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What Does the Future Hold for emanga in America?

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Is the future of electronic manga downloads going to increase in America, or are the Japanese just more tech savvy than us? The Japanese have already branched out into electronic formats such as mobile phones and even game systems. Japanese gamers can download manga for their Nintendo Wii’s from five different Japanese publishers, including Kodansha and Shueisha, and another group is bringing digital manga to the iPhone. Even Tokyopop's Princess Ai has been ported to the iPhone and the Japanese Wii by Sunsoft Books, and Sunsoft has reportedly added English subtitle options to that release (see story here).

Tokyopop is offering some manga downloads to mobile phones through gocomics. Seven Seas went an unique route by making some of their titles available for download to the Sony PSP. This is an interesting approach and I like the ‘pushing the envelope’ idea, but perhaps it is limiting the customer base as I would think a lot more people own mobile phones and iPods than Sony PSP’s.

What about Amazon’s electronic book reader, Kindle? It is bulky and expensive and the resolution isn’t very good. However, Amazon has recently released a better version in the Kindle 2. This version is much slimmer, with longer battery life, and a higher resolution with 16-level gray scale. Unfortunately, it still lacks color but I’m sure the next version will have that function. The other interesting aspect is the 3G data network ability to remotely download books, magazines, newspapers, and blogs. Along with the MP3 player ability, the Kindle 2 seems to have decent multimedia functionality, although it is still no iPhone. Overall, I really like the idea as my work often has me on the road for a month at a time. It would be great to load up a few dozen manga onto a unit as small and portable as the Kindle 2. Albeit, the price still makes me cringe.

With that said, we have to keep in mind that this is only the second version of the Kindle, and even the iPod had growing pains. The first couple generations of the iPod was really cool, but they seem kind of lame compared to the newest generation. With that said, the Kindle 2 is still not affordable for my taste, but it gets me wondering. According to Amazon, they have more than 230,000 books available for download to the Kindle. So that begs the question, will American manga publishers begin to offer more of their books in both an (cheaper) electronic format and a (more expensive) paper book?

There is also the Sony Reader Digital Book PRS-700BC that boasts an interactive touch screen display. This holds an interesting ability for college students in the future. Could you imagine downloading all your books for the semester to a single digital book? It should be way cheaper than print copies and Sony's Reader gives you the ability to write on the pages and highlight text. Okay, that is way off subject, but the future is beginning to look up for students. Back to non-academic books. Unfortunately, Sony can't match Amazon's wealth of books for download to the Kindle 2. The Sony Reader downloads books from the eBook Store from Sony or any other site selling PDF ebooks, such as Ereadable, which has 140,000 books.

So the good news on the device and retailer front is that competition does exist. This will force devices to be better and retailers to compete in prices, to a certain extent.

To date, there are few manga available from Amazon for the Kindle and few American publishers have books for sale in electronic format. Infinity Studios seems to still be alive and most of their recent releases have been ebooks. Some of their series are only available in eformat, such as Adrenaline. Their ebooks are PDF format and cheaper than print at $6.50 per book, about 35% cheaper than the $9.95 for print books. Still, this seems expensive when I can buy a printed book from other publishers for anything from $7.99 and up. Unfortunately, Infinity Studios does not have a direct download method, they burn the ebook to a CD for shipping. Multiple books ordered at the same time are burned to a single CD for shipping.

NETCOMICS has been attacking the American market with a progressive tactic in relation to the electronic market. NETCOMICS mostly publishes manwha, and from what I understand, Korean publishers have been providing their books in electronic format for a long time. So maybe NETCOMICS just seems progressive in the American market. All of their titles are available with a free preview and a viewing 'rental' for a fee, and some of their books are only available in electronic format. The books are available for electronic purchasing by chapter, usually around $0.25/chapter. This is incredibly cheap, however, the customer does not download the chapter but receives the privilege to view the chapter. The fee also only allows for the customer to view that chapter for 48 hours, so no reread ability unless you pay the fee again. Again, this is not a perfect solution for getting ebooks into the hands of customers.

That isn’t very many American manga publishers heavily pursuing the electronic format. Some publishers are trying out the web comic idea with a particular manga opening in a browser on your computer, such as Go!Comi and Dark Horse. Many more publishers have free previews available for some of their titles, but usually no download option. Publishers with preview pages include CMX, Del Rey, DMP and its sister imprint June, Viz and Seven Seas.

While ero-manga is a small niche in the U.S., only a few small publishers, adult manga provider Icarus Publishing(NSFW) does have a few digital versions of Comic AG for download through Drive Through Comics. This brings into the discussion the various online sites legally selling manga for download. Many sites have American comics, but there are relativley few that offer manga, such as the aforementioned Drive Through Comics and eManga. eManga was launched by DMP and has many June titles available for purchase and download, along with the Let’s Draw Manga series and DMP’s Vampire Hunter D. Unfortunately, in my opinion, eManga also does a 72 hour 'rental' distribution for its titles.

What does the future hold for American manga fans? Manga downloads with subtitles for the Nintendo Wii, such as the image from the left for Princess Ai, or more options for mobile phones and the iPhone? Will more publishers give the Amazon Kindle or Sony Reader option a try? I don’t know which direction the American industry will go, but I strongly believe it needs to be affordable to become successful. I would think releasing an electronic format, or ebook, would be cheaper for the publisher since it eliminates the printing and shipping fees for the paper books. This should make it possible to sell ebooks for maybe half the price, or less, of print books while maintaining the same profit margin. Of course, this is all conjecture on my part as I am not in the publishing business.



I would read more series, like those I find mildly entertaining but are not willing to pay $10 per volume, if I could legally obtain them for half the price in an electronic format. I especially like the idea of portability that mobile phones, mobile gaming consoles, and the Kindle or Sony Reader provide, but the initial cost is steep. That being the case, it is even more important for publishers to sell ebooks at a much cheaper price than the print copy. For example, Amazon is selling the Kindle download of Yen Press’ Maximum Ride for $7.99 (Sony eBook Store for $9.89). That is roughly 27% cheaper than the retail for the print book ($10.99), but not all that cheap considering Amazon is currently selling the print copy for $8.79. The Kindle copy is only $0.80 cheaper than the print book, not a good deal in my opinion, especially when the Kindle 2 retails for $359.

However, maybe I am approaching the subject the wrong way. Perhaps the idea is that the portability and ease of storage of ebooks make them worth the same as print books? That isn't true for me personally, but perhaps for some folks it works that way.

The emarket also opens a completely different side of publishing for manga publishers and all publishers, really. What about all those out of print books? Making out of print books and manga available in eformat could open a whole new world. Forget trying to peruse every comic book shop you come across in an attempt to find the random out of print title to fill the gaps in your collection. This would make finding those titles easy for customers and continue to make small profits for the publishers. It sounds like a win win to me.

Perhaps in the end, the best direction for American manga publishers to take will be providing both a print copy and an electronic download for their titles. This would allow paper book fans to purchase what they want and for others to purchase ebooks for whatever their desire may be (portability, price, space saving, etc.). This has the added benefit for publishers and customers in the case of poorly selling series. When publishers have to drop the paper version of a series that sells poorly, they could still maintain the ebook format to satisfy fans following the series. No, it is not a perfect solution, but I would rather be forced to read an ebook version of a series I like than losing it forever. For that matter, Infinity Studios seems to have gone completely electronic, but where the heck is the next volume of Unbalance x Unbalance!

I believe more American publishers will eventually head in the direction of selling electronic versions for download, like NETCOMICS and Infinity Studios, but there clearly remains a lot of work to make the process successful.