asdfMTV Geek > Digital Comics

Manga reporter extraordinaire Deb Aoki has posted some very thorough coverage of the JManga panel at San Diego Comic-Con. JManga is a group of Japanese publishers that is setting up a manga web portal for foreign readers—it will launch for U.S. readers, but their plans include expansion to other countries. Deb starts us off with a transcript of their SDCC panel and follows that up with an in-depth interview with six execs from four different companies—JManga, Kodansha (the biggest publisher in Japan), Shogakukan (one of the parent companies of Viz), Futabasha (publisher of Crayon Shin-chan), and Kadokawa Shoten (publishers of CLAMP).

Here's a quick summary of what is going on:

• The site will launch in mid to late August with "a few hundred titles," ramping up to 10,000 by its third year.
• JManga will be the online portal for Kodansha USA manga.
• They will also publish Kodansha manga that have been released in the U.S. but were cancelled for one reason or another.
• It sounds like Shogakukan will use JManga as a venue to sample Viz manga, then send readers to the Vizmanga.com website to buy and read it.
• Futabasha, which has not published many series in English, will focus on digital-first releases.
• Kadokawa Shoten will not be releasing manga on JManga, just information about their titles that are available digitally in Japan.
• The manga available will be in a range of genres, including less popular genres such as sports manga, and will focus initially on new titles rather than classics.
• They are working on JManga for iOS devices, but Apple's restrictions on in-app purchases are slowing that down. Android is their next priority, and Kindle after that.

I encourage you to go read the whole article, because there's a lot of interesting information and some intriguing tidbits about how things work behind the scenes. Robert Newman of JManga said "We are interested in working with the scanlation community" and possibly offering books to translators and paying them up front (as opposed to the Digital Manga Guild, where translators, editors, and letterers get a cut of profits once the book starts to sell). Read More...