Will retailers grab their torches and pitchforks to protest this move, as they did when they thought Dark Horse was pricing same-day digital releases below print? Probably not, for a couple of reasons: Bluewater isn’t as big a player in the direct market — it isn’t in Diamond’s Top 10 publishers, and much of its line is aimed at children, who are not the core customers of the direct market.

Beyond that, though, dedicated apps like comiXology and Graphicly seem more like competition for comics stores than e-readers. I think that the latter has broader appeal: While some Kindle comics, like DC’s exclusives, can be read only on the Kindle Fire device, the Bluewater comics can be read on any device with the Kindle or Nook app. This makes the comic more accessible than most, and it’s easy for non-comics readers to stumble upon the comics while looking for books on Romney or Giffords. On the other hand, the comiXology/Comics +/Graphicly ecosystems are set up specifically for comics readers looking for something new — readers who are using digital to supplement or supplant their Wednesday purchases. In other words, with the Kindle and Nook, the subject matter comes first; with comiXology and other apps, the medium — comics — comes first.

This is not black and white, of course. Digital Manga has successfully marketed yaoi manga via the Kindle and the Nook, and DC’s Kindle Fire exclusives were big news. The comiXology app even comes pre-loaded on the Kindle Fire. Still, most of the conversation about digital comics still seems to revolve around comics apps rather than e-readers. Interestingly, I’m not seeing the Bluewater comics on comiXology, so maybe this is a strategy to attract a different audience without cannibalizing direct market sales. (Or maybe comiXology just hasn’t processed the files yet — who knows.)

DC Comics Executive Vice President of Sales, Marketing, and Business Development John Rood and Senior Vice President of Sales Bob Wayne try not to gloat too much as they discuss DC’s October sales numbers over at ICv2. (Actually, ICv2 did the gloating for them with the headline “DC Crushes Marvel.”) Thanks to strong sales of the New 52 line, DC took over 42% of the dollar share and 51% of the unit share in the direct market, pushing Marvel down to about 30% in both measures. And the pie got bigger: Single-issue sales were up 24% compared to October 2010. “We’re excited to see the reports from Diamond that we’ve won the month in dollar share and in unit share,” Rood told ICv2. “I consider that ironic as hell, since we don’t price our comics to win any dollar share battles, and we don’t pump out a lot of inventory to win any unit share battles. So the fact that this is happening accidentally just speaks to the readership of the New 52, and the support from our retailers, which we’re so appreciative of.”

In Part 2 of the interview, Rood says that he sees the sales increase coming from new and returning readers, who are in it for the long haul, as opposed to speculators buying issue #1s in the hope that they will become valuable collectors’ items.

He was a bit less forthcoming on the details of DC’s deal to put their graphic novels on Amazon’s Kindle Fire e-reader, refusing to discuss how long the exclusive agreement would last and whether DC was aware that Amazon would price Alan Moore’s Watchmen at $9.99, half the price of the print version.

As for the trade collections of the New 52, the chief difference that readers will see, Wayne said, is a more unified trade dress; the graphic novels are definitely being presented as a jumping-on point for new readers. As to quantity and schedule, he said that the graphic novel releases will be spread out a bit, compared to the fairly concentrated launch of the monthly comics. While DC is publishing fewer comics titles than last year, the number of graphic novels will remain the same because they will be reaching into the vaults to publish older material, and movie tie-ins, in graphic novel form.

I used to wonder why Digital Manga only published print books, but over the past few years the company has made all sorts of inroads into the digital realm. The latest: bringing Harlequin manga to the Nook, Barnes & Noble’s e-reader. These Harlequin manga are quite a phenomenon: They are actual American Harlequin romance novels that were adapted into manga for the Japanese market. A company called Softbank has been localizing them for American readers and publishing them on Digital’s eManga site, and plans are also in the works for French, Chinese and Korean editions. There will be two versions, one optimized for black and white, the other for the color Nook; the price is $5.99. If you’re not tied to an e-reader (I have both the Nook and the Kindle apps on my iPad), you might check out the Kindle store, where the Harlequin manga are two bucks cheaper per volume. Most comics look like crap on the Kindle app because of its small size and poor resolution, but the digital files for these manga are somehow better and they look fine.

Harlequin manga are a niche within a niche. I have never compared a Harlequin romance and its manga equivalent side by side, but having read some of each, I can say that the manga versions are pretty compressed—after all, a typical Harlequin romance is about 200 pages of prose, while the manga are about 160 pages with very little text. Even given the economies that sequential art bring to the storytelling, that’s tight.

Interestingly, Dark Horse brought some of these manga over about five years ago but canceled the line after a few volumes. They were an odd fit with the rest of Dark Horse’s manga line (which I once facetiously described as “manly manga for manly men”) and an even odder fit with the comics shops that are Dark Horse’s natural ecosystem. Plus they were printed with colored ink—pink for the YA line, purple for the more “mature” titles — which is not unusual in Japan but tends to hurt American eyes.

Sometimes the difference between a success and a flop is how you market it. Digital CEO Hikaru Sasahara told me last April that the Harlequin manga are among the best sellers on the eManga site. That’s not surprising, as Digital’s specialty is yaoi (male-male romances) and as Sasahara observed on some field trips to bookstores, both genres appeal to the same demographic, women of a certain age. The pink and purple are gone, the manga are priced at $4.99 a volume on the site ($5.99 on the Nook), and most importantly, they are placed where readers can find them, on the web and now in the Nook store.

I don’t think Dark Horse necessarily did a bad job on the digital manga — they were operating according the demands of the market at the time, which included a $9.95 price point and an “authentic” feel. The pink and purple inks were authentic, but sometimes you can get too much of a good thing. Digital has built an audience of romance readers over the years with its yaoi manga, and they also have a tradition of good communication with their audience (as Dark Horse does with its male readers). So for Digital, the Harlequin manga are simply the obvious next step.

It used to be gospel among publishers that getting a book banned in Boston juiced sales. Can the same be true for Kindle? Digital Manga is banking on it; the Akadot retail site is offering all three of the books that were removed from Kindle (presumably for adult content) as a discount bundle. These are print editions, and the price, $18.99 for all three, is a considerable discount over regular retail, so it’s a good deal. The Digital folks have done well for themselves out of this whole affair, as the three books in question (two of which were deep backlist) have gotten a lot of attention; advertising them as too hot for digital is a pretty shrewd move.

