Interview with Saimma Javaid UK Marketing and PR Manager Tokyopop at London Expo May 2006

By Joseph (Joe) Wood
9th Jul 06

JW:Could you tell us a bit about what you do at Tokyopop?

SJ:Marketing and PR Manager so I’ve been recruited to basically…well the UK office is developing and I’ve just been taken on because it is growing, obviously as you know the manga market is growing at an unbelievable rate. So, I’ve been taken on to basically promote Tokyopop and not just our product but manga as a whole. I think Tokyopop try and represent manga but obviously manga has been around for a long time, people are reading it and it’s making people more aware of what manga is. Because there is a lot of negative opinion, especially when parents and older people, when they think of manga they think of late night showings of sort of sex, violence and pornography. That’s what they think manga is and I know form experience from people I’ve spoken to that’s what they think when you say “manga”. So getting that image away and making them realise that there are so many genres and different types of storytelling, and while there is that part of it as well, try not to focus so much on that.

JW:As you said over the past two years the availability of manga in the UK has increased dramatically places like Ottakars, which would have only had, maybe, one or two manga titles now have fairly decent sized sections dedicated to manga (most of which are Tokyopop titles). What sort of a role has Tokyopop played in this?

SJ:Well it is because of us. We’ve really strong links with Ottakars; we’ve worked with them trying to get the message of what manga is out. There has been really kind and supportive and wanted to come on board. We have developed these manga evenings and you’ll start to hear a bit more about them. Our Fields Sales Manager has also taken on the role of Events Manager and been developing these Manga evenings. We started off one night after the store is closed, and it’s advertised locally. We’ve gone from having about 50 people coming to an evening to having 300+, it has grown at an amazing rate. Ottakers have had a large response that they weren’t expecting and we’ve gotten some great feedback from them internally. The staff Ottakers have been fantastic, and the people that read manga themselves and word of mouth all help promote it. They’ve just taken off phenomenally. Some places have gone from having 3 or 4 a month to the same number of evenings in a week, and we’re hoping to develop that into a more nation wide thing.

JW:How do you think the increase in availability of manga titles in high street shops will affect independent retailers who would have either bought your titles in the UK or import from abroad?

SJ:I think it’s only a good thing. Because independent comic shops, traditionally your going to have a certain kind of customer going there. The people we’re targeting by retailing in high street shops are not all the kind of people who would actually go into a comic shop. People who go into to comic shops they know their business, they know the product, they’ve grown up with it or got into it. They go to a comic shop and they have a good idea of what they want when they go in their. People going into a shop on the high street, kids going in with their parents might not know as much. Having these manga evening type events in a high street shop would attract more people than in a comic shop, advertising for an event in a high street shop will be seen by more people than one in an independent comic shop. Many of the people who go to a comic shop might not do much shopping on the high street yet a selection of manga titles may draw them in. Similarly the kids who’ve bought manga in their high street may be more likely to go to a comic shop to find more manga. So I think it’s widening the market and it’s beneficial to everybody.

JW:What do you think the reason for the increase in popularity of manga worldwide and more specifically in the UK are?

SJ:I think fundamentally it starts with the Japanese culture; it’s always been one-step ahead of the west. There fashion always reaches the U.S and the U.K. It’s because it’s seen as hip, cool, and different. This is what appeals to many people. Also most western comics/animation don’t have the same sort of realism and edge that Japanese manga/anime do. Now most western cartoons have been influenced by Japanese programmes like Samurai Jack, and a good deal of them are Japanese like Pokemon and these are dominating it. Here in the west we’re more overprotective so a parent might not let a child read something with minor violence etc. in Japan they are a lot more open, which I think appeals to kids as well. It’s a little bit taboo, a little different and children think there parents won’t like it, which they like. With most manga kept in its original format of right-to-left makes it seem a bit quirky to kids as well.

JW:Any there any differences between titles that prove popular in the UK than elsewhere? And what type of manga sells the most in the UK?

SJ:We actually haven’t started publishing the UK yet. We’re still sort of establishing ourselves. What we do is look at what the bestsellers in the U.S. and we’ll bring it through here. In the U.S, we’ve several hundreds of titles coming out each year, but we can’t do the same in the UK due to the size of the market. So we’ll look at about 50-60 titles a year for the UK which is nothing compared to the US. If we bring over what we know works in the US over here then it’s pretty certain it’ll sell. Bestsellers like Battle Royal; Fruits Basket “for girls” is doing amazingly. It’s not just girls buying it either the amount of males I’ve seen buying Fruits Basket is quite amazing. One genre that the Sales Director and a lot of retailers said they didn’t expect to be so popular is Shonen-Ai. It’s not the gay market, but the female market that are buying it. I think that’s really taken many people by surprise, so we’re also going to try different ways of marketing it as well. We want to look at why that has proven so popular, is it the storytelling, the romance, or are females looking at it in a different way? Our Shouen-Ai titles have flown of the shelves here at the Expo so it just goes to show how big the market is.

