Kindle
Robot 13 wins Digital Innovation Award
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.
- January 28, 2011 @ 09:00 AM by Brigid Alverson
2010: The year in digital comics
What a difference a year makes! A year ago today, the iPad not only didn’t exist, it hadn’t been officially announced yet. People read comics on their iPhones and iPod Touches, but the screens were too small for a good experience (and therefore, no one wanted to spend much money on them). The iPad changed all that, with a big, full-color screen that is just a tad smaller than a standard comics page (and a tad larger than a standard manga page), and publishers started taking digital comics seriously. The distribution was already in place, thanks to the iPhone—comiXology, iVerse, Panelfly—and now the publishers not only jumped on board with those platforms but also started developing their own apps.
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 2, 2011 @ 08:55 AM by Brigid Alverson
Manga piracy moves to the Kindle
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. Continue Reading »
- December 27, 2010 @ 09:00 AM by Brigid Alverson
Mike Jasper and Niki Smith chart a new course for In Maps and Legends
Mike Jasper and Niki Smith hit the big time when their comic In Maps and Legends won the Zuda competition in November 2009, but shortly after the comic started its run, DC took down the whole site, leaving many of the creators without a platform. Jasper and Smith took the plunge into self-publishing, relaunching the comic on multiple platforms, including Kindle, Wowio, LongBox, Drive Thru Comics, and iTunes. You can get the comic on your computer, iPhone, iPad, or Droid. With the third issue due out on December 1, I checked in with them to see how things were going.
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.
Continue Reading »
- November 30, 2010 @ 11:00 AM by Brigid Alverson
Comics A.M. | The comics Internet in two minutes
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]
- October 22, 2010 @ 07:54 AM by Kevin Melrose
Japanese company stops American scanlators
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.)
- September 14, 2010 @ 07:11 PM by Brigid Alverson
The return of Youka Nitta
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.
- July 7, 2010 @ 01:00 PM by Brigid Alverson
Slash Print | Following the digital evolution
Screenshot of Comic Zeal 4
Apps: Chris Meadows reviews Comic Zeal 4, a CBR/CBZ comics reader for the iPad (previous editions had both iPad and iPod versions). Aside from the performance of the reader itself and its interface, Meadows also touches on the question of what you would use it for, since there aren’t a lot of legitimate sources of CBR/CBZ files; although some publishers use them for online work, the vast majority are pirated scans.
Zuda: Scott McCloud becomes the one millionth person to complain about Zuda’s annoyingly slow flash interface—and his prize is a personal response from Zuda honcho Ron Perazza.
iPad: Rich Johnson considers the possibilities and limitations of the iPad as a comics reader at The Beat.
Kindle: Gene Luen Yang‘s American Born Chinese is available on the Kindle, and he has a fuzzy photo on the internet to prove it. I’m not sure the Kindle is doing his book any favors, as the resolution is not that great and it converts the color images to black and white, but I’d need a sharper photo to know for sure.
- May 13, 2010 @ 11:00 AM by Brigid Alverson
Kindle: It’s where the boys are
Delivery Cupid
I held off on posting about this at first because I wasn’t sure what was going on, but the mystery seems to have been cleared up, so here goes:
About a week ago, with little fanfare, a yaoi manga called Delivery Cupid showed up on Kindle. This caused a small flurry of excitement among yaoi fans, because the book had been licensed by Broccoli Books and then became unavailable when the publisher folded.
Then the buy feature was disabled, and Yamila Abraham, the publisher of Yaoi Press and someone who knows a great deal about the biz, speculated that was because whoever put the book up on Amazon didn’t actually own the rights to it (something that has happened before, most notoriously with George Orwell’s 1984). Abraham noted that the cover of the Kindle edition was the same as Broccoli’s, which was different from the original Japanese cover — in fact, Libre, the Japanese licensor, wouldn’t have had the rights to that cover.
The reality turns out to be less sinister. As Simon Jones notes on his cheerfully NSFW Icarus Comics blog, a company called Animate is publishing Libre books for the Kindle. They list four April releases and promise more to come. Interestingly, two of the April books, Delivery Cupid and Pet on Duty, were Broccoli books, and the other two, Golden Cain and Love a la Carte, were originally licensed here by Central Park Media’s BeBeautiful imprint — also now defunct. In the interest of research, Simon read Delivery Cupid on the Kindle and says that it looks pretty good both on the device itself and on his PC.
As for the mystery of the cover, former Broccoli editor Shizuki Yamashita comments at the Yaoi Press blog that Broccoli waived all the rights to the translations, design, etc. of its books when it folded, and it even gave the publishers digital files in case they wanted to publish the books in English themselves.
In the interest of full disclosure, I should say that I was contacted recently by someone from a large financial firm who was doing research into yaoi manga trends, with a particular interest in digital distribution. I know she talked to other folks in the biz as well, and I have no idea what specific project she was working on, but it’s interesting to think that I may have played a small part in this little drama — or perhaps in some future project.
- April 8, 2010 @ 10:30 AM by Brigid Alverson
Comics A.M. | The comics Internet in two minutes
Amazon
Retailing | Amazon.com reportedly has threatened to stop directly selling titles from four major publishers if they don’t strike a digital-sales agreement with the online retailer before the launch of Apple’s iPad in just two weeks.