The Governator

Publishing | As the fallout mounts from the revelation that former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger fathered a child more than a decade ago with a member of his household staff, plans to revive the Terminator star’s acting career have been put on hold — a move that now extends to The Governator, the comics and animation project co-developed by Stan Lee. “In light of recent events,” representatives announced last night, “A Squared Entertainment, POW, Stan Lee Comics, and Archie Comics, have chosen to not go forward with The Governator project.” However, Entertainment Weekly notes the statement was revised two hours later, putting the project “on hold.”

Unveiled in late March, on the cover of Entertainment Weekly, no less, The Governator features a semi-fictional Schwarzenegger who, after leaving the governor’s office, decides to become a superhero — complete with a secret Arnold Cave under his Brentwood home that not even his family knows about. “We’re using all the personal elements of Arnold’s life,” Lee said at the time of the announcement. “We’re using his wife [Maria Shriver]. We’re using his kids. We’re using the fact that he used to be governor.” But even before the couple’s separation became public, producers had backed off depicting Shriver and their children. [TMZ, Entertainment Weekly]

Retailing | Barnes & Noble announced Thursday that Liberty Media, which has stakes in cable, satellite television and interactive companies, has offered to buy the nation’s largest book chain for about $1.02 billion. The proposal, which comes nine months after the retailer put itself up for sale, is contingent on the participation of Barnes & Noble chairman Leonard Riggio. [The New York Times]

Amazon Kindle

Retailing | Reaching a digital milestone, Amazon has revealed it’s now selling more e-books than print editions, just four years after launching its Kindle. [TechCrunch]

Awards | The Anthony Awards, presented annually at the Bouchercon World Mystery Convention for excellence in crime fiction, have introduced a graphic novel category. The inaugural nominees are: Scalped, Vol. 6: The Gnawing, by Jason Aaron and Jock (Vertigo); Richard Stark’s Parker, Vol. 2: The Outfit, by Darwyn Cooke (IDW Publishing); Tumor, by Joshua Hale Fialkov and Noel Tuazon (Archaia); A Sickness in the Family, by Denise Mina and Antonio Fuso (Vertigo); Beasts of Burden, by Jill Thompson and Evan Dorkin (Dark Horse); and The Chill, by Jason Starr and Mick Bertilorenzi (Vertigo). The winner will be announced in September at Bouchercon in St. Louis. [via Comics Worth Reading]

Conventions | Nick Thompson previews this weekend’s Dallas Comic Con, which is expected to attract about 10,000 people. [CNN.com]

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #1

Publishing | Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles co-creator Kevin Eastman will team with co-writer Tom Waltz and artist Dan Duncan on IDW Publishing’s upcoming TMNT series. [Comics Alliance]

Publishing | Jason Wood examines “the myth of the sell out announcement.” [iFanboy]

Creators | Michael Cavna profiles Cul de Sac creator Richard Thompson, soliciting quotes from reclusive cartoonist Bill Watterson and others in the process. “Where to start?… ” Watterson writes in an e-mail. “The strip has a unique and honest voice, a seemingly intuitive feel for what comics do best … a very funny intelligence … the artwork, which I just slobber over. It’s a wonderful surprise to see that this level of talent is still out there, and that a strip like this is still possible.” [The Washington Post]

Creators | Mark Andrew Smith discusses using Kickstarter to fund the second volume of The New Brighton Archeological Society, and surpassing the $6,000 goal: “This got the word out on a huge scale. We saw other high-profile creators throw their support behind us and we got a lot of mail from people telling us how much they enjoyed the book. It was an incredible feeling to see such a show of support and to have people be so vocal that they like our work, and to see them rallying to support us.” [USA Today]

Shinku #1

Creators | Ron Marz talks about Shinku, his new samurai vs. vampires series from Image Comics. [USA Today]

Creators | Matt Wagner chats about his Dynamite Entertainment series Zorro Rides Again. [ICv2.com]

Creators | Jaime Woo profiles Snow creator Benjamin Rivers, recipient of a 2011 Xeric Grant. [Torontoist]

Creators | Collaborators Zan Christensen and Mark Brill discuss their anti-bullying comic The Power Within, which was inspired by Dan Savage’s It Gets Better project. [KOMOnews.com]

Comics | Comics historian Paul Gravett selects the Top 5 political graphic novels. [CNN.com]

Comics | Mark Ginocchio, whose blog chronicles his efforts to collect every issue of The Amazing Spider-Man, explains why he’s expanding to include the newly launched FF: “… Something felt different about this new Fantastic Four series. Yes, I realize that Spider-Man is also technically a member of the Avengers, in a series being written by Brian Michael Bendis that is drawing both extreme praise and criticism. But Spidey and The Avengers don’t resonate with me. When I look at the current Avengers lineup and see characters like Spidey and Wolverine, it feels like a professional sports all-star game. Sure it’s entertaining to watch all these guys get together once a year, but you wouldn’t want to see it every night.” [Chasing Amazing]

Digital Manga Publishing, which is certainly living up to its name nowadays, is now selling manga for the Kobo e-reader. This is a logical extension, as they already sell manga via the Kindle, the Nook, and their own eManga site, and Digital vp Fred Lui told me a few weeks ago that their revenues from the Nook are fast approaching their Kindle sales. And with Amazon removing some of their manga from the Kindle Store for reasons that remain unclear, it makes sense for them to diversify into as many channels as possible.

Since I haven’t heard about any graphic novels for the Kobo, I went to their store and poked around a bit. A search on “graphic novel” turned up Ted Dekker’s graphic novels, which seem to be on every medium, an adaptation of the children’s novel Artemis Fowl, and… Pokemon Graphic Novel, Volume 2: Pikachu Shocks Back, by Edward Bulwer-Lytton. I was a little surprised to see that the guy who coined the phrase “It was a dark and stormy night” had written a Pokemon book, especially as he died in 1873, so I downloade it; alas, it turned out to be just another badly written 19th-centry novel. This suggests that the Kobo bookstore is not quite ready for prime time, but given that Digital is about to greatly expand its digital offerings, it makes sense to maximize the number of channels as well.

Pet on Duty is back!

Ever since the news broke last week that Amazon had removed some yaoi manga from the Kindle store, people, myself included, have been bombarding them with questions. No answers have been forthcoming, however. Amazon is like a huge black box with a screen in the side that sells books. What goes on inside it is anybody’s guess; their PR people don’t return emails or calls, and their customer service department spits out bland, automated responses like

“Occasionally books are removed from the Kindle Store for various reasons. We do not have any specific details about why this particular book may have been removed. The book’s publishers decide if a book is to be made available for the Kindle, and they can change this status at any time.”

In the Case of the Missing Manga, Amazon fails the Turing Test. It is obviously a robot.

