Despite rumors that Tokyopop has canceled numerous titles, marketing director Marco Pavia says he has not issued any cancellation list and that many of the titles purported to be on the chopping block will be published on a modified schedule.

As part of its recent restructuring, Tokyopop cut back its publication schedule from about 500 volumes per year to between 200 and 225. As a result, Tokyopop postponed some scheduled releases so the rights could be renegotiated. Tokyopop notified retailers in June that 28 titles solicited in the July previews would be canceled, and many bloggers posted that list. In addition, PWCW’s Heidi MacDonald reported in her comics industry blog, The Beat, that 11 more that were slated for January had been pulled.

However, Pavia says the books on both lists were postponed, not permanently canceled. “We obviously have restructured our publishing program and are going month by month with fewer titles,” he says. That requires going back to the license holders to discuss the new schedules. “We are talking about either revising the schedule or looking at alternatives such as online [publication],” he says. While he did not rule out dropping some titles, he says, if that happens, “We will certainly let everyone know.”

Tokyopop, one of the pioneer U.S. manga publishers, split into two companies in a reorganization last May, with Tokyopop Media LLC handling film and digital properties, and Tokyopop Inc. remaining as a book publisher. At the same time, the company announced that it was laying off 39 employees from its staff of 100 and cutting back its publication schedule. “With the state of retail shelf space, we can’t continue to publish as many titles as we have in as large a quantity as we have been,” Pavia says.

One blogger, Simon Jones, who is also the publisher of the erotic manga house Icarus Publishing, posted the Diamond list of titles presumed to be canceled, but cautioned readers that it should not be taken as a definitive list of cancellations. “I reproduced the list simply because I personally felt it was newsworthy,” he tells PWCW. “The number of books was significant, there was a lot of uncertainty amidst [comics trade news site] ICv2's report about Tokyopop chopping their schedule, and Tokyopop was either coy, or have not decided which books to put on hiatus and which to cancel. That's why it was important for readers to know about the list, so that they may make their opinions known to Tokyopop by lobbying for their favorite books.”

News about some of Tokyopop’s global manga titles have come out lately, when Rikki Simons, the cocreator of Shutterbox, revealed on his LiveJournal blog that Tokyopop would not be publishing the fifth volume of that series. Jen Lee Quick wrote on the DeviantART Web site that her series, Off*Beat, is on hiatus, and Tania del Rio says in an interview on the Comics Worth Reading blog that she is working on a two-volume series for Tokyopop, to be titled Quincaneras.

Coming in August

Meanwhile, Tokyopop continues to release new series, and its August releases include four double-size volumes at different price points. Pavia says the reasons for the thicker volumes vary from title to title. The science fiction series Jyu-oh-sei was released in double volumes in Japan, Pavia says, so Tokyopop opted to keep the original format. On the other hand, the two-volume bindup of the manhwa Jade of Bango was strictly a marketing decision. “It’s a shojo action fantasy series,” he says. “We thought binding it up at a good value price would encourage new readers.”

Pavia says he plans to release the new series Tsubasa: Those with Wings by Fruits Basket creator Natsuki Takaya in double-size volumes as well. “It originally was a regular 192-page manga series, five or six volumes, and then in Japan they re-released the bunko [bunkoban, a small Japanese paperback format] version in two-volume bindups with new covers,” he says. “We are publishing the bunko version, so each volume will have 384 pages. What’s great is with the new covers, you can really see how her art style has evolved.” While the Japanese bunko format is smaller than standard manga, Tokyopop’s editions will have the usual 5”x7” trim size.

Also in the works is Castle of Dreams, an omnibus containing two single-volume manga by Masami Tsuda, creator of Kare Kano. That title is scheduled for January. Tokyopop has also been releasing omnibus editions of older titles such as Sgt. Frog to bring in new readers, and it produces deluxe, larger-format “ultimate editions” of successful titles. A full-color ultimate edition of Keith Giffen and Ben Roman’s original manga series I Luv Halloween is due out in September, and Pavia says the ultimate edition of Svetlana Chmakova’s original manga Dramacon has just been sent to press.

Pavia also says that the new line of full-color European and Asian graphic novels announced earlier this year at New York Comic-Con is still on, with the first two titles scheduled for February.