Movies News Talk
With a new deal with legendary manga publisher TOKYOPOP, book publishing powerhouse Penguin Random House is making bold actions to confirm its expanding Manga business. The agreement will make Penguin Random House among the biggest providers of manga content in the US, therefore highlighting how mainstream manga has evolved into a feature of American society.
PRHPS, a division of Penguin Random House, has agreed to distribute TOKYOPOP's entire library of published works including their current and newly released titles as well as their older, previously published titles as recently reported in a May 15, 2024, post to the official X TOKYOPOP account and a Penguin Random House publisher's services (PRHPS) press release posted to Anime News Network. Under this multi-year contract, PRHPS will be providing TOKYOPOP content for purchase and Distribution via all of its sales channels—including its physical bookshops, online stores, digital platforms, and any other areas where it formally markets its books. The agreement calls for starting on January 1, 2025.
Although news of an old-fashioned, mainstream trade publisher consenting to be a key sales and distribution outlet for Manga may seem unexpected, Penguin Random House has been trying to create and spread its manga presence for years. It committed in 2020 to market and distribute materials from American manga publisher Seven Seas Entertainment. 2019 saw it sign a contract with Square Enix Holdings, a Japanese manga publisher with American subsidiary.
In perhaps the most telling of its intentions in the manga space, in 2010 the company agreed to sell, distribute, and publish manga content for Kodansha, one of Japan's biggest publishers of manga content, including popular series such Attack on Titan and Blue Lock, and the owner of Weekly Shōnen Magazine, one of Japan's two most popular manga anthologies. With the arrangement with TOKYOP, PRHPS becomes one of the biggest West manga content distributors and a major competitor of Viz Media.
Originally founded in 1997, TOKYOP was crucial in enabling manga content including Saiyuki and Courtney Love's Princess Ai to reach the United States and the EU in the early days of the manga revolution. TOKYOPop kept actualizing its attempt to make manga content available daily through its Great Britain and the EU divisions even if it closed down its operation in the United States in 2011. TOKYOPOP's pioneering work brought the word "manga" into English language, as the X post noted.
But the agreement with Penguin Random House and TOKYOP not only lets the latter return to the American market from a position of strength but also helps with worldwide Distribution. For the venerable manga publisher, this is an absolutely win-win agreement.
The US manga market could undergo major transformation with this agreement. With TOKYOP's large catalog of titles and Penguin Random House's wide-ranging distribution network, it's only a matter of time until the two work on fresh material or special releases. Though the market is never more competitive, these two industry heavyweights will undoubtedly keep driving manga material to unprecedented heights.
Two main industry participants, Penguin Random House and TOKYOP, together exhibit a clearer pattern in the US manga business. This sector is fast growing, hence the deal will improve availability of manga materials. Finding out how this deal influences the market will be fascinating.