That said, somewhere inside its complex machinery is some sort of a sensor that responds to exterior stimuli. I emailed Animate U.S.A. to confirm that some of their books had been removed, and the answer was surprising: They told me that Delivery Cupid and Pet in Love had been removed but were now back, and that vol. 1 of Mister Mistress was removed and “doesn’t get approved again,” which apparently means it won’t be back. The Yaoi Review has a very comprehensive list that covers several publishers, and they also show Pet on Duty, Kiss Ariki Episode 2, and Hyper Loving a Maniac, part 4, as having been removed and then restored.

Digital Manga, on the other hand, suffered a double whack: Not only are their manga still missing from the Kindle Store, but the print volumes have been removed as well. The Yaoi Press titles that were removed from Kindle, including Happy Yaoi Yum Yum and The Aluria Chronicles, do seem to still be available in print. Meanwhile, the Kindle Store continues to offer such classy photo books as Nude & Naked Hot Pants (Hot & Seductive Girl) and No Holes Barred. It’s hard not to think of this as sexist, as yaoi appeals primarily to women and the photo books obviously cater to a male audience.

Also, as was inevitable, there is now a Facebook page for this issue.

Delivery Cupid: No longer delivered wirelessly to your Kindle

Last week we reported that Amazon had removed several yaoi manga from the Kindle Store on the grounds that it did not meet their content guidelines. I spoke to Fred Lui of Digital Manga Publishing, the publisher of the deleted manga, and he said that Amazon didn’t give any more specific reason than that, although he did note that there seemed to be a new guy who was being “overzealous.”

The Kindle Store still offers plenty of yaoi manga, including some fairly steamy titles, so Amazon doesn’t seem to be deleting all the yaoi by any means. However, Animate U.S.A., a Japanese publisher that publishes yaoi manga exclusively on the Kindle, reports that Amazon has removed some of their books as well. I e-mailed them last week to ask about this, and this is the reply I got:

As you may know, some titles are already removed by Amazon without any specific reasons.

We just know that the titles contain content that is in violation of their content guidelines.

The e-mail did not include specifics, but I looked through their press releases and came up with three titles that Animate announced but that are not currently available in the Kindle Store: vol. 1 of Mister Mistress (vol. 2 is still available, and both can be bought used in print through Amazon), Delivery Cupid, and Pet in Love, a Pet on Duty side story (Pet on Duty is still available). I have e-mailed Animate to confirm that these titles were removed by Amazon and not by the publisher.

While the deleted Digital titles are still available via the Nook and Digital’s own eManga website, Animate U.S.A. publishes only to the Kindle, so these titles are no longer available digitally.

A side note: In the earlier post, we mentioned several non-yaoi graphic novels that seemed to be at about the same level of explicitness as the ones deleted; one of these, Christmas Creampie, is no longer available in the Kindle Store.

It’s hard to know whether number 2 or 3 above is responsible, but Amazon has instructed at least one publisher to remove its yaoi books from the Kindle store, while allowing considerably more explicit male-female titles to remain. Digital Manga Publishing, which puts out several lines of yaoi, ranging from the fairly tame June imprint to the pretty steamy 801, posted this notice on its blog yesterday:

Recently Amazon has become more strict in enforcing their content requirements for ebooks. Several DMP books that have been available online since 2009 are getting the axe, beginning with our 801 Media titles like Weekend Lovers and King of Debt. However, in the last few days the issue has spread to the June imprint by Amazon’s refusal of The Selfish Demon King, and the removal of The Color of Love from the Kindle store. We fear that Amazon may target more of our books for removal so we’re warning all Amazon Kindle store users that providing you with our content may become more difficult in the future. However, if you purchase our ebooks before Amazon decides to remove it from their store you will still be able to access the book from your account.

All the books mentioned are already gone from the Kindle store, and several are missing from Amazon’s print book selection as well.

(Warning: NSFW image below.)

I looked at the linked content requirements and didn’t see anything addressing explicit sex, but someone at Amazon’s yaoi forum pulled this out of their guidelines:

“Pornography
Pornography and hard-core material that depicts graphic sexual acts.

Offensive Material
What we deem offensive is probably about what you would expect. Amazon Digital Services, Inc. reserves the right to determine the appropriateness of Titles sold on our site.”

I’m going to confess right here that I haven’t read any of the manga we are discussing. It’s just not my thing. But fortunately, lots of other people do read them. Here’s Julie Opipari, a longtime manga reader, writing about one of the pulled manga, The Color of Love:

The sex, like the rest of The Color of Love, was understated and almost gentle as the couples expressed their deep affections for each other. While there are panels of entwined couples, there’s hardly even a fleeting glimpse of muscled buttocks here. Drats.

In fact, all the reviews I checked described the book as more sweet than sexy, which raises the question: If this story had been about a man and a woman, would it have been removed from the store?

A quick search suggests that the answer is “no.” Titles currently available on Kindle include Christmas Creampie, a graphic novel in which “horny Whoreville hussies show a frustrated dildo shop owner the true meaning of Christmas,” and Little Lorna in Resort Sports (I’m not even going to link to this one), in which Little Lorna, who is spunky, sexy, but “not too bright,” goes on vacation to Mexico with her Uncle Bob; “nudity, spanking, and sexy humor” result.

So apparently a sweet love story between two men is unacceptable, but an orgy in a dildo shop is OK.

At least one other publisher is affected: Some Yaoi Press titles were removed, and publisher Yamila Abraham was told to tone down the images accompanying their prose titles.

Digital is probably the biggest publisher of BL (boys love) manga on the Kindle, but there is another: Animate U.S.A., a Japanese company that publishes yaoi exclusively on the Kindle — there are no print editions. The publisher sends me regular press releases, and all the titles I checked are still available, although I believe Animate’s books are pretty explicit.

So what’s going on? If previous experience is any guide, the Internet will be rising up today, and it should be an interesting show. Hopefully at the end of it, Amazon will restore the deleted titles, but this episode points up once again the problems with centralized distribution, as well as raising another troubling question: Why does this only seem to happen with gay material?

