Forum - View topicNEWS: 37 Japanese Publishers to Launch N. American Manga Portal
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Cait
 Posts: 503 |
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I really think people are interpreting the region issue from a very anime-centric point of view. All of the existing English digital manga portals that I am familiar with (Kindle, eManga, Netcomics) have no region blocking. Books do not get region encoding the way that DVDs do, and are only banned from distribution to certain countries (from the US to several countries that are hostile towards us) and for specific reasons (like "obscene" materials). I really don't think we have any reason to assume that just because these companies are calling it a North American portal, that it means "only available in the US and Canada." It more likely means that because most of the scanlations that have become an issue in the last few years (aside from Chinese ones, which are a whole different beast) have been English ones (as English is the current universal language) and that this site will be catered to the largest segment of English-speakers, ie, the NA market.
What I think is the bigger issue, actually, is what languages will actually be available and/or which titles. Limiting the portal to English, at least at first, is probably the intention they have, but that might change if things go well. However, as existing licenses, which vary between countries/languages, may be affected, the publishers of these books have to carefully choose which titles they can make available and in what languages. This will be especially true for titles already licensed in NA. Anyway, what I found interesting, personally, was that nearly all of Digital Manga's regular licensors are on this list (Libre, Tokuma Shoten, Shinshokan, Oakla...), begging the question of what publishers have actually signed onto their DMG program. |
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einhorn303
 Posts: 1180 |
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I'd like to be happy about this,but it'll probably be burdened with some DRM scheme. In which case it will only frustrate me by cutting into print (and non-DRM) sales and market health.
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Iridescent_Fall
Posts: 20 |
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If this affects the release and quantity of printed material in a negative way, I'm really not interested. I love collecting and having the manga I bought physically in my hands. Not to mention actually collecting and having the series I love lined up on my shelves. I'd pay more to have that than downloading or reading online any day.
Also, having this new manga portal is great news for the industry, but I hope it doesn't badly affect publishers in North America too much. This isn't necessarily good news for them. :p |
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Cutiebunny
 Posts: 1747 |
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Heh. I was in Akiba last week, not for porn, but for shikishi. And UFO prizes...because, Taito Station was practically giving them away.
Speaking of which...if these companies want to launch their portal with user fees akin to what CR charges, I'm hoping they'll also adopt some of the other strategies that work for their Japanese audience. I want prizes, darnit. Offer me a chance to win a shikishi board signed/drawn by a mangaka. Even if my chance to win that shikishi is about as good as winning the lottery, I'll pay. That's what I love about buying weekly/monthly manga in Japan. Every so often, there's a chance for you to win something. Sure, you may end up with 8th "free stickers" prize, but the fact that you could win something potentially cool (past prizes have include PS3s, hand drawn/signed artist items, etc.) by buying something you'd likely buy anyways is great. I'm not holding my breath, but, I'd like to hope that these Japanese publishers will take what works for them on the Japanese market and apply it here. Otherwise, like CR, their operating costs will likely be more than the revenue that they'll take in. |
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configspace
Posts: 3717 |
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sigh... so this news is much to do about NOTHING really |
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macross38
Posts: 2 |
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Guess what?North america includes Canada.In canada there is a province called quebec.In that area of that country they speak french.Plus they have a very large community of people who read manga.Plus there are many people in the norhtern parts of the USA who do speak and read french. Personally it is nice to see them do this.In this day and age it is a great idea. |
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Eloande
Posts: 11 Location: South Cackalacky |
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Also, this wouldn't really harm the English Publishers all that much, if anything it might lead to both companies involved getting royalties from the site if a manga hosted there were to be picked up by an English-language publisher. (Think Crunchyroll, but with Manga). Sounds like good news. ^^ Looking forward to this, even though I've never done manga scanlations. |
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Eloande
Posts: 11 Location: South Cackalacky |
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fuuma_monou
 Posts: 1817 Location: Quezon City, Philippines |
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The workaround is to get Japanese iTunes gift cards. Haven't tried it myself, though. |
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Sunday Silence
 Posts: 2047 |
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Spanish is one of the most used languages in the world besides English, so ignoring that market is still gonna be "justification" for scanlations to continue on to some people. Same goes for French as well. |
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Juhachi
 Posts: 228 |
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This is great and all, in theory, but I'd say there's a 99% chance they're only going to pick popular series, i.e., series that have already proved popular to release in North America. I suppose that works for super-popular series like One Piece and Naruto, and there's also series like Yotsuba&! that could benefit. That said, niche series, and series that have no official fanbase in North America won't be released on this website, meaning that much of the scanlators will still be intact.
Plus, with 37 publishers distributing who knows how many manga, they're gonna need a veritable army to deal with this. Even just assuming each of those publishers choose 5 manga each, that's 185 series, a drop in the bucket of the sea of manga already available, not only officially, but unofficially through scanlators. If they up the number to 10 or 20, I still don't think that's enough. Each publisher would probably have to serve up at least 50 manga each to truly complete with scanlators (and with 1,850 manga available, can you even fathom how many people would work on that?). And then there's the issue with payment. In order to supplement the costs of running the operation, and pay hundreds of people working on the manga (translators, typesetters, cleaning, editors, quality checkers), I don't see this service coming cheap, if it isn't free (which I can't see why it would be). Plus, the translations themselves will vary from manga to manga, and I wouldn't be surprised to see some Engrish in some of these translations. 
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Iridescent_Fall
Posts: 20 |
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I never said they'd be obsolete. Of course they won't! I said it might affect the quantity. I'm not sure 100% how licensing would work for NA publishers with this new portal, but let's say a certain series is released online in English and translated by those working for the portal, it's unlikely that the title will be published by a NA distributer (conflicting rights for distributing?). Or even published at all if it's readily available online, especially if it's a niche title or proves to be less popular. |
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yuna49
 Posts: 3804 |
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I'm curious to see how they'll incorporate digital rights management into all of this. I'm pretty much certain you won't be getting a PDF file that you can share with your friends. Will this be limited to certain platforms like the Kindle? Will you be able to print out the manga? Will it only work on Windows or iThings? (Linux? Not very likely. How about Android phones?) There are a lot of important details that need to be clarified before we know what will really be available and in which formats.
Of course, it could just be what configspace fears, an occasional manga or two made available as a teaser or simply a fan site with little or no actual downloadable content. |
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Paploo
Posts: 1875 |
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Unless of course, the coalition offers a similar service for regions of those languages. I know that manga is really big in France, which supplies many french language countries with imports, so I could see something similar popping up there. I'm guessing that this will be a test run for them. Also- gah, just saw that there's a new french edition omnibus of Brother Dear Brother 0_0! I just might try picking that up |
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