Forum - View topicNEWS: Square Enix to End E-Manga Service in N. America, France
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noblesse oblige
 Posts: 280 Location: Florida |
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Yen Press has a digital manga store and an iphone app, but they didn't have Soul Eater....now I know why. I wasn't even aware Square-Enix had an e-manga store! Now I have to decide if it's worth buying soul eater volumes on there and hope they keep the site running or wait and see if Yen adds it to their library.
Anyways, it seems like the cause of all these failures have been inefficiencies in marketing and mismanagement. First off, these legit companies need to do something to displace pirate sites from the top of Google searches. Google is full of intelligent, tech-savvy employees; I'm sure there are at least a few who have a soft spot for manga/anime. Sorry if that generalization offends anyone, I'm not assigning it any negative or positive judgement. It's just an observation. |
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agila61
 Posts: 3213 Location: NE Ohio |
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I knew it was there ... when I tried to read some sample chapters, they could not display the whole page on my netbook screen.
So I never even got as far as Deb Aoki ... I didn't even try to find out how to buy anything on the site. |
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faintsmile1992
 Posts: 295 Location: England |
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That's precisely true and its not old fashioned cause its normal. I'm 21 and I like looking at the shelves in my room whereas people of all ages download what they want, legally or not. If you care about a real copy, only paper will do, but if you're only interested in reading once, then there are scanlators as a first stop. Same as there's no need for the licencing of anime if you don't want a hard copy or dubs. Licensed e-manga won't work in the west. |
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Pirkaf
 Posts: 156 |
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Yes, just buy books guys.
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configspace
Posts: 3717 |
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DMP offers e-manga as well, but I don't know anything about them. But for Vizmanga, et. al. you are in reality just renting the titles you "buy" for an unspecified period of time. It's not such a great deal either. Amazon has Tenjo Tenge vol. 11 for $11.50 w/ prime. And a new condition book in the Amazon marketplace goes for $9.10. Viz offers the digital version for $9. But despite "buying" it for nearly the same price as the physical manga, you can only view it online through their website. At the very least, digital manga as DRM-free pdf or epub files would provide a real alternative to physical books that you can still own. Look at the explosion of the digital music market (mp3 and aac) |
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agila61
Posts: 3213 Location: NE Ohio |
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The manga I have seen at Vizmanga I would be interested in are available as Nook Comics. They are not DRM-free, but they can be stored on a computer hard drive by downloading the PC Nook app, so if the DRM ever became problematic, it would be feasible to convert them to DRM free at that time. |
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Mr Adventure
 Posts: 1598 |
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Not true. You can also download it to your iPad app. While its not a great state of affairs that we can't download standalone files (even DRM locked ones) for local back ups. It's still more then just renting. I have faith that in the future consumer pressure will lead to local file back-ups in DRM free formats becoming the standard. Many prose publishers are starting to go that route on Amazon and such now. |
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Mohawk52
 Posts: 8202 Location: England, UK |
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Mr Adventure
Posts: 1598 |
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Individual books have lasted thousands of years on a case by case basis. The vast majority of all books ever produced have been destroyed by the ravages of time. It's really no different. |
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configspace
Posts: 3717 |
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See: http://www.vizmanga.com/tenjo-tenge
Nonetheless requiring an app or online connectivity for DRM authentication is still effectively renting. You can't share it, or transfer it to any device, or transfer ownership to another person. And more importantly they do not have any obligation whatsoever to keep the servers or the license around forever. Amazon have pulled Kindle books people have "bought", though with refund, due to: licensing issues, or controversy (people report it as offensive, and they play it safe) I only buy digital books from tech publishers despite Amazon having a cheaper kindle version because interestingly, just about all the tech publishers now offer DRM-free PDFs. While they're watermarked with your name, you can do anything you want with them including printing! But until I see some indication otherwise, I don't have any faith we'll see DRM-free manga.
Current books won't last anywhere near 1000 years unless maybe it's expensive archival quality paper. It'll be yellow and brittle by the end of ones life, and that's assuming keeping it dry, dark, cool storage for most of its life. As for digital assets, the advantage is that you can continuously archive it in perfect quality forever in any medium. Hard drives are finicky things, but should last for a few years if they don't die an early death. But this is not a problem since you can and should always make backups (or use raid at least). Good quality optical media with certain types of dyes and coatings like by Verbatim or Taiyo Yuden should last 50 - 100 years. There have been accelerated aging stress tests done on them. And now, all LG drives are capable of burning M-Disc DVDs. These M-Discs can be read on any DVD drive and they are supposed to last 1,000+ years. |
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agila61
Posts: 3213 Location: NE Ohio |
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Well, effectively, if the DRM can be broken, then its not really preventing the sharing of the file, or transfer of ownership to any device, and whether or not you can formally transfer of ownership rights has always been a legal rather than a technical question. But even setting aside the fact that there may be no way to actually prevent sharing or device transfer with a physical download of a "DRM" file to an accessible folder ... what about if the DRM algorithm can be applied by a third party, as with Nook Comics? You are also going for the whole collection of different rights that have accumulated for books over the centuries ... the core complaint most people have with online readers is that they want a better prospect of perpetual access. |
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Gilles Poitras
Posts: 476 Location: Oakland California |
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Another e-manga services which I rarely hear about is ZQ Books. They have an iOS app for the iPad and may have apps for other platforms.
Few of their titles are available in book form in English and the selection is varied. Some of the titles I have downloaded to my iPad include The Quiet Don (a yakuza gag manga), Salaryman Kintaro (much more to the story than the anime and movie), The Poor Man's Dining Table (where a poor widower comes up with interesting inexpensive recipes), and one of my favorites Hiba - Wild Seven Another (a Sequel to The Wild Seven). |
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Meanwhile how many pirate scanlators are closing down? Anybody? 
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