Amazon Kindle

E-books | Amazon announced it will allow Kindle users to read e-books from more than 11,000 libraries, marking a reversal of the company’s policy. Previously library users who borrowed e-books could read them on Barnes & Noble’s Nook, the Sony Reader and other devices, but not the Kindle. “We’re excited that millions of Kindle customers will be able to borrow Kindle books from their local libraries,” Jay Marine, Amazon’s director of Kindle, said in a statement. The Kindle Library Lending will debut later this year. [The New York Times, press release]

Publishing | Several DC Comics staff members laid off as part of the sweeping corporate restructuring — among them, editors Mike Carlin and Pornsak Pichetshote — have been hired by DC Entertainment’s newly formed Burbank-based Creative Affairs division, which operates alongside Creative Services. [Bleeding Cool]

Legal | Japanese police have arrested a 25-year-old man suspected of using Share file-sharing software to upload about 28,000 manga and anime files without the copyright holders’ permission. [Anime News Network]

Tokyopop

Publishing | Sam Humphries and J. Caleb Mozzocco join in the reflection on the closing of Tokyopop’s U.S. publishing operations. [Comics Alliance, Every Day Is Like Wednesday]

Publishing | IDW Publishing is auctioning all 83 variants of Godzilla: Kingdom of Monsters #1, with the proceeds going to AmeriCares to benefit the victims of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan. [IDW Publishing]

Retailing | Borders Group, which is closing 226 superstores, is paying a dozen consultants more than $500 an hour to guide the company through the bankruptcy process. [AnnArbor.com]

Retailing | Kevin Czap tours Cleveland’s comic stores. [Comix Cube]

Far Arden

Creators | Far Arden creator Kevin Cannon has been dubbed the best cartoonist in Minneapolis. [City Pages, via Top Shelf]

Creators | Matt Fraction talks about the new Mighty Thor series: “Is he a superhero, is he a god? Is it a little g or a big G and what does that mean? Is my god better than your god, and does Jesus live somewhere? It’s also fun to refer to big Gs and then cut to Galactus.” [USA Today]

Creators | Jonathan Valelly spotlights Chester Brown and the official book launch for Paying For It. [Xtra]

Creators | Cowboys & Aliens co-writer Andrew Foley discusses the upcoming movie adaptation. [Edmonton Sun]

Akamatsu's legit manga download site

A blog called Welcome Datacomp has translated a discussion of manga piracy between manga creators Ken Akamatsu (Love Hina, Negima), Minako Uchida, and Kazumi Tojo that took place on the Japanese social media site Togetter about the prevalence of scanned and fan-translated manga on the internet. Akamatsu is experimenting with his own free manga site, but even so, he sounds pessimistic: “Am I too late? I get the feeling that [my project to release free manga PDFs] won’t be enough at this point.” He goes on to say

Hasn’t illegally scanned manga, propagated so casually like this, fallen into the category of “property of the Internet”? You won’t be able to eliminate it. The only thing we can do at this point is [launch our own free websites with the] “advertising model”. (Because charging people would be difficult.)

The most recent illegal scans are very high quality, and the translations are exceedingly accurate. (^^;) If there’s no respect for original authors on the net, then obviously the official versions will lose out.

The creators express dismay that people who would not shoplift from a physical store have no compunction about reading pirated manga; as Tojo says, “It seems like people will pay for things they can touch like vegetables, but they think it’s a waste to pay for intangible data.”

It seems like the creators are talking about both scans in Japanese, which are read locally, and fan-translated manga for other markets; they cite one example of a publisher being told by fans to change a name to the one selected by a scanlator. And there’s an interesting side discussion on the decline of the cell phone, which was once a popular platform for yaoi and erotic manga. As people switch to smart phones, the options dwindle: Apple doesn’t allow adult manga in the iTunes store, and Akamatsu says Kindle doesn’t either (I’m not so sure about that), but the fans reassure him that Android allows it, making that the platform of choice for ero manga fans.

Hereville

Awards | Barry Deutsch’s Hereville: How Mirka Got Her Sword has been nominated for the Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy, presented by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America as part of the prestigious Nebula Awards. “When the nice lady from the Nebula committee called me, she said this is ‘essentially the Nebula Award for young adult books’,” Deutsch writes. Although graphic novels are specifically mentioned in the Andre Norton Award guidelines, this appears to be the first time one has been nominated. The award was established in 2005 in honor of prolific science fiction and fantasy author Andre Norton, who passed away that year. The winners will be announced May 21 in Washington, D.C., during the Nebula Awards banquet. [SFFWA]

Passings | We’ll collect reactions later today to the sudden death of respected comics and animation writer Dwayne McDuffie — Comic Book Resources has remembrances from more than a dozen industry figures — but I wanted to go ahead and point to a handful of links: The Associated press obituary; a few words from Christopher Irving, accompanied by a beautiful portrait of McDuffie photographed by Seth Kushner on Feb. 13; the origin of Static; and a look at Spider-Man anti-drug PSA comics written by McDuffie. There’s also McDuffie’s message board, where he interacted candidly with fans on a regular basis. Two threads are devoted to the news of his death and memories of the creator they often referred to as “the Maestro.” The site’s administrator has posted a message last night on the main page: “Dwayne’s family and friends would like to thank everyone for the outpouring of condolences. They are much appreciated in this difficult time.” [Dwayne McDuffie]

Amazon Kindle

Digital comics | Todd Allen examines now Amazon’s pricing policies are forcing some publishers to rethink using the Kindle as a platform for their comics. [Publishers Weekly]

Digital comics | Gus G. Sentementes spotlights the move by Diamond Comic Distributors into digital distribution with its recently announced partnership with iVerse Media. [The Baltimore Sun]

Publishing | Poland’s foreign minister has ordered the pulping of a controversial graphic novel about the composer Chopin commissioned by the country’s Berlin embassy. Designed to promote Polish culture to German schoolchildren, the comic included a profanity-laden story in which a modern-day Chopin goes to a concert at a prison with his skinhead friend. The approach, intended to make Chopin more accessible, backfired, leading to the destruction of all 2,000 copies. [Warsaw Business Journal, TheNews]

Creators | Geoff Boucher chats with veteran artist Joe Staton about taking the reins, with writer Mike Curtis, of the Dick Tracy comic strip: “My involvement with Dick Tracy and Chester Gould goes back about as far as is possible. My mother said that when I was 3, I was found in the kitchen floor with the Sunday funnies, trying to copy a picture of Tracy. That would have been in 1951. Everything I’ve learned or developed in terms of my art since then has been built on those first encounters with Tracy. That’s why I’m not trying to ‘ape’ Chester Gould’s style (or Rick Fletcher’s, or Dick Locher’s, for that matter). I just always have the faith that when I get down to basics, I’ll find Tracy waiting for me.” [Hero Complex]

21: The Story of Roberto Clemente

Creators | Cartoonist Wilfred Santiago discusses his upcoming graphic biography 21: The Story of Roberto Clemente, which will be released in April by Fantagraphics Books. [Publishers Weekly]

Creators | Alex Dueben talks with Camilla d’Errico about her influences, art school and her new art book Femina and Fauna. [Suicide Girls]

Creators | Collaborators Joshua Hale Fialkov and Rahsan Ekedal discuss Echoes, their new miniseries from Top Cow Productions’ Minotaur Press imprint. Note: The first issue is being serialized here at Robot 6. [Major Spoilers]

Creators | Thom Atkinson briefly spotlights Frank Quitely, who’s holding a workshop today as part of the Glasgow Film Festival. [The Skinny]

Creators | King City creator Brandon Graham has moved his always-entertaining and informative blog to a new location. [Royal Boiler]

I have a friend who thinks that Kindle is actually the best way to market comics. “People are already there,” she told me. “That’s where they go to look for books. Why not sell them graphic novels there?” It’s stunningly logical when you think about it, as plenty of readers already get their graphic novels through Amazon, which often offers a hefty discount.

