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I’m pouring one out for JManga. Today, May 30, 2013 is the last day of the service before its complete shutdown. Can’t really say why exactly it failed. I’ve read elsewhere that even its most popular titles only sold in the hundreds of copies. And I’ve read speculation that the marketing was not as good as it could be, or that there were just too many pirate manga sites to complete with.
In any case, I was a paying customer who will miss them. Thank you JManga.
It’s every publisher’s hope that new books will catch on and find an audience. You promote, promote, promote and then watch the sales figures. If all goes well, the rocket takes off and a smile comes to your face. I’d been smiling a bit lately about Oh My! A thinking man’s guide to crossplay.
The eBook has been doing reasonably well on the Kindle, but when sales recently spiked a bit, I was curious and began to do some digging. What I discovered was that the book was also available on a number of file sharing sites on the web. My book was being pirated!
I knew that this was a possibility from the beginning. Piracy is just an unavoidable part of the digital ecosystem that has to be accounted for in any modern business plan. So rather than becoming angry, I was rather proud that someone thought my book was worth pirating. At $1.99, it certainly isn’t too expensive, and the sales spike is very likely due to the increased exposure.
So it seems that there really is no such thing as bad publicity!
Oh My! A thinking man’s guide to crossplay is available for Kindle, Nook, and iPad/iPhone.
Okay, we’ve all read scanlations at some time in our manga reading lives. And we’ve all felt, or should have felt, guilty that reading illegally scanned and translated manga does nothing to support and thank mangaka for their work. Well now you can do something about that! Join the Digital Manga Guild and become part of the solution! In the latest Akadot newsletter this morning I read:
Did you know that the Digital Manga Guild just got 508 titles from Japanese publishers? I’m pretty excited because it won’t just be yaoi, but shojo, shonen, seinen and josei! I wish I had the time to join, but maybe you could help out at digitalmangaguild.com!
The Digital Manga Guild needs translators, editors, and letterers to succeed. And everyone involved will be paid for their efforts based on title sales. With 508 new titles, I think that’s an opportunity that should not be passed up. So if you have the skills and love manga, give the guild a shot and bring more of the manga you love to the ones you love in a way that supports the artists.
Yesterday Lendle, a Kindle eBook lending network service had its access to the Amazon API blocked. Lendle made use of the Amazon API to facilitate the lending of Kindle eBooks all in accord with the current restrictions. Kindle books may be loaned to another Kindle user for a period of 14 days. During that time, the owner of the book cannot read it until the end of the loan period. And any given book may only be loaned out one time and one time only. Barnes & Noble Nook eBooks suffer the same lending restrictions.
After changes to Lendle’s use of the API, Lendle’s access to Amazon has been restored. But the whole debacle casts light once again on the overly restrictive eBook lending rules. First, 14 days is too short. I’ve read plenty of books that with life’s little interruptions have taken me far longer than 14 days to read. I’m not a library, when I loan a book to a friend, I don’t stamp it with a due date and charge fines if it comes back late! Secondly, many of us have loaned a good book to family and friends more than one time only. It is not uncommon for an entire family to share and read a single copy of a book.
These restrictions, coupled with DRM, are intended to fight piracy. But by making it harder for the consumer to use the product in a way that seems natural and fair to them, they actually encourage the piracy they wish to limit. We’ve already seen this with software, music, and movies. People living in the same household don’t want to buy full priced copies of things they have already paid for once. If it is easier to obtain and use a pirated copy of a book than a legal one, then guess which one wins?
As eBook readers begin to fall below $100, more of them are finding their way into the hands of younger readers. Stripping eBooks of DRM is not all that difficult and a quick web search is likely to find pirate copies of anything even remotely popular. It would be better in the long run if lending restrictions are loosened up to resemble something closer to what book readers expect, than to raise up a new generation of casual eBook pirates.
Rather than continue unrealistic lending policies, eBook sellers and publishers should use the lending data to track reader preferences and trends in order to sell more books. The current policies actively discourage lending, opening it up should result in a larger, more significant data pool for analysis. Just as iTunes did for digital music, the eBook buying and lending experience should be as easy as tapping a touchscreen.
Recent tweets from TokyoPop indicate that the company is in the process of bringing its manga library to the iPad and other eBook readers soon. When asked on Twitter about creating an iPad manga app like competing publisher Viz already has, TokyoPop responded that one was coming soon. And indicated in response to other questions that Kindle and Nook support was also in the works.
TokyoPop eManga Tweets
The global recession coupled with the twin challenges of piracy and the transition to eBooks have put a lot of pressure on the publishing industry. The Borders bankruptcy has been particularly hard on small independent publishers who may not be able to easily write off millions of dollars in book shipments that may never be paid for. TokyoPop cited the Borders bankruptcy in its most recent round of layoffs and restructuring.
TokyoPop already sells manga online via Zinio, but the rising popularity of the iPad and the need to make up for losses may be accelerating its move to support additional digital formats. It is not publicly known just how successful iPad manga has been for Viz, but with fewer and fewer places to buy manga at retail, digital may be the only avenue left for growth. For small publishers, digital may be a matter of life or death.
