I have no problems with people like Stu Levy of Tokyopop and Jason DeAngelis of Seven Seas getting manga published by their own company. Sure, they may be able to override the editorial controls in place at their company to get anything published, but hell if you can't make your own company publish your stuff, then what's the point in having a company. Mind you a responsible business person would run their work through the same Editorial and Quality checks that all other manga goes through so potential time and money is not wasted on a flop. But again, it's their company, and if they want to waste money that's fine (but they do have a responsibility to their employees to keep the company running so that the employees can get paid, and making flops isn't a way to run a company).

What does annoy me is this fellow:
From - http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6368709.html?nid=2789
"The publisher created a Flash animation version of Diva v. Poe, an illustrated children's picture book by Kurt Hassler coming from Seven Seas this October. In addition to being a children's book author, Hassler is also the graphic novel and manga buyer for Borders Books and Music and is credited with turning the graphic novel category into one of the fastest-growing sections of the bookstore chain. Hassler is also a well-known manga author (he writes under the name Segamu); the second volume of his comics manga fantasy series Sokora Refugees is due from Tokyopop in October. Seven Seas has a strong relationship with Hassler and the company has offered a number of its titles exclusively through Borders."

Now, in any industry a lot of things get done because of who you know. Hell, people get hired sometimes because they are a good source of contacts. Regardless of how I feel about such an antiquated setup, that's the way it works (I think it has something to do with humans being Social Creatures). First it can very easily said that Mr. Hassler is taking advantage of his situation, but the big concern is that there may be a conflict of interest in what he's doing.

Kurt Hassler is in charge of purchasing Graphic Novels and Manga for the Borders Bookstore chain. While Borders is a great avenue to sell manga, they only have so much shelf space to devote to all the Manga and Graphic Novels out there. So it's very important to a company to get their titles onto that limited shelf space. So not only is Mr. Hassler able to fill those shelves with his manga he can also fill those same shelves with manga from the companies that gave him publishing jobs. The most negative thought one could have about this situation is would have Tokyopop and Seven Seas be as successful as they currently are if they didn't make such a deal with Mr. Hassler.

If we even give Mr Hassler the benefit of the doubt that there is nothing sinister about this, he should had least taken steps to make it look less suspect. He could have made a press release about all this before people started finding out on their own. He could have made it very clear that he would hand off the ordering of the book to a subordinate as a sign of good faith. He could have used his real name too. So in best case, he handled it badly so any negative reactions from it shouldn't be too surprising.

Other links about this- http://www.comicon.com/thebeat/2005/03/kurt_hassler_revealed.html