Following NYAFF this year there seems to be a lot of anger aimed at the publishers over their attitude towards digital distribution. Especially it seems towards Kurt Hassler of Yen Press.

When I first read two of these posts, the first by Alex over at Manga Widget, and the second by Lori Henderson at Manga Xanadu, I was all angry and wrote a long post lambasting publishers over this.

However just before I posted it I calmed down a bit and went looking for info and found a transcript of the panel. Reading this, I got a different impression to what both of the blogger’s were writing, in fact it was as different as it could be.

So, do these people reject the digital distribution out right? Read for yourself and come to you’re own conclusion:


Online Manga Delivery or Raise Your Kindle in

the Air and Wave It Like You Just Don’t Care
Cell phone manga. Online manga, Digital reading devices. Are these digital distribution options the future of manga publishing? Hassler and Gombos were, at best, skeptical.

Hassler: “The system of delivery hasn’t been nailed down into an easy format. Anime works naturally as something that can be viewed online and on cell phones. And everyone is exploring their own way to present manga in a digital format, but no one has found THE way to do it in a way that everyone (manga creators, publishers and readers) agrees works best. If someone can create a delivery system that works, then fine. But I don’t see how it would supersede print; I don’t see print falling by the wayside.”

Gombos: “Everyone, hold up your Kindle and wave it in the air.” (no one does, crickets chirp for a few seconds) “I’ve never seen an actual Kindle! I hear alot about digital delivery, but there’s just something special about reading a book.”

“If you create manga and design it to be read on a phone, that’s different. But manga is created to be read as an entire page. How the panels flow and how the sound effects are presented are a big part of how the story flows. I don’t want to read manga on a cell phone.”

The way I am reading this is not an out and out rejection of digital media, but rather an explanation as to why they haven’t yet, and why they wont for a while, be using the medium. There’s no solid and viable medium for them to work with.

Anime has many stable and standard formats for digital distribution, ranging from containers such as AVI and mp4, to flv for web streaming.

There are numerous problems involved with digital distribution, and Alex’s idea just doesn’t work out IMO. The idea behind an RSS based subscription service is not new. Several companies have tried it over the years, mainly newspapers. They’ve found that the costs just don’t balance out against the costs involved. Manga would be even less likely to turn a profit given the high costs involved. You need to remember that publishers have to pay a huge amount to license titles.

The idea works for a pure text basis, but when you throw in images and stuff it gets complicated.

Lori’s post is more of a rant, and I loved this:

Guess what guys, it’s not about YOU!

In this she’s wrong, publishers are a company and are interested in one thing and one thing only, Profit. Yes they’re a service provider, providing the fans with manga, but in the end they’re still out for a profit.

I agree with Kurt that for digital manga to be viable there needs to be an industry wide standard, that works for both publishers and fans.

There are several widely used already, the most common of course being Adobe’s PDF format. However I’ve never liked this format, it’s a pain to use, and the new version, Digital Editions, is so bad that several of the most prominent e-book retailers refuse to support it and tell people to downgrade to Adobe Reader 8. It’s also not exactly the most user friendly reader on the market.

What the industry needs is it’s own reader and format. The problem is that this requires tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of pounds in research and development. It’s not a case of just sitting down and drawing up a reader in a few days, you also need a encrypter to take the raw files to create the new file, As well as a decrypter.

Then it needs to be tested to make sure it works across all the platforms, windows, Linux and Apple. All of this is both costly and time consuming, in a period when economies are pretty much in recession, where do they expect companies to get the cash for this? We’ve already seen several large publisher getting into trouble, Tokyopop being a prime example slashing jobs and the the number of releases.

Other publishers are also taking measures to shore themselves up in the looming financial problems. So again, where do they expect the money to come from?

This doesn’t mean that companies aren’t looking at future possibilities of digital distribution. However it’s not something that’s going to be a high priority for them. Comparing the manga industry with record industry is just plain nuts, the two are complete opposites. The record industry has several formats that standard, MP3 being the main. The refusal of the industry to utilise them to the fullest is not the same as the manga industry saying, lets wait for a universal standard.

As for Gombos’ comments, I’m fully in agreement. How many people out there have a Kindle, or any of their variants?

I looked at one recently which was being offered by my local Waterstones, but like the Kindle, the costs just don’t justify it. In truth e-book readers at the minute are yuppie toys. Also from the one I tried (the Sony Reader) images look crap on it, the gray format just doesn’t work on images. for it to really work they would need to make them full colour, which I have to admit would make it more viable. The other huge factor is the price, they’re just to damned expensive. While the books themselves are reasonably priced, the reader is to expensive for the average person to buy.

I think that they’re a step in the right direction, they just need some more work and price reductions to make them worth buying.

I also disagree with Lori on a few other points she’s raised:

Online distribution of video will most likely be the death of Blu-ray.  It’s win over HD hasn’t gained them any ground.

I disagree completely on this. Blu-ray is still in it’s infancy and is barely crawling. Like the e-book readers the units to play and record them are expensive and when they come down in price and become more accessible, then they will kill off the normal DVD. Digital downloads are all well and good, and I do use them. I’ve series from both BOST TV and Crunchy, that doesn’t however mean I’ll stop buying my DVD’s. DVD’s and Blu-Ray can give things that digital downloads don’t. Extras, huge high quality resolutions, the OP and ED videos, etc etc. For example BLASSREITER is a series I bought as a digital download, and it’s a series I would buy on DVD. Why? Well my computer is hooked up to a 19″ monitor and they look nice. However my DVD player is hooked up to a 48″ plasma. Watching BLASSREITER on a screen that size will be awesome.

digital Downloads in this respect are an accompaniment to the DVD/Blu-Ray releases, not their executioner.

Publishers would be smart to start preparing now, and give the kids what they want.

Who says they aren’t? I’ve not seen anything in the transcripts that says the industry is firmly rejecting digital downloads. Everything I’ve seen leads me to the conclusion that the companies want to take it slowly and do it right. Which to me means they’re actually thinking for once. It seems they’ve seen the danger of just jumping into the deep end without any real research or thought. Sure it might net them a few bucks in the short term, but in the long term it’ll cost them more. It’s better to take their time and get the medium right the first time.

As for the whole manga on mobile phones, or the likes of the iPhone, Hell no!! And for the same reason that I hate anime on the likes of iPod and PSP. The resolution is to small, and the subs are to damned hard to see. english stuff isn’t so bad since you can understand the audio, but with Japanese anime relying on subs, hell no!!

Phones are the same, the screens are just to damned small. The iPhone works for a bit of web surfing on the go, but it’s not good enough for reading manga, no phone is. it’s novel idea, but that’s all it is, a novelty.

I think in the end a lot of the hostility that people seem to be feeling towards the publishers over this, is they’re misreading the comments made. There is nothing in the transcript I read that says they’re out and out rejecting digital media, yet for some reason blogger’s seem to be taking the comments that way.

I’ve always been a strong proponent of digital manga, and i always will be. However after talking to several manga publishers on this, I’ve come to realise that it’s going to be a slow process, especially now.

Alex shows his naivety in this comment IMO:

The problem with that attitude is that, while your analog distribution may be pretty fricking great, people have been reading manga on the internet for years. Scanlations have always been a huge part of the industry, and the last time I checked, you get those on the internet, right?

To me there’s a difference between supporting a standardised digital distribution, and just throwing you’re doors open and saying take what you like. Yes scanlations have been around for years, and will be around for years. However that’s not the point. The point is that a universal format is needed, and it needs to meet certain criteria. It’s cost effective, multi format, and easy to use.

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