Graphic novel publishers don’t seem to have caught on, however. The list of graphic novels available for the Kindle is large but eclectic: There’s Joshua Hale Fialkov and Noel Tuazon’s Tumor, a line of Kindle-only yaoi from the Japanese publisher Animate, Harlequin manga published by Digital Manga Publishing, children’s folk tale adaptations from Graphic Universe, some self-published graphic novels—there’s good stuff in there, no doubt, but it’s not easy to find it unless you already have a creator or title in mind. On the other hand, you don’t have the problem of fragmentation that the iTunes store presents—you can search for a creator or title and be confident that if it’s there, you will find it, while the iTunes store doesn’t allow you to search across apps.

As a graphic novel reader, however, the Kindle leaves something to be desired. The Kindle device itself is in black and white, so color is out. As I mentioned, I don’t have a Kindle so I use the iPad. The interface is a lot better than it used to be, but the page size is small (the right size for the Kindle but smaller than the iPad screen). You can enlarge it with the iPad’s pinch and zoom functions, but since the resolution isn’t very good, the picture doesn’t become clearer. The biggest distraction is a sort of cloudiness around the lettering, which gets bigger when you zoom. Also, the Kindle interface doesn’t play very nicely with the iPad; if you pinch or zoom, you have to click a red X on the corner of the page to get back to a normal-size page and move to the next. This is a distraction and seems unnatural, since a big red X usually closes you out of whatever you are doing.

Some books do better than others. I downloaded half a Harlequin manga, which was advertised as a free book (nothing in the catalog listing hinted that it was only a very large sample, which is another problem with the Kindle store). It looked terrible on my iPad but the page size was bigger on the Mac version of Kindle, which made for an easier read. The Graphic Universe folktales and the yaoi from Animate stayed small on both devices. Tumor, which was originally published for the Kindle, was chopped up into “pages” of one or two panels, which I thought made it harder to read. The World of Quest, with thick lines and simple blocks of color, wasn’t too hard to read at its small size. All the comics got fuzzy when I zoomed in, though.

Amazon could be the best place to get digital graphic novels. The marketplace is there, and as my friend pointed out, people are already buying books there. If you want to sell, say, a Janet Evanovich graphic novel to Janet Evanovich mystery fans, that would be the place to do it. But Amazon has to improve the searching a bit and optimize the books for devices other than the Kindle in order for that to happen. Unfortunately, they may be going in the opposite direction: When I checked out the books in this 2009 article about graphic novels for the Kindle, a lot of them had disappeared.

Robot 13

The big news in the e-book world this week was the Digital Book World convention in New York, and the big news for Robot 6 is that Robot 13 (no relation) won the Publishing Innovation Award in the comics category.

If there was every any doubt that comics have arrived, brush it away: There were only five awards categories, and comics made the cut alongside fiction, non-fiction, children’s, and reference. And the list of nominees was quite diverse:

• Clown Commandos #1 (Big Red Boot Entertainment)
• Disney Epic Mickey Digicomics (Disney Publishing Worldwide)
• Motion Comic SUPERARE (Amo Tarzi)
• Operation Ajax (Tall Chair, Inc.)
• Robot 13 (Robot Comics)
• Tumor (Archaia Studios Press)
• Valentine (Robot Comics)

The nominating judges clearly favorited individual comics over publishers: comiXology, iVerse, and Graphicly are all absent from this list, despite the fact that they have been doing quite a bit of genuine innovation. And it’s worth noting that for the judges, iTunes isn’t king. The finalists for the awards were Robot 13, Operation Ajax and Tumor, and two out of these three are not iPad comics: Robot 13 is available for iPhone but was originally developed for Android, while Tumor is distributed via Kindle. In the eyes of these judges, at least, there’s still quite a bit of diversity in the digital world.

The digital comics scene is still developing, but the iPad was the game changer. For many people, it was the first time that they could comfortably read comics on a handheld screen. Now, it’s just a question of marketing—this year, publishers will grapple with bringing comics to a wider audience, outside the existing readership, and balancing the digital marketplace with the established brick-and-mortar retail structure.

Here, then, is a look back at our digital year.

January

Apple announces the iPad.

February

Graphic.ly

Graphic.ly, which at this point still hasn’t released their product to the public, acquires iFanboy.

Forbes.com reports that Apple’s iBookstore would have “Comics and Graphic Novels” as a top-tier category. Plans must have changed, as the current version, sadly, features no such category.

March

Jason Thompson explores iPhone apps that pick up manga from illegal scan sites. At the end of the year, many of these apps are still going, but with less content than before.

Rantz Hoseley tells Heidi MacDonald that Longbox, billed as “iTunes for comics,” would launch its public beta at Emerald City Comicon.

Tokyopop CEO Stu Levy tells ICv2 that Tokyopop would publish its own iPhone content this year and that he is very excited about the iPad, especially the iBookstore. At the end of the year, only one new Tokyopop book (Hetalia: Axis Powers) is available digitally, and Tokyopop is completely absent from the iBookstore.

iVerse, one of the pioneers of iOS comics apps, announces it will have a comics app ready to go the day the iPad launches.

April

With the launch of the iPad just days away, Marvel announces that it will have its own app, developed by comiXology.

Comic apps on the iPad at its launch include Comics by comiXology and Comics+ by iVerse.

IDW announces four iPad apps, mirroring its iPhone apps: an IDW app and branded apps for G.I. Joe, Transformers, and Star Trek. (IDW’s apps were developed by iVerse.)

The Japanese publisher Animate begins publishing yaoi manga directly to the Kindle, in both English and Japanese.

Apple rejects a proposed iPhone app from Pulitzer Prize-winning political cartoonist Mark Fiore because it “ridicules public figures”—which is pretty much what political cartooning is all about. A few days later, Apple reverses that decision.

ICv2 estimates North American digital comics sales at between half a million and a million dollars annually.

I note that all the manga apps in the iTunes store take content from illegal scan sites.