The Wall Street Journal has reported that Borders is in the final preparations for declaring bankruptcy. When this happens, a lot of Borders bookstores are going to close. Borders currently operates about 650 bookstores and various reports estimate that they will likely close 150 of these. I think, for no reason other than things often being worse than they appear in these situations, that Borders is going to close a lot more stores than that by the time it’s all over.
But what does this mean for the manga reader? Personally, I’ve already made the switch to eBooks whenever a title I want is available in digital format. But many manga title are not currently available in any digital format, at least not legally. So I’ve depended on Borders for much of my print manga for years now because they always had the best and largest selection of titles, including mature ones.
After reading a bit of speculation on what the surviving Borders would look like on Japanator, I think the prospects for print sales of manga are rather bleak indeed. Between a smaller Borders chain only offering the most popular manga titles and Barnes & Noble maintaining its quick return policies and a ban on mature titles, that seemingly leaves Amazon as the winner in all of this. Or does it?
Manga publishers in Japan and their U.S. licensees have been fighting a seemingly losing battle against illegal manga scans, scanlations, on the web. Initially, many, if not most, of the illegal scans consisted of series that had little hope of being distributed in the U.S.. But the growth of the internet soon saw even those popular titles licensed in the U.S. easily available on a number of web sites for all to download for free.
Some of the highest profile scanlation sites have been closed down, but many remain and are relatively easy to find for the most popular manga titles. There are even scans of manga showing up as YouTube videos! By contrast, there are still few popular manga titles available in eBook format for eReaders like the Kindle or Nook. The number of popular titles is growing on the iPad, but few of the largest part of the manga buying demographic, teens and college students, own iPads. A growing number of popular manga are also readable on publisher web sites in a web browser where they must compete head to head with the often easier to read (i.e. no Flash or DRM required) illegal scanlations.
Against this backdrop, it isn’t clear that Amazon will be the clear winner as retail bookstore availability of manga decreases. It seems likely that at least some frustrated manga readers will turn to the grey market for their manga fix unless publishers and booksellers give them an easy way to get manga legally. For now, I’ll probably buy from Amazon because there are no longer any nearby bookstores that carry the titles I want and the selection available at anime conventions is haphazard at best. My hope is that in 6 months I’ll be writing about how all of the major manga publishers have released their titles in all of the popular eBook formats.
If the publisher allows it, eBooks for the Nook or the Kindle can be loaned out to another person to read on their eReader for a limited time. We’re all familiar with lending and borrowing the books of friends and this is often the way we discover new authors. Reading, while in itself, a solitary activity, has always been an intensely social pursuit. How does this translate to the eBook experience?
Well so far, much gets lost in the translation. First, not all publishers allow lending of their eBooks. Second, the lending period is only 14 days. So if your buddy loans you an eBook edition of War and Peace, then you’ve just got yourself a new job for 2 weeks. Finally, you are only allowed to loan a book out exactly one time and one time only! I’d say this is a pretty lousy translation at this point.
I understand what the publishers are trying to do with these restrictions, but if they expect a family or group of students living together to buy a separate copy of a book for each person, then they are going to be disappointed. the absurdity of the restrictions will only increase the attractiveness of getting eBooks through less than legitimate channels.
Publishers would do well to adopt a model similar to the one iTunes uses. In iTunes a limited number of computers can be authorized to play music in the user’s library. This works reasonably well for the typical family with computers on a home network. Why not allow readers to authorize a limited number of eReaders to read the books they have bought? Eliminate the one time only lending limit and the 14 day loan period. I’d also get rid of the restriction that you cannot read a book you have currently loaned out. Why shouldn’t a family be able to read a book together simultaneously? This capability could even be a selling point for eBooks versus physical ones.
A good portion of computer software piracy is the casual sort where a family copies software onto multiple computers at home rather than buying a full priced copy for each machine. Major software publishers, such as Microsoft, Apple, and Symantec finally got a clue and began to offer multi-license family packs. For much less than the cost of individual licenses, the typical pack allows the user to legally install the software on up to 3 computers in their home.
As eBooks continue to rise in popularity, publishers would be wise to adopt more liberal restrictions before the grey, 100% discount, market becomes the preferred way for people to fill their eReaders.
BTW, you can get War and Peace for free at Project Gutenberg right here!
As I continue to add more books to my Nook, it surprises and saddens me just how many classics are not available for purchase in any eBook format. Last night, while preparing for a Bible study I was hoping to add some of the reference books for our study of Romans to my Nook. I was greatly disappointed to find that many of them were not available as eBooks. Given the command to make disciples of all nations, I don’t think Paul would be too happy that much Christian thought was not available in one of the easiest formats to share with the entire world. If Paul were here today, I have little doubt he’d be sure to publish in ePub format!
