Sony, in an attempt to be competitive with the Amazon and it’s Kindle, announced this week it would be releasing two new versions of it e-reader and a price drop on it’s books. The Reader Pocket edition is slightly smaller than the original e-Reader, with a 5 in diagonal screen, and a price point of $199, $100 lower than the Kindle 2. The Touch Edition will have the standard 6in diagonal screen and has a touch screen with virtual keyboard. The touch screen will give the reader a more book like experience with page turns and the ability to highlight and add notes with a finger or stylus. And Sony will now match Amazon’s price on new, bestsellers of $9.99. While the drop in prices are nice, and may attract more people to Sony, it still doesn’t have a wireless connection. Users of the Sony E-Reader have to download their books to their computers and then upload them to the E-Reader. After Amazon’s “1984” fiasco, is that really a bad thing? Sure, it might be convenient to be able to download a book anytime (in the US only), but Amazon has shown it can and will take back books from…
Manga’s version of the “Sub vs Dub” debate Found this on Twitter via aicnanime: Helen McCarthy weighs in on the OEL manga label debate, and she puts into words something I’ve always thought but don’t think I’ve ever expressed properly: And that’s the reason. Semantics is the study of meanings, and to writers and historians, meanings matter. Fans and businesses exploiting the power of the word ‘manga’ are tapping in to one of the oldest magics known to man – the belief that real names have real power, and that attaching a name to a thought or act can give it weight, can bring it into being. But to me, attaching the word ‘manga’ to non-Japanese comics doesn’t change anything important about those comics, and may well dilute and weaken the power of the word in its original form.
What would it take to get you to buy a Kindle? Amazon’s ebook reader seems to be selling okay (not that we’ve seen any numbers), but there are a lot of people who haven’t taken to it, or any other e-book reader device. And why should they? Books work just fine, and buying them is cheaper than the electronic gadget. Amazon boasts to have thousands of ebooks, but very, very few that would interest readers of this blog, namely manga. What if Amazon tried to sweeten the deal? Would you go for it?
When I last looked at the Amazon Blogs, just after the Kindle 2.0 came out, there were no blogs available. Whispernet is rather pointless if there aren’t any books or blogs to get through it. But that is starting to change finally. A tweet from Erica Friedman about her Yuri blog Okazu being published on the Kindle made me take a look to see if there were any others. I was pleasantly surprised to see there were a few others. Comics Worth Reading is a group blog run by Johanna Draper Carlson. It’s a terrific place to get reviews of not just manga, but comics, graphic novels and everything related to them. Okazu is run by Erica Friedman and is the oldest blog about Yuri manga. You won’t find better or comprehensive information on Yuri than here. There it is, Plain as Daylight is a review blog by Melinda Beasi. You’ll find lots of reviews of manga and commentary here. The Anime Almanac is a blog by Scott VonSchilling. It covers manga, anime and commentary on the medium. The Anime Blog is a group blog. It covers anime and manga, as well as Japanese culture such as cooking, culture and…
Amazon.com isn’t resting on it’s laurels with the Kindle. The Kindle 2.0 was only just releases in February, but less than 3 months later, they already have a new model out, the Kindle DX. It features a larger screen, 9.75 in, integrated PDF support and auto rotating from portrait to landscape.
Today, Amazon.com had a big press event to unveil the newest generation of its e-book reader, the Kindle. Speculation has been running about for while now that Amazon would release a new reader with leaked photos, increased orders of screens, and a long reorder wait at the Kindle store. So, what’s new about it? Well, not much. There were some cosmetic changes, which many people called for when it first came out in late 2007. It’s lighter and thinner, has an estimated 25% increase in battery power, and more memory that will allow it to hold nearly 6 times more books. What’s in it for manga readers? Again, not much. It does boast a new screen that is capable of showing 16 shades of gray, as opposed to the first generation that could only show 4. This would definitely improve the quality of black and white pictures, which makes up most manga releases. What hasn’t changed? The two most important things that would make the Kindle relevant to manga readers; price and content. The price hasn’t changed, so it’s still $359. But in this economy, that prices the reader out of LOT of people’s range. Prices under $200 seems to…
I got this through the comments on a previous post of mine about reading manga on the Kindle. Of course, this isn’t for legally downloaded manga, becasue…..there isn’t any! But if you read and enjoy scanalations, which manga publishers obviously don’t consider a threat or care do anything about, here’s a new solution for reading them on the Kindle. Mangle is open source software that makes organizing and reading manga on the Kindle easier. It was created by Alex Yatskov, a manga reader with one of those imaginary Kindles Michael Gambos keeps asking to see. He did what I couldn’t do; play around with the Kindle and it’s “undocumented features” and got scanalations working on his. Of course because these are not official features, there were problems. See the link for details. But, being an enterprising gentleman, he set to work to create software to fix them. The site includes download links, instructions and screenshots. It’s really sad that we have to rely open source and borderline pirates to get manga in a digital format. But as long as publishers refuse to do anything about it, I’m glad there are people like Alex and the other sites that make online…
I knew I shouldn’t have done it. I saw the con report for the State of the Manga Industy panel from NYAF at Manga Recon, and knew I should skip it. But, being a masochist, I didn’t. So now I have to write another rant about the ignorance of Michael Gambos. Now, I don’t know if it’s just that no one else cares, but the panel was happy to let Gambos speak for them on digital distribution and make his silly little comment about the Kindle.
Earlier this week, I ranted about manga publishers and their head-in-the-sand attitudes toward digital distribution of books. One of their seemingly cited reasons for not supporting digital books is the lack of e-readers in circulation. Sony and Amazon seem to be trying to rectify that.
The Kindle has been getting a lot of press lately. It was feature on the cover of Newsweek, it’s back ordered because of the demand, but is it really all that the hype is making it out to be? And what’s this going to mean to manga and other j-media? The Kindle is Amazon’s entry into ebooks. Since Amazon sells books, this seems to make sense. The Kindle uses a new technology know as “electronic paper”. It uses black ink, in a way similar to an etch-a-sketch, to electronically charge the ink so that it clings to the screen. This gives the appearance and readability of paper without the flicker or glare of a computer screen. It has wireless connectivity that makes getting books and other files fast and easy. No need to search for a WiFi hotspot. Anywhere Sprint service is available, so is your Kindle. You can buy and download books from the Amazon Kindle Store with the keypad at the bottom of the reader. It comes with an account and email address for your purchases and correspondence. You can also download magazines and daily newspapers, so no more paper cluttering your house or needing recycling. It can…