Comments on: Kindle DX: One Step Closer to Digital Manga

By: Gary

Gary — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 16:33:51 +0000

I’m buying a DX for my Mom who is 84 and suffering from macular degeneration. I’m splitting the price with my Dad and brother. Mom loves to read and can only read her books now with a magnifying glass and a strong light. The large format, variable text size, easy-on-the-eyes e-ink and landscape capability means she can now enjoy her favorite novels and not feel like she’s ‘going blind’. It will give back her independance and pride.
In light of all this, it’s more than worth it!

By: Brian Henderson

Brian Henderson — Sun, 10 May 2009 00:05:02 +0000

In theory yes, but we both know that the number of manga you actually sit down and read through cover-to-cover more than once is pretty much nil, at best you might page through it when doing a review, but we’ve got a house full of manga doing nothing but gathering dust that you will *NEVER* re-read. The same is true of all the thousands of scanalations you’ve gotten, you look once, you move on, it’s not something that gets read over and over and over. Now I can understand how some books might be, when I was a kid, there were books that I read again at least 2-3x a year because I enjoyed them so much, but those days are gone for the overwhelming majority of people, especially adults.

Now I might not disagree with you if these digital copies were significantly cheaper than their paper versions, but we both know that, at least at the moment, they’re not. Solely digital versions also suffer from a lot of drawbacks that their paper cousins do not. So you’re paying as much, or in some cases more, for something that you can do less with and that’s not even taking into account the cost of the reader. I’ll agree that someday, e-readers might have a viable place in the home, school and workplace, but that time is not today. You can do everything that you can reasonably do with an e-reader with a physical book, cheaper, faster and easier. Technology is supposed to make your life easier, it’s not supposed to make you justify a purchase doing things you’d never do in real life. Sure, your iPod can hold 5 years worth of music, how often do you actually listen to the vast majority of it? An e-reader can hold 3500 books, when are you actually going to read most of them? Come up with something that will actually make the things I do on a day-to-day basis easier, cheaper and better and I’ll consider it. Otherwise, it’s just another pointless piece of techno-crap that doesn’t solve any problems.

By: Lori Henderson

Lori Henderson — Sat, 09 May 2009 08:57:12 +0000

Manga, and books in general, have a lot of re-readability. There’s many a time when I just wanted to look up something in a book, and ended up getting sucked back in and reading the whole thing. I don’t know that I’ve ever regretted a manga purchase, but there are definitely titles that I don’t think I would read again. Comics are another story all together…

While I do enjoy paper books, I also realize we can’t keep going as we have forever. Paper, ink and distribution has been very expensive. And then there’s the whole greeen movement. Newspapers are already starting to disappear, and while I don’t believe books will be anytime soon, it’s better to have other alternatives in place. The transition may be tough on those of us that computers are technology for, our kids that grew up with computers and iphones as every day devices probably won’t see things the same, and they are the future.

This is something we should keep looking ahead for, and not try to lag behind. It’s the reading that important, and not so much the format.

By: Lori Henderson

Lori Henderson — Sat, 09 May 2009 08:51:27 +0000

I have to disagree about the white paper. I have one series that comes to mind on white paper, Murder Princess, and I didn’t like how bright the white paper was. It called attention to the paper when I should have been paying attention to the story. Bright white isn’t good for paper or digital.

While the Kindle and Kindle DX aren’t ideal, they are the foundations that other companies can build on. Amazon is not in the hardward business. They are a content seller. They want to sell books, paper and electronic. And let’s face it, for business, electronic is easier and cheaper to store and distribute. If you’re a web company, which would you rather stock? Amazon is trying to jump start the e-reader business, and if someone else comes out with a better product, that won’t bother them, just as long as they can sell their books on it. Why else would they put a Kindle app on the iphone?

By: tg

tg — Sat, 09 May 2009 06:53:06 +0000

I re-read a lot of my books/manga/manhwa more than two times. I only buy the ones that I feel are the most interesting to me.

The only manga I really regret in my collection is the first volume of Pixie Pop/Gokkun Pucho. Agh… The characters aren’t too likeable. I should’ve previewed it in the bookstore! >.< The book, that I regret getting, is a tie between Endymion Spring and Grimpow.)

I’m not really into this whole digital age of reading books in a portable computer. I prefer the old fashion paper, thank you very much. I don’t want to see books become extinct (or a “Library Wars” scenario will be playing in front of me).

By: Brian Henderson

Brian Henderson — Fri, 08 May 2009 19:51:06 +0000

The problem is, it doesn’t really balance out, most books aren’t re-read, you read it once, you get rid of it and buy something else. Most manga is read once or twice and never again, what’s the point of keeping things that you’ll never touch again in your life? But with an electronic version, you paid just as much for it as a paper version, but you can’t do anything with it. You can’t sell it, you can’t give it away (depending on DRM), you can’t donate it to a library, all you can do is delete it. What’s teh point in that?

By: Tiamat's Disciple

Tiamat's Disciple — Thu, 07 May 2009 12:33:15 +0000

Bit harsh there Brian

Lori, there have been several publishers that have releases series on white paper. TP, Yen Press, Infinity to name a few. The yuckky coloured paper we get usually is used because it’s cheap. But there are a lot of white paper manga out there, and they look a hell of a lot better in white

My issues with it are that it’s crap, expensive crap at that. The rpice would need to fall considerably before it becomes worth while.

Brian, i disagree with you on several points really. For people like me who are compulsive collectors, having an option to have all my manga and books on one device would be a godsent. I’m at the point now where i literally have to climb over piles of manga to get to the front door hehe.

Also you may not save much on the cost of the ebook, but when you factor in the costs of not having to buy new book shelves and stuff i think it ballances out. Also means i get to take my manga collection in it’s entirety on holidy with me, rather than just a dozen volumes of it.

Same with the likes of ipods. Think of the space saved from having 5000 songs on 1 device, over having the same number of songs in CD form.

Though i agree with you that at the minute it’s technotrash

By: Brian Henderson

Brian Henderson — Thu, 07 May 2009 05:54:09 +0000

The problem is, this is still a piece of technotrash that has no real demonstrable need. It’s a toy. There is no place on this planet where you could ever go that you’d need to take 3500 books with you, any more than people need to carry around 5 years worth of music. It’s a gadget for people who need to get a life and an expensive gadget at that, especially since we already know that you’re not going to save anything significant on the electronic versions of the books to begin with and you lose pretty much everything wrothwhile yhat you get from them. Amazon is banking on the idea that people are going to want another piece of whizbang electronic junk that’s really only good for ego-stroking.

Count me out.