The publishers — Hachette, HarperCollins, Penguin and Simon & Schuster — already have agreements with Apple to sell their books through its iBookstore. Under those deals the publishers will be able to set prices for their e-books, with Apple receiving a 30-percent commission. Amazon grudgingly agreed that major publishers could decide prices on titles in its Kindle store after a weeklong standoff with Macmillan last month. During the dispute, Amazon removed the “buy” buttons from thousands of the publisher’s books listed on the website. [The New York Times, GalleyCat]
- March 19, 2010 @ 07:25 AM by Kevin Melrose
Comics A.M. | The comics Internet in two minutes
X-Men Origins: Wolverine
Legal | On Thursday 20th Century Fox filed six lawsuits against several dozen people the studio claims sold DVDs containing unfinished versions of X-Men Origins: Wolverine before the movie’s May 1, 2009, theatrical release.
In December, the FBI arrested Gilberto Sanchez, a New York man suspected of uploading an unfinished edit of the film to a file-sharing website. Sanchez claims he purchased the bootleg for $5 from a street vendor. [Media Decoder]
Legal | The Department of Justice has delivered another blow to Google’s controversial plan to make millions of out-of-print books available online. In a statement issued Thursday night, the DOJ said that despite “good faith” efforts, the revised agreement still suffers from class certification, copyright and antitrust issues. A hearing on the proposed agreement is scheduled for Feb. 18. [Publishers Weekly, Epicenter]
- February 5, 2010 @ 09:26 AM by Kevin Melrose
Comics A.M. | The comics Internet in two minutes
Publishing | Despite indications that Amazon had blinked in its weekend-long standoff with Macmillan over the price of electronic books, by Tuesday afternoon some of the publisher’s major titles had not returned to the retail website.
On Friday, the Internet giant surprised everyone when it removed both electronic and traditional books from Macmillan after the publisher announced plans to raise the price of e-books from $9.99 to $14.99. (The titles were still available on the website from third-party vendors.) Macmillan and other publishers have been engaged in a pricing dispute with Amazon, which insists that all e-books for the Kindle be priced at $9.99. [Bits, Jacket Copy]
Publishing | Heidi MacDonald and Calvin Reid round up publisher reaction to last week’s iPad announcement. [PW Comics Week]
Retailing | Jim Mroczkowski considers the state of the secondary comics market: “In my neck of the woods, unless your grandfather’s estate just found Action Comics #1 in his airlocked vault, the comic shop’s not buying your comic. The comic shop has plenty of comics. That’s why they have that shop.” [iFanboy]
- February 3, 2010 @ 08:21 AM by Kevin Melrose
Comics A.M. | The comics Internet in two minutes
I’m filling in for Kevin on our daily roundup of news items, so my apologies for the lateness and any dip in quality in today’s edition. –JK
Angouleme
Conventions | The 36th annual Angoulême International Comics Festival starts today in France, running through Jan. 31. NBM’s Terry Nantier is on the ground and blogging from it, while Bart Beaty has kicked off his usual thorough coverage at the Comics Reporter. [Angoulême International Comics Festival]
Legal | An Australian man has pleaded guilty to downloading “graphic cartoon porn images” featuring child characters from The Simpsons, The Powerpuff Girls and The Incredibles. Kurt James Milner, 28, was sentenced to 12 months in jail, but it was “wholly suspended” for five years.
“The 28-year-old is now a registered sex offender and will have to report to police after pleading guilty in Ipswich District Court to having the bizarre images on his computer,” the Queensland Times reports. [Queensland Times]
- January 28, 2010 @ 10:30 AM by JK Parkin
Slash Print | Barnes & Noble’s nook goes head-to-head with Amazon’s Kindle
Tablets | Kindle, meet the Nook … or nook, as it looks like Barnes & Noble are spelling it with the lowercase “n,” which is really annoying. But yes, the bookseller has launched their own e-book tablet, which retails for $259 (the same as the Amazon Kindle 2), has a color touchscreen and comes out in November. Check out the product comparison chart (it’s a PDF) from B & N for more information on how it compares to Amazon’s device.
Google, meanwhile, isn’t working on a device, but they do plan to launch an e-book store in order to deliver electronic books to “any device with a web browser.” Time will tell what any of this means for the comic industry, but with a color tablet coming out soon, you can see the possibilities.
Webcomics | Writing for PBS’s Mediashift blog, Simon Owens writes about what newspaper cartoonists can learn from web cartoonists. He spoke with both Richard Stevens and Howard Tayler for the piece.
- October 21, 2009 @ 09:27 AM by JK Parkin
Comics A.M. | The comics Internet in two minutes
Tumor
Publishing | Writer Joshua Hale Fialkov explains the decision to syndicate his graphic novel Tumor on Amazon’s Kindle: “The Kindle represents a seamless method to purchase and read content. You buy the book, and it magically appears on your screen a second or two later. The playing field becomes quite a bit more even. People will still be drawn to bigger authors or titles, but, for the people who want to seek out your work, they actually can. The same can’t be said of most comic shops, or, for that matter, most bookstores. In effect, by removing the physical commodity, we’ve opened up the marketplace to endless options. It’s no longer a question of whether to stock Batman OR Tumor, because they’re both there, all the time, waiting to be downloaded. [The X-Change Files]
Publishing | In response to reader complaints, Tokyopop has upgraded the paper stock on its books. [About.com]
Bokurano: Ours
Publishing | Deb Aoki speaks at length with Hideki Egami, senior editor of Japan’s IKKI, about the manga magazine’s new North American counterpart, Viz Media’s SigIKKI.com: “We have a slogan for IKKI, something like ‘We are still at the dawn of the manga era.’ This kind of explains our philosophy. The spirit of this tagline is that the dawn is still approaching; meaning that if you assume that the history of manga will continue for 200 years or longer, we are still at the very beginning.” [About.com]
- August 6, 2009 @ 08:08 AM by Kevin Melrose