I kind of expect religious literature to be, *ahem*, hidebound and slow to come to new formats. But for a highly successful commercial series like the Harry Potter books, it’s rather surprising and annoying. You will find many books about Harry Potter in eBook format, but not the series itself. That remains “safely” on paper pages, though I’m  sure a quick Google search will turn up many digital copies of dubious origin. The cat being out of the bag anyway, why not make an eBook version available for people willing to pay for it? But I guess eBooks are only for muggles…sigh.
I visited my neighborhood Borders yesterday for some hands on time with the Kobo eBook reader. I was impressed by its really slim design and its responsiveness, a good buy at $99. After that I did my usual perusal of the manga section, looking for new volumes in series I follow and any other new titles that might be promising.
In particular, I was looking for Neon Genesis Evangelion: Campus Apocalypse Volume 2. I’d bought volume 1 there a few weeks ago and saw online that volume 2 had actually been out a while. I was a bit annoyed to see that volume 2 was still not there. I resigned myself to the likelihood I would have to order it online and went home.
Later I learned that Diamond Book Distributors had put all shipments to Borders on hold. Â I’d already heard that Borders was negotiating with publishers to delay payment to them while they seek new financing. But this was the first I’d heard of shipments being stopped. Diamond distributes books for a number of manga publishers, including Dark Horse, the U.S. publisher of the manga I was looking for.
This situation leaves me no other choice than the online option for new manga. There aren’t any other bookstores nearby that carry new manga. If Borders goes under, it’s going to be a lot harder to find manga at retail. Fewer bookstores will make it more difficult for all publishers to sell books profitably.
I think the shrinking number of bookstores is already a factor driving the adoption of eBooks. Graphic novels have been slower to come to the medium, in part due to their use of color. But manga are mostly black and white, they generally translate to eBook form very well. If shipments of most manga to Borders have already stopped, then perhaps we will see an accelerated move to the eBook format.
The situation for manga is further complicated by the very strong reluctance of Japanese publishers to embrace digital media. But the growth of iPad app versions of popular manga would indicate that they are changing their stance. And declining manga sales in Japan has increased the importance of sales outside of the country. A Borders collapse in the U.S. would be a big problem for Japanese manga publishers who are already facing the challenge of widely circulating illegal scans of their titles on the internet. Some of these scans have even been packaged up and sold in the Apple App Store!
In the end, the threat of piracy on one side and the collapse of a major bookseller on the other, will lead to more eBook manga. At this point, there’s no going back.
Yesterday I gave my wife a Nook Color for her birthday. She had already shown a lot of interest in my Nook, but I also knew that she was very interested in Apple’s iPad as well. In the end, the Nook Color won out because it was the best overall value for the money. I knew my wife would want to do more than just read books, but not enough more to justify the greater cost of the iPad.
She’s very happy with her new Nook and now faces the joyful task of filling it with books. It seems that every media transition leaves us buying our collections all over again. I still remember the great tape to CD migration and the horrible carnage it left behind in my wallet! Going from CDs to MP3s was somewhat less traumatic. In each of the aforementioned transitions, most of the trouble and expense was due greedy record companies who kept costs for the consumer much higher than the cost of production justified. CDs cost a lot less than LPs and tapes to make, but even now you’ll find CDs in excess of $20 retail in the US, even higher in Japan. The artifically high high cost of music coupled with the growth of the web, lead to rampant piracy which eventually forced prices to go down. With that history still fresh in our minds, I don’t think there will be a repeat of this in the transition to eBooks.
It is true that publishers have pushed back, maintaining eBook prices that equal or sometimes exceed printed book prices for popular authors and inciting the wrath of many. But I don’t see this remaining the case very long for a number of reasons. One of those is the huge wealth of classic literature already available for free or very low cost, completely legal! Â Amazon and Barnes & Noble have done well to make acess to these very easy in their eBook stores. Many of these public domain classics are also available for download from the Project Gutenberg and similar groups. So adding many of those books you had to read in high school won’t cost anything at all!
Another reason the high prices cannot be maintained is the declining number of physical bookstores. This has been the trend since Amazon became popular, first selling physical books and now eBooks. Sales of eBooks on Amazon recently passed those of hardback books on the site for the first time. And the Kindle has been their best selling product for a number of years now. Consumers are used to buying things online for less than retail stores and digital goods for less than physical ones. With fewer places to sell physical books and consumers who are warming up to buying eBooks online, the prices must come down.
Finally, piracy has not disappeared. As the number of eBook readers go up, so will demand for the works of popular contemporary authors in that format at what is considered to be a fair price. It doesn’t take a mathematician to know that it costs less to make and sell a copy of an eBook than a physical book. Any popular, but overpriced eBook will almost certainly be widely pirated, just as music and movies continue to be. There will always be piracy, but if the success of iTunes has taught us anything, it’s that if product is easy to get legitimately at a fair price, most will take the easy route.
So by all means, buy those books again! It’ll be cheaper than last time and the added functionality and portability is more than worth it. The only thing I really miss is not being able to proudly display my collection of eBooks when people visit my home.
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