May

Masaaki Hagino, of the Japanese e-book developer Voyager Japan, says that the iTunes store rejected 30% of the Kodansha manga his company adapted for the iPhone due to relatively mild violence and nudity

IDW announces it is creating comics apps for the BlackBerry; it is the first publisher to do so.

June

Marvel announces its first comic to be released in print and digital form on the same day: Invincible Iron Man Annual. The total cost of the digital version, which was released as three separate issues, was a dollar more than the print comic. Six months after this was big news, the price of the digital version has not dropped.

Longbox launches its public beta.

Apparently unaware of the irony, Apple forces the creators of Ulysses: Seen, a graphic-novel adaptation of James Joyce’s Ulysses, to re-frame a number of panels to eliminate some nudity. A few days later, they reverse their decision.

Boom! Studios unveils its iPhone/iPad app and announces that it will make its entire backlist available digitally through comiXology, iVerse, Graphic.ly, and Panelfly.

DC announces its iPad app, developed by comiXology, and reveals that it will pay royalties to creators for digital downloads of their work. Joe Quesada hastens to clarify that Marvel is also paying digital royalties to its creators.

July

Fraud arrives in the digital paradise, as a rogue developer hacks into people’s accounts and uses them to buy his comics apps (poorly translated bootleg manga) and boost their ratings in the iTunes store.

Graphic.ly launches a Windows 7 version, making digital comics more accessible to non-Apple users.

As things get crowded in the digital ecosystem, webcomics entrepreneur Joey Manley says the big publishers are getting it right, for once.

August

Just in time for summer vacation: The Scott Pilgrim iPad app (developed by comiXology).

Image Comics joins the growing number of publishers who have their own iPad app.

Webcomics creators rise up in arms against a mobile app that is basically an RSS feed pre-loaded with comics—but that accessed their sites without their consent, and which they fear would steal readers.

September

Chip Mosher of Boom! Studios says that making their backlist available digitally has grown their audience rather than cannibalizing print sales.

Comics come to the digital library service Overdrive.

Marvel comics become available on the Graphic.ly platform.

The Walking Dead goes day-and-date in the comiXology app with a cover price of $2.99 (higher than the previous delayed issues but the same as the print comic).

October

At New York Comic-Con, Dark Horse announces its digital initiative (a stand-alone app that will debut this month) and Boom! Studios reveals that its titles will be available on MyDigitalComics.com. Yen Press becomes the first manga publisher to announce its own app, which is also a stand-alone app (and which has not yet launched).

ComiXology launches a Walking Dead comics app.

Barnes & Noble unveils a color version of their Nook e-reader.

November

The manga publisher Viz announces its iPad app.

Due to a glitch in the system, comiXology releases Ultimate Thor #2, which Marvel is publishing simultaneously in digital and in print, a week early. Benjamin Simpson buys it, reads it, and wakes up the next morning to find that Marvel has locked the comic on his device, making it unreadable until the official release date. This raises the question of whether digital comics readers are buying the comics or just a license to read them, a question later explored in depth by David Brothers.

ComiXology announces it will make their developer tools available to a select group of publishers to help speed up the process of getting their comics onto the platform.

December

Apple posts its lists of top apps of the year, and comics do very well: ComiXology’s Comics app and the Marvel and DC apps (both developed by comiXology) are among the top-grossing apps.

Digital Manga Publishing makes its Vampire Hunter D manga available on the Nook.

ComiXology launches a version of its app for Android devices.

IDW begins releasing graphic novels as stand-alone apps.

Someone figures out how to put bootleg manga on the Kindle.

Marvel announces that the Death of Spider-Man arc in its Ultimates line will be released simultaneously in print and digital.

Dark Horse announces the initial lineup for its comics app, which will launch with full story arcs of Hellboy, Conan, The Guild, Umbrella Academy, and other comics, both bundled and as single issues.

Finally, just as Time Magazine has its Person of the Year, I think it’s appropriate to designate a Digital Creator of the Year. It’s a tie, actually, between Alex De Campi, creator of Valentine, and Mike Jasper and Niki Smith, the co-creators of In Maps and Legends. Alex, Mike, and Niki published their comics on every imaginable platform this year—iPhone, iPad, Android, Kindle, Nook—and that sort of versatility is what creators will need to have in the coming year, as digital comics expand and develop in, hopefully, a variety of niches.

It was inevitable that someone would try manga piracy on the Kindle. It’s actually coming a bit late: The iTunes store is riddled with manga apps that pick up files from pirate sites like OneManga.com.

The Kindle is more of a closed system, so you have to hack it a bit, but an entrepreneur has figured it out. Manga on the Kindle is a subscription service; for $5 a month, you can download your choice of manga to your Kindle. It sounds legit, until you look at the list of available manga: Naruto, Bleach, Fullmetal Alchemist, Air Gear. No way is any American manga publisher going to let properties like that go to an obscure multi-comic app like this.

So how do they do it? At first I thought this might be published as a blog or e-zine on Amazon’s Kindle service, but it’s not. Basically, it’s just downloads that can be configured to go on a Kindle. There’s something touchingly old-school about the instructions page; it reminds me of the beginner’s guides to IRC (Internet Relay Chat) that scanlation sites used to feature, back when you still had to download. It’s written in the same friendly, reassuring tone, and it explains absolutely everything that will happen.

It’s pretty blatant piracy, but Manga on the Kindle gets a lot of things right. They offer the most popular titles, they don’t restrict it to a single publisher, and they offer a couple of first volumes for free. This last one is key: If you’re going to use digital comics as a sampler, you might as well be generous. Viz wants $4.99 for the first volume of Naruto in their iPad app; Square Enix wants $5.99 for the first volume of Fullmetal Alchemist at their online manga site. In a word: No! These are first volumes of series that have been around for years; free copies are readily available through libraries, Paperback Swap, or your best friend’s older brother. Charging full price for them is shortsighted and greedy, given that the publishers made their nut on these years ago.

Whoever is behind this has some good insights into what readers want. The list of available manga includes a lot of strong titles, and there are at least ten volumes of each. At five bucks a month, it’s actually quite a bargain, especially since you download the manga onto your computer and therefore get to keep it forever—no fear that the Amazon folks will sneak in in the middle of the night and take it back, as they did with 1984.

I assume this will be taken down pretty quickly once the publishers notice (and assert their legal rights), but I hope someone is paying attention. I doubt this site will get much traction because of the clunky download procedure, but the guy behind it gets almost everything else right.

Brigid: First of all, the most important question in an interview like this is: What is the comic about?

Mike: In Maps & Legends is about a young woman caught between this world and another, and her attempts to save them both. It starts off as a contemporary fantasy, as our hero Kaitlin Grayson and her friends get caught in the web of a mysterious man named Bartamus who shows up at Kait’s place one night. Bartamus tells Kait she’s the only one who can save his dying world. As you can guess from the title, cartography, history, and stories play a key role in the unfolding mystery of our comic.

