Tokyopop: We asked, they answered

With all of the chatter about Tokyopop’s relaunch of its website, we thought it was time to go straight to the source and find out just what they are thinking. So we called up Matt Nixon, the Web Community Content Producer, and asked some pointed questions. Below is a slightly edited transcript of our conversation.

MangaBlog: This website is a radical departure from previous versions of your site. What are you trying to do here?

Matt Nixon: We’re trying to create a community. After being to many, many conventions and really having an ear to the ground, so to speak, we found there was a place for a fan community, and this is sort of what we are building there. Tokyopop considers itself synonymous with manga, so we thought we should create a playground where everyone who lives the manga lifestyle—who loves the manga lifestyle—can hang out, share blogs and videos, and so forth.

MB: Whom do you see as your typical user?

MN: It’s designed to be a site for anybody who is interested in manga. It’s not age specific, it’s not gender specific. It’s designed to cater to everybody’s tastes. It’s designed to be a safe environment. There’s MySpace, Friendster—those are primarily used as dating sites. This is designed for people who don’t want to post photos, who don’t necessarily want to be in that scenario, who just want to share their thoughts about manga and anime. The idea is that everybody deserves to have a place to have their voice heard. And we’re listening to everybody’s feedback. It’s a beta version, it’s a testing version. Every day we are updating and changing things around, making it more palatable and easier to use.

MB: Why did you choose not to moderate the blogs and fan sections? Will you do so in future?

MN: At this point, it’s designed to be self-policing. There is a way for people to flag content; if it’s inappropriate, it’s removed automatically. Also, if there is anything odd or out of place, [users] can bring it up in the forums or communicate it directly to us. At some point it will be moderated. People can do what they want within reason, and for the most part the community has been very responsible. I don’t think I have had one instance of anything brought to my attention in terms of adult content.

MB: People are complaining the books are harder to find. Clicking on the “manga” button doesn’t bring you to a list. [At this point, light dawns on Marblehead, as we say around here.] Is the top navbar supposed to be all fan-generated content?

MN: That’s what it is. The symbol [on each button] is, roughly translated from Chinese and Japanese, “Mine.”

MB: OK, but the “manga” buttons on the left navbar don’t give you an alphabetical list, which is what we bloggers like to see. Instead, you give us a list of featured manga. What’s the purpose of that?

MB: For a very, very long time, there have been manga fans who have created their own community. The hard-cores really brought to the fore what they liked, and a lot of manga become popular by word of mouth. The problem is, somebody might find a manga they like, but they don’t know what’s like it. We’re giving them a way to find similar things within the same classification and category. The hard-core fans know what they are after. Now that we’re taking on more casual manga fans, and we’re giving them more service: If you like this, then you’re going to like that—just broaden their horizons a little.

MB: What’s the best thing about this site, in your opinion?

MN: In my opinion, the best thing about the site is the columns. We picked up columnists from various sectors of the industry. The stuff they are bringing to the table is great. Especially with the music—they are opening up doors for people to get into J-pop and J-rock and Korean music. And the cosplay section—the woman who writes that is a Harvard grad and she runs the Anime Boston cosplay section. She is doing human chess—that is a really cool column with really great photos.

MB: What other features do you think people shouldn’t miss?

MN: The online exclusives—the books that are only available through The Right Stuf. You can’t buy them in a store. Obviously, it’s a pilot program now, but we will create a site where people will come here to get this manga, and it’s the only way people will be able to get it.

MB: So does that mean a web manga model, like Netcomics, could be in Tokyopop’s future?

MN: That’s definitely something we are working toward. We have even played around with the print-on-demand model, but we’re not happy with the output we are seeing. It’s not the same quality as in-house. We want to make sure that if we move to that, the quality is as good as the stuff we are selling in stores.

MB: OK, last thing: Broken links. You’re planning to fix those, right?

MN: We are busily fixing every broken link we come across. Every time we come to a new alert we get on it right away. This is the beta version, so sometimes when we fix one thing something else comes along.

MB: When will it stop being a beta and become Tokyopop 1.0?

MN: I know that the end of August is when we should have everything ironed out, and then we are going to change around our features based on feedback. So it should come out sometime in September, but we don’t have a hard date for that. Sifting through fan feedback takes time. Then we’ll change around to make more logical—if people are used to doing it this way, will they be confused again when we change it? This is designed to cater to the community. We live and die by them, and we are trying to give something back. It’s sort of like conventions—we don’t generate a lot of tangible income from that, but the fans love it. We get huge crowds, we get positive strokes. This is an extension of that. It’s a community thing.

MB: What’s the best way to give feedback?

MN: In the forums or by blogging on the Tokyopop website. Jim Devico has set up a section in the forums that is specifically to address those.

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Comments

  1. Nice interview. Thanks for taking the steps to get this dialogue.

  2. Thanks, Lyle! I was feeling sort of bad that we were all piling on, and I really wanted to hear them articulate what it was supposed to be all about.

  3. Thanks, very informative!

  4. I have to say I do not like Tokyopop’s new website. I also do not like the online only exclusives. They took books that have already released numerous volumes and suddenly made future volumes available ‘only’ through their new distributor. I feel that this a slap in the face to anyone who is currently reading these titles, and also to the comic book stores and bookstores that carry Tokyopop titles. People who helped to make Tokyopop the current ‘giant’ that it is. This is something that a lot of my friends agree on. If we bought all the previous versions offline, why should we suddenly have to switch so that Tokyopop can give their new distributor a welcome present? Lastly, I also dislike the fact that for Tokyopop has started releasing titles really slowly. Once I was able to get updates on a quarterly basis (or every two months), suddenly they are releasing tons of new series, but the old series now have releases that can take up to 9 months or longer between books. I have to say that I am losing interest in Tokyopop lately, as are a number of my friends and that is really too bad.

  5. All in all this is a great idea on Tokyopop’s part. In this day and age where customers have so many options, it’s important to show that your company will go the extra mile and get the customer involved in your business as much as possible.

Trackbacks

  1. ComiPress says:

    Interview with Tokyopop on its New Website…

    http://www.mangablog.net/?p=565
    MangaBlog interviews Tokyopop’s Web Community Content Producer, Matt Nixon, on TP’s recent relaunch of its website.

    ……

  2. […] She’s right. While Matt Nixon of Tokyopop described the site to me as a safe place where people of all ages could go to talk about manga, without some moderation there’s always the possibility of things going awry. Last week my daughter, who is 13, registered on the site so she could read the online manga. Within a few minutes, she got several requests from total strangers to “friend” her. Being a smart girl, she was bothered by this and stopped using her account. (She uses mine; nobody wants to friend me because I’m too old.) […]