JW:How do you think the popularity of manga will affect other related industries like the anime industry?

SJ:I think it will help to increase its popularity. Lot’s of people think anime and manga are separate; there not they’re the same sort of thing in many respects. I believe people who are getting into manga will eventually start getting into anime as well. I think the opposite is true also. Although I’ve met lots of people who like anime and have said “Oh! I don’t like manga.” and I think well you can’t say that, because the two are so closely related. They tend to believe the idea that all manga is sex, violence sort of wired stuff, where as it’s not, most manga is just the original form of what they are watching on TV. Most manga titles that become popular often get turned into anime, and you do get some anime that haven’t come from an original manga that do get turned into manga, there’s also cine-manga/ani-manga. Also, because manga and anime are beginning to influence a lot of western directors in their movies you’ve got more people becoming aware of them.

JW:Do Tokyopop have any more plans to increase cross-promotion with anime distributors in the UK. Like the MVM/Tokyopop collaboration on Battle Vixens?

SJ:Yes! We’re looking to increase partnership, we’re all working towards making more people aware of manga and anime as individual companies. So we should be working together as well to achieve this. We’ve got titles that if we promote together will be beneficial to both companies. We intend to talk to different anime companies and see where we can work together, trying different avenues and see what works.

JW:What goes into deciding what titles are released in the UK?

SJ:Popularity in the other markets, we’ll start by seeing what’s happening in the US, and Germany. Although I think the UK market’s tastes is more in line with the US, as the way they present things is completely different in Germany. Although as you can imagine the readership of manga they’re not local, the UK market isn’t enclosed, nor is the US market. The readership are online, the biggest market that know about manga are on the internet. A title may not have come out here but some UK fans may have already bought and read it through importing. We may not have a UK licence for a title it but that doesn’t stop it getting into the country. Then we’ll also get word of mouth, checking websites we can find out what the readers are wanting. At Bristol Expo a while ago lots of people came up to us and said when we going to get such and such a title, and up to that point we might of never thought of bringing some of those titles to the UK. So we’ve now added some of those titles to our UK release schedule for 2007. That change was brought on by reader demand, and that’s what we’re going to work on, we’re going to listen and bring those titles in as well as bringing the more popular titles from other regions.

JW:Do you think it’s fair to say that Tokyopop has a clear lead in the UK market over other companies, due to the mass of titles and branding i.e. like the Tokyopop spinning shelves in bookshops?

SJ:Yes (laughs), we definitely have a lead. I think that’s because we have a good selection of popular titles, ones the readers want. That’s also, what we’re looking to maintain, to remain the No.1 market leader in the UK

JW:Do Tokyopop have any plans to go into the anime industry in the UK as they have done in America?

SJ:I think at the moment the anime market in the UK is quite small. We are looking to working with those in a similar market in the UK, and keeping links between us open. Although one day a light bulb might go off and we’ll think, let’s try that. We’re the kind of company that will try new things, even if they might not work, if it seems like a good idea we’re quite happy to put the backing in and try it out. Again, it might not work first time round but the outcome of it may lead to some better things. So we’re all for it but perhaps not in the foreseeable future.

JW:What impact does the news that in America Funimation has taken over distribution of quite a lot of Tokyopop anime titles?

SJ:I don’t think this is going to affect us too much. It may have ramifications in the future but I don’t think it’s going to affect us much anytime soon. We’re just doing our own thing.

JW:What plans do Tokyopop have for the future in the UK?

SJ: Keep going! We are doing amazingly at the moment as you can imagine. Two years ago at various events in the UK having a table, about the size of an average coffee table with books on to sell to having the shelves we’ve got here which are over two meters in length and about a meter and a half high, and it’s not big enough, we need more! Some of the books we sold out off on day one we had no idea they’d be going as fast as that. I think that shows the rate that we’re growing at, and I think Tokyopop’s presence in the UK is going to continue to grow purely because of reader demand. We’re going to keep going that way and hopefully it will all work out.

-- Joseph (Joe) Wood 9th Jul 06