Brigid: How long do you plan it to be?

Mike: This first story arc is ten issues. I can see a lot more stories in this series, but we’re starting with this arc to see if it sparks interest in readers who’d like to read more.
 
Brigid: Why did you choose to enter it in the Zuda competition?
 
Mike: It’s all Niki’s fault! She put out a call for writers via Twitter, and I sent her half a dozen ideas, and this is the one that stuck. I’d never heard of Zuda before, but when I found out it was an imprint of DC, I sat down and started reading all the comics available at the site. All of it great stuff, and while I felt a bit daunted by the quality of the other contest winners at the site, I thought ours added a new take, a strong female protagonist, and a great cape-and-tights-free story.

Niki: As Mike said, I’d been musing “aloud” on Twitter about entering the Zuda competition last fall—a few writers tossed out ideas, but I really liked Mike’s—it had the most potential *visually*, I thought. A map carved into the walls of a room? There was definitely potential to show something Zuda readers hadn’t seen.

Brigid: What was that experience like? Are you glad you did it?

Mike: The month of the competition, November 2009, was pretty heinous. Lots of checking and double-checking of our numbers, and the twice-weekly ranking updates were particularly nerve-wracking. And spamming everyone we knew to get them to vote! Though we led all month, I was convinced by the last day of November that we’d lost. But we didn’t, and I’m really glad we did it, in spite of all the chaos of the year since. It was a crash course in marketing, what to do to get the word out and what not to do. Plus, getting contracts and checks with the DC logo on it? Priceless!

Niki: Stress. My wife made me promise I would never submit again. It was a tight race start to finish. You can’t just sit back and hope people like you—you have to get the word out and bring in new readers. Comics are always in need of new readers!

Brigid: How did working for Zuda shape the way you made the concept—the format, the storytelling, the pacing? Is there anything you would do differently?
 
Mike: I think Niki would agree with me that we’d adjust the size and orientation of the page—Zuda used a horizontal format, which is great for reading online, but not so great for reading on a Kindle or Nook or iPad. And so many comic distributors are set up for vertical, not horizontal, that we’ve had to do some jury-rigging to make our comic fit at certain sites. But I’m not sure I’d change anything else, and I actually like the horizontal aspect.

Niki: I don’t know if I would go standard comic vertical, actually. Horizontal works perfectly for screens; you just have to rotate how you hold it. We may have tried to squeeze less action onto each page, though, if we had originally intended it for the smaller screens of phones and ereaders. Pacing-wise, Zuda’s deal is always for a “season” of 60 pages—and conveniently enough, that’s exactly where we are now! One year to the day from winning Zuda, we’ve released the third issue, and those who have read it will know just how much of a cliffhanger our Zuda season would have ended on—with no definite say on whether or not it would continue! Releasing In Maps & Legends independently means we can tell the full 10-issue story without our readers having to worry they’ll never get to see the end.

Brigid: How did you find out that Zuda was shutting down, and what was your immediate reaction?
 
Mike: I got an email from Zuda, and then sat back in shock for a while. Then I watched the twittersphere blow up as other creators reacted to the end of Zuda. I wasn’t completely blindsided, as there were rumors flying already, and I had a bad feeling about it in my trick knee, but still… it stung. I got on IM immediately to chat with Niki and commiserate.

Niki: All Zuda creators got the same form email, with not a lot of information. We had no way of knowing who was cut free and who they’d decided to continue—or where and how they would survive. So far at least one other ex-Zuda series (War of the Woods) has released independently on Comixology, and I hear a few others have plans, but by now I think many have simply moved on to their next projects. It’s a shame, because I’d enjoyed following their series on Zuda.

Brigid: Why did you decide to present your story on so many platforms?
 
Mike: It didn’t make sense to limit ourselves to just one distributor (though it would’ve been a lot easier on us!).  There still isn’t one distributor that hits ALL the various platforms and devices (some are getting closer and closer, however). Also, people are going to start choosing their favorite app for getting their comics—I know I don’t want to go through five or six different comic apps on my iPhone or computer to get to the comics I want to read. So we figured the best route was to do some research and find the big players as well as the smaller players that we felt had lots of potential and reach, and get on board with all of them.

Niki: Digital reading devices are growing so fast it’s hard to keep up. The iPad was released something like 6 months ago, and a wave of tablets are soon to come—all running on different operating systems and needing different programming. There’s no single distributor available on all of the platforms we’re on. We have a different partnership for Kindle, for Nook, for Android phones, iPhones, Windows phones… the list goes on. By limiting ourselves to one distributor exclusively, we would have cut out a huge percentage of our readers. EReader sales actually make up the majority!
 
Brigid: How do you handle the nuts and bolts of formatting it for all these different apps?
 
Mike: Niki does a lot of the behind-the-scenes work, and I’ve got notes and spreadsheets for the different issues and all the distributors. We’re still fine-tuning the process, but it’s getting better with each issue. Thank goodness for the wonders of Dropbox, which helps Niki and keep our files synced up between North Carolina and Ohio.

Niki: I do a lot of Photoshop work. Kindle and Nook take longest because their smaller screens means all the lettering needs to be made larger and more legible. For the “guided view” panel-to-panel stuff for iPhone and Android, the distributors handle that.

Brigid: Do you plan a print edition?

Mike: A print edition is definitely in the plans. We’re considering a couple different publishers, but haven’t settled on anyone just yet. I’m looking forward to it.

Niki: We plan on querying a few publishers soon, but the hard-core print thinking may come closer to the end of the 10-issue run.
 
Brigid: What have you learned since leaving Zuda?
 
Mike: I think I have a pretty good feeling of what it’s like to own your own business! I went from scripting 3 issues a year (with Zuda) and doing some minor marketing for each new page (Zuda did 1 page a week, while we’re doing 22 pages every six weeks) to running what’s essentially a small digital publisher. I’ve gotten really good at reading contracts. I think I’m getting better at writing press releases. And I’ve learned that you get exactly out of creating a comic what you put into it. It’s been a rush.

Niki: Agreed. Time management is huge. I’m drawing, inking, coloring, lettering, formatting 22 pages in 6 weeks… it’s exhausting but I’m actually getting the hang of it!

Brigid: Do you like being independent comics producers, or would you prefer to be working for a publisher?
 
Mike: As I said above, it’s a lot of work, and the marketing side of it can be really draining, especially when I’m trying to get an issue scripted and keep in touch with our distributors and discuss the art with Niki. Ideally, I’d love to have it both ways—work on indie comics as well as work with a publisher.

