’ve got just about everything they need in place, too… a community portal to create captive audiences; a free print magazine whose true purpose was to data mine a huge mailing list perfect for direct marketing.
And the numbers make it work:
As discussed in the previous TP post, Tokyopop can either make 1.5 times the amount of profit, or the same amount of profit selling to just 30 to 40% of the audience. They know the move to online will likely cause a drop in readership, but they’re counting on it being less than 60%.
I agree on the numbers, but I still think Tokyopop is falling short on the marketing side. They have yet to come up with the manga equivalent of “You can’t slice a tomato with your foot.”
Love Manga has more analysis and a roundup of links. Lyle sees Tokyopop making the same mistakes as Marvel and DC, including pushing already popular titles at the expense of lesser-known ones. And at Sporadic Sequential, John Jakala wonders if some of the Tokyopop online exclusives may quietly disappear, or become webcomics, if preorders are too low. He’s made a list of the titles on the site now, so we can check if Tokyopop is being naughty or nice.
Meanwhile, in comments at Love Manga, Rivkah puts her finger on what’s bugging me about the online exclusives:
Sales can’t get it through their head that they’re marketing a good majority of their titles to girls who are a heck of a lot more likely to buy something they don’t necessarily want simply because it’s on sale. I think a lot of the folk in sales are still stuck with the mentality of the male comic book buyer who goes in to purchase what he wants, even if he has to pay full price. Call me sexist, but girls are drawn to the red sale sign like moths to a flame.
That’s it! I hate paying full price for anything, but I’ll buy all kinds of crazy things if they are half off. I know there may be contractual reasons why Tokyopop has to pay full price, but they need to find a way around them (coupons!). Especially for the early volumes.
It seems everyone but a few AOD posters totally forgot about the non-US readers who are going to be affected by the Online-only thing.
At 20+ USD PER VOLUME I simply can’t keep reading Dragon Head, no matter how much I like it.
I can somewhat understand the reasons for going online-only, but forcing non-US/Canadian readers to order from Right Stuff? That has nothing to do with being realistic or smart. I have to fax a copy of my ID and CC to Right Stuff which is about as safe as playing with a live grenade as far as I’m concerned.
Double the price and ten-fold the risk, how very thoughtful of TP.
But then again, I got a “You have no right to complain since you don’t live in the US, since these releases are made FOR THE US” when I posted in the R1 forum a while ago. Maybe I’m a second grade consumer after all.
Not at all. But I think it’s pretty lame of Right Stuf not to be better about foreign customers. In this day and age, they should be able to handle a credit card order online from anywhere, not just the U.S. and Canada.
And it’s a bit ironic that people who have appropriated Japanese comics would complain that their editions are “for the U.S.” It’s like my mother, who moved to this country in 1959, talking about all the “foreigners.”
Actually this is exactly the sort of thing I’ve been talking about over at Love Manga, considering I come from the UK, the TRSI shipping is literally going to kill me if I choice to buy anything from Tokyopop online.
As I posted over at Love Manga, it breaks down for me as follows;
Here is a quick example for buying 1 volume of Dragon Head.
At the moment it’s
£5.46 for the book
£1.15 for shipping
total is £6.71 or $12.72 in USD.
Now its going to cost me
$9.99 for the book
$15.99 for shipping
total is $24.99
$12.72 or $24.99 not a difficult choice that one.
Oh, they do Online CC orders, but from non-US/Canadian (or at least for Israeli) customers they want a faxed copy of the ID+CC to make sure it’s actually the customer’s. I fail to see the logic.
I don’t mind paying full price, but in those cases I’m getting plenty of convenience since I wandered into a store, saw something I wanted on the shelves and took it home (allowing me to read it on the train as I commute back).
I guess that’s the point most of the blogstorm has been writing around — there’s no compelling incentive to support the online exclusives. So far, the positives that have been identified don’t have the kind of immediacy that the negatives have.
Maybe it’s time for you Brits to return the favor and stage a Boston Tea Party, but with a bunch of cosplayers dumping copies of Dragon Head into the Thames. Hows that for a Manga Revoluntion® !? ;)