I’ve never been much of a romance fan, and have never read a Harlequin romance novel in my life. So, when I was given the opportunity to read some of the Harlequin manga released by DMP on their online manga site eManga, I decided to check some of the titles out. I read 7 titles in total, that seemed to run the gambit from historical to modern settings, and from chaste fade-to-black love scenes to those slightly more explicit, but not enough to rate a M rating. Some general observations first. DMP’s eManga site is very well done. The navigation is clean and concise, and easy to get around. The reading list displays all of your titles, including how long your rental will last. The manga reader is also easy to navigate. It allows for either one or two page viewing, as well as zoom in and out. The two page view fit my monitor just fine though, and I could read the text easily without zooming. My only complaint here was about the bookmark feature. It didn’t really work. I tried to use it, but it didn’t remember my page when I came back the next day. Luckily had…
One Shall Stand, One Shall Fall Last Friday night, news started coming in over twitter that Amazon had pulled the buy buttons from all of publisher MacMillian’s books from their website. The books could only be purchased there from 3rd party sellers, and this was for both print and digital books. This included all of their imprints such as First Second books, Tor, and Seven Seas Entertainment. The New York Times then broke the story that Amazon and MacMillian were arguing over Amazon’s $9.99 pricing for e-books. MacMillian, one of the 5 publishers who had signed on to Apple’s iBooks store with the tiered pricing plan, now wanted Amazon to do the same. Amazon’s reaction was to pull MacMillian’s books. You can get a lot of links to reactions here. By Sunday, Amazon had posted to their blog that they would have to give in to MacMillian’s demands, and as of this writing, the publisher’s books were being made available again. This has been brewing for quite some time, and it seems only with the advent of the Apple iPad and iBooks store that publishers seem to be embolden enough to push for the tiered pricing. While the iPad/iBooks is…
New People Grand Opening Saturday marked the grand opening New People in San Francisco, CA. Located in Japantown, it’s a three story shopping center that features Japanese cinema, retail and art all in one place. Several SF peeps/tweets when there. You can find most of the coverage under the topic #newpeople on Twitter. Deb Aoki of About.com: Manga has a photo gallery of the event. AX Flashback AX Backstage has posted the Keynote from Anime Expo 2009, including the “Can Manga From the US Be Commercially Successful?” panel (aka the OEL panel). The actual video of the panel begins on Day 2, Part 2 at about 6:00 in. (link via @debaoki)
You all know I’ve been pushing for getting manga online. It’s something I believe it, and think can really succeed, but only if it’s done right. But, I’m sorry to say, Digital Manga Publishing isn’t doing it right. And it’s not because most of their “launch” titles are YAOI. DMP makes it’s bread and butter off of BL, which hopefully is what helps supports it’s non-BL line (the Vampire Hunter D manga, etc). It’s the way they’ve decided to make it available. DMP has chosen the subscription model for digital content. You “rent” a title for 72 hours for about $4 ($3 special for launch it seems), and then, if you really like it, you can “buy” the book for another $2. In other words, on the second purchase you have unlimited views of the title. Here’s where I’ve got the problem. You have just spent $5-6 on a title, which, granted is half the print cost, but you don’t get to actually download it. It stays on their servers, and you can read it anytime, through their thoroughly annoying, flash based viewer. All you are doing with this model is purchasing the rights to view a title for as…