Niki: I’m still actively trying to find a publisher for a few graphic novel projects of my own, so in the end I would say I’m probably inclined to lean that way. There’s no safety net when you go independent—no advance, no page rate, just your own meager skills as an artist and marketer. I would also love to work with a good editor, particularly on the comics I write.

Brigid: What’s next once this comic is done?
 
Mike: With seven issues to go, it’s hard to see that far ahead at times, but I’d love to do another graphic novel or maybe a shorter one-shot kind of comic, and then do another story arc for Maps. I also have some non-graphic novels out there to publishers, and if those get picked up I’d love to get a series going there for one of my novels. My five-year-old son and I just finished the most recent Wimpy Kid novel, and I think there are a ton of stories waiting to be told for that audience, especially for boys ages 5-12—we loved the mix of stories and line art in those books, and as my wife would attest, I haven’t completely left behind my junior-high-school mentality…

Niki: I actually just won a grant to work on a graphic novel I’ve been writing for the past few years, so I’m hoping something comes out of that! It’s a story I would love to get out there, and it’s MUCH different from IM&L in both style and tone.

The Walking Dead #77

Publishing | Image Comics Publisher Eric Stephenson talks at length about market share, the economics of creator-owned comics, fallout from the prolonged legal battle between Todd McFarlane and Neil Gaiman, and retailer concerns about simultaneous print and digital release of The Walking Dead: “… I was honestly a little thrown by the sheer amount of invective generated by the day-and-date release of a single Image digital title, sold at exactly the same price point as the print version of the book. Nobody was undercut, nobody had an unfair advantage, and I don’t see how it’s any different from offering the book for sale through any other storefront. Virtually every comic is available digitally on the same day it’s released to comic book shops — for free — and that has been the case for several years at this point. Publishers have slowly begun to establish a foothold in digital publishing, but I would be willing to bet more people downloaded The Walking Dead #77 for free than paid for it through our app. In fact, I’ll even go one better and speculate that more people downloaded The Walking Dead #77 illegally than bought the print comic. And you know what? The book’s sold out — we have more reorders than we can fill and we both know those reorders wouldn’t be coming in if retailers weren’t selling out of the books.” [Bleeding Cool]

Viz Media

Publishing | Viz Media has been teasing “HUGE news” that “changes everything,” leading some to speculate the manga publisher will announce digital distribution. [Kuriousity, via MangaBlog]

Publishing | Tokyopop’s Mike Kiley wades into the often-thorny issue of what qualifies as manga: “In my humble opinion, while my roots are in Japan and my first love of ‘comics’ really comes from Japan, I think a lot of these distinctions have become meaningless.” [The New York Times]

Retailing | Amazon’s sales rose 39 percent in the third quarter to $7.6 billion, helped in part by the debut of the Kindle 3 in June. [The Wrap]

Retailing | Hi De Ho Comics & Books in Santa Monica, Calif., one of the oldest comics-specialty stores in the United States, is moving to a larger location. [Hi De Ho Comics & Books]

Passings | An obituary and tribute appear in the Medford, Oregon, newspaper for colorist Jonny Rench, who passed away Saturday. [Main Tribune]

Creators | Laura Hudson chats with Kate Beaton about Marvel’s Strange Tales II, the evolution of her work, reader reactions, Wonder Woman, The New Yorker and more. [Comics Alliance]

See You in the School of the Muse, one of several Libre titles available in Japanese on the Kindle

Several scanlation groups are reporting that they have received cease and desist notices from the Japanese publisher Libre, which specializes in yaoi manga. Baka-Updates reports that the scanlation groups Attractive Fascinante, Bliss, and Liquid Passion & Biblo Eros all received C&D notices, and the latter two have taken down or removed links to content owned by Libre. It looks like Blissful Sin has received a notice and complied as well.

On the one hand, it’s a little surprising that Libre is targeting these groups, as they seem to only scan manga that hasn’t been licensed in the US, and the audience for yaoi is relatively small anyway. On the other hand, Libre has been pretty aggressive in asserting its rights. The company was formed following the 2006 bankruptcy of another yaoi publisher, Biblos and picked up the rights to the magazine Be x Boy and the work of several creators. The American publisher Central Park Media was publishing series by these creators, but Libre accused them publicly of violating their IP rights. At the time, Ed Chavez (now the marketing director for Vertical, Inc., but at the time simply a blogger with an encyclopedic knowledge of the Japanese manga scene) commented on how unusual it was for a Japanese publisher to call out an American licensee, in English, no less. CPM disagreed but ultimately filed for bankruptcy, making the whole thing moot.

And now we get to the heart of the matter: Libre is publishing yaoi for the Kindle, under the aegis of parent company Animate, so they are obviously protecting their market. Animate publishes four titles a month in English, but they also occasionally put up a book in Japanese as well. Although most serious scanlators take down their scanlations of books as soon as they are licensed, there may be less lag time in this case. Or maybe they are just being aggressive; Libre is a member of the anti-scanlation coalition formed earlier this year.

The general reaction seem to have been pretty mature—the readers realize that scanlations are illegal, and they are resigned to it. Unlike Onemanga.com fans, they aren’t demanding that someone set up a new free manga site for them or that manga publishers just “learn to deal with it” and let the scanlators continue, although one reader did pen an embittered open letter to Libre on her LJ, in which she forcefully makes the point that she buys lots of yaoi, some of it directly from Libre—and details the order she just canceled. It’s an interesting twist on the voting-with-your-dollars argument, but one that most of us can’t pull off as we don’t buy Japanese manga to begin with.

(First spotted via Cait Branford on Twitter.)

Youka Nitta's new site

Youka Nitta has a niche following in this country and in her native Japan—she creates yaoi manga—but as anyone who follows that scene can tell you, that is a pretty hard-core niche. Two years ago, she admitted that she had traced some of her art from fashion advertisements, which was not just an aesthetic sin but also an infringement of copyright. The magazine that published her work, Be-Boy Gold, apologized and dropped her from the lineup before she had completed her 14-volume series Embracing Love.

Well, Nitta is back. Last year she wrapped up Embracing Love in Japan, and this week, Animate U.S.A., which publishes manga in English on the Kindle announced that that last volume would be available, on the Kindle, in Japanese. They are also publishing two other Nitta manga in English this month. Some non-Japanese speakers claim they can read untranslated manga because the visuals carry the story, but that has never been my experience. Nonetheless, it’s interesting that Animate sees enough of a market for untranslated manga to make it available to fans. And Nitta has launched a website, with quite a bit of English content, “in response to the huge demand from fans,” according to Animate.