Found in translation: Fortune magazine spotlights Tokyopop, and gets the lowdown on its selection process from COO John Parker:

"'We have a green-light committee in Japan that evaluates titles that we think would be interesting to Americans.' Once a title is sent to the Los Angeles office, non-Japanese speaking employees gauge its appeal based on the graphics and a summary of the text. Tokyopop measures reader interest by direct communication with its American fans, some 100,000 of whom it e-mails monthly, as well as by trolling newsgroups and chat rooms to spot trends. Then the company brings in a freelance translator and an in-house rewriter to add U.S. slang and colloquialisms. During production, every piece of information about the books is on an online database that allows employees in Tokyo and the U.S. to get instantaneously updated information about anything, from how far along the translation is to whether the graphics have been scanned."