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NEWS: Infinity Studios to Offer Manga, Manhwa via Ebooks




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Arcwave



Joined: 07 Jul 2007
Posts: 246
Location: Seattle
PostPosted: Wed Feb 27, 2008 4:12 am Reply with quote
Cool! Man I hope these guys pick up Elfen Lied...
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marie-antoinette



Joined: 18 Sep 2005
Posts: 4136
Location: Ottawa, Canada
PostPosted: Wed Feb 27, 2008 5:36 am Reply with quote
Interesting. The publishing world is still trying to figure out how to deal with eBooks, so it will be good to see if these do well or not.
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Moomintroll



Joined: 08 Oct 2007
Posts: 1600
Location: Nottingham (UK)
PostPosted: Wed Feb 27, 2008 7:47 am Reply with quote
Infinity seemed to be pretty ambitious as far as their physical releases were concerned (dust jackets, quality paper, colour pages etc.) but they were never going to recoup the cost of producing volumes to that standard given the general bottom-of-the-barrel nature of most of their licenses and their inability to get things out in a fairly timely fashion. I think they bit off rather more than they could chew.
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Dargonxtc



Joined: 13 Apr 2006
Posts: 4463
Location: Nc5xd7+ スターダストの海洋
PostPosted: Wed Feb 27, 2008 7:52 am Reply with quote
I just hope they don't stop printing. I am still waiting to get sent a couple volumes of brand new manga that was out two months ago. Confused
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Richard J.



Joined: 11 Aug 2006
Posts: 3367
Location: Sic Semper Tyrannis.
PostPosted: Wed Feb 27, 2008 10:27 am Reply with quote
Remember when people were saying Ebooks were going to completely replace paper books? I hate to inform Infinity but Ebooks didn't really do all that hot.

Instead of this, maybe they should just fix whatever issue it is that keeps their volumes from coming out in a timely fashion. I know there are many tech-heads out there, it's just that I prefer in hand paper to easily lost electrons. (Not that I'm getting anything from them right now anyway.)
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BleuVII



Joined: 19 Sep 2006
Posts: 672
Location: Tokorozawa, Japan
PostPosted: Wed Feb 27, 2008 11:32 am Reply with quote
This news would be pretty cool if there was a single title in there that I was actually interested in. As it is, just like with most of Tokyopop's stuff, it's a cool idea, but I'll wait for some of the better companies to join in before partaking of it myself.
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hentai4me



Joined: 25 Oct 2005
Posts: 1313
Location: England. Robin is so Cute!
PostPosted: Wed Feb 27, 2008 1:56 pm Reply with quote
Richard J. wrote:
it's just that I prefer in hand paper to easily lost electrons.


Errr...plenty of electrons in books too.

Personally I quite like this idea, for series I am only mildly interested in I wouldn't mind reading them this way. Shame everything they seem to have it utter crap...
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Richard J.



Joined: 11 Aug 2006
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PostPosted: Wed Feb 27, 2008 2:07 pm Reply with quote
hentai4me wrote:
Errr...plenty of electrons in books too.
Oh you know what I meant. Deleting a file (or having it corrupted) is a bit easier than destroying a book.
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DekarMaximGuy



Joined: 21 May 2006
Posts: 22
PostPosted: Wed Feb 27, 2008 2:13 pm Reply with quote
I just hope they don't 'E-Book only' anything I care about, and ESPECIALLY anything I already own volumes of. I have multiple volumes of many of their titles, a single volume of others, and still plenty more I wish I could find, but if they decide to E-Book future volumes of any of those titles, I will not be E-Booking with them.

It's too bad their titles are near impossible to find, and rarely release on time, but E-Books? No thanks. I'd prefer to put up with their untimely and sometimes non-existent releases. And sadly enough, I think I'd prefer they stopped releasing things entirely as opposed to E-Books only.

I hope things turn around for them, and I hope they can get back to releasing things on time. They tend to license stranger, less liked titles, and those seem to be my favorites, so I wish them the best. But If I want a book, I want a book. Not an 8mb file. But this is all just a grumpy man's opinion on the matter, and shouldn't be taken too seriously.
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Patachu
Past ANN Contributor


Joined: 08 Jul 2004
Posts: 1325
Location: San Diego
PostPosted: Wed Feb 27, 2008 2:34 pm Reply with quote
Richard J. wrote:
hentai4me wrote:
Errr...plenty of electrons in books too.
Oh you know what I meant. Deleting a file (or having it corrupted) is a bit easier than destroying a book.




What was that about destroying a book? Wink

Anyway, I don't see this as having that big of an impact. Other publishers have tried digital distribution with only minimal results (whatever happened to Seven Seas' PSP downloads? When is CMX's comic reader coming out?) and honestly the dead-tree-and-ink manga business IN AMERICA is doing pretty decently compared to its on-screen counterpart. Besides, I tend to think of PDF as a format for academic papers, business documents and music scores. If they really wanted to hit manga's core audience for digital downloads, they'd scan each page as individual JPGs/PNGs, stuff 'em in a zip file, and stick it on a torrent. Razz
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Richard J.



Joined: 11 Aug 2006
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PostPosted: Wed Feb 27, 2008 3:02 pm Reply with quote
Patachu wrote:


What was that about destroying a book? Wink
Unlike some people, I don't play with lighters or matches and thus have never set anything on fire unintentionally. I have, however, had quite a few files become corrupted, occasionally for no discernable reason. Hence my thinking that Ebooks are easier to destroy/lose.

Besides, if people aren't even willing to go all out to get free scanlations of manga as new chapters come out for popular series in Japan, how likely is someone to pay for one of Infinity's releases?
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zetsuie



Joined: 21 Jul 2006
Posts: 193
PostPosted: Wed Feb 27, 2008 4:08 pm Reply with quote
Richard J. wrote:


Besides, if people aren't even willing to go all out to get free scanlations of manga as new chapters come out for popular series in Japan, how likely is someone to pay for one of Infinity's releases?
The 204,870 Members at Mangatraders (a site that hosts free scanlation downloads for manga and manhwa) would suggest otherwise.

Personally, I think it has a chance to workout , and that we will see online reading become a larger part of the market simply because it makes things easier from the buyers perspective ,its faster and less expensive when you consider the money you save on sales tax and as for the publishers the money that companies will save on printing will probably more than cover the loss of a few customers. However, I think the only company that can truly prove successful right now is Viz, and I wouldn't be surprised to see them use it as a method to release current chapters of their most popular series to decrease the spread of scanlations(although I'm sure there are a number of problems they would face such as planning and cooperation of Japanese publishers).
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Richard J.



Joined: 11 Aug 2006
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PostPosted: Wed Feb 27, 2008 4:58 pm Reply with quote
zetsuie wrote:
The 204,870 Members at Mangatraders (a site that hosts free scanlation downloads for manga and manhwa) would suggest otherwise.
. . . .

Well, clearly this thread is my personal hell. Everything I post is wrong. (Also, wow, can you imagine how much money would be generated if even half those members actually bought manga?)
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Ryokosha



Joined: 23 Feb 2008
Posts: 107
Location: North Eastern United States
PostPosted: Thu Feb 28, 2008 1:37 am Reply with quote
I truly wish them success, they have titles I like and are a good company as far as I am concerned, they deserve a big hit with this, in my opnion.
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hentai4me



Joined: 25 Oct 2005
Posts: 1313
Location: England. Robin is so Cute!
PostPosted: Thu Feb 28, 2008 3:40 am Reply with quote
Richard J. wrote:
zetsuie wrote:
The 204,870 Members at Mangatraders (a site that hosts free scanlation downloads for manga and manhwa) would suggest otherwise.
. . . .

Well, clearly this thread is my personal hell. Everything I post is wrong. (Also, wow, can you imagine how much money would be generated if even half those members actually bought manga?)


Or maybe you are just unlucky...

I picked up practise from my workplace...EVERY file I EVER have on my computer will be backed up to an external drive, if I actually care about the file it will be backed up online as well. Thus it is actually harder to completely lose the e-book while accidentally leaving a real book on a train, lending it and losing it, water....etc
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