I am gravely disappoint.

[elementalhero]

I'm sure most of you guys have heard by now, but a whole bunch of manga distributors have teamed up to start cracking down on scanlation sites. They've already hit Mangahelpers, and Onemanga is soon to follow.

I think this is a really bad decision on their parts. Without online manga sites, a good three-quarters of my current manga collection (which has grown to easily over one hundred volumes) would never have been purchased. Manga is expensive, and that makes it hard to justify buying on faith. But being able to read series beforehand and decide that this is worth spending money on definitely has gotten me into the vast majority of the series I currently am purchasing.

I understand the concern over people just reading scanlation sites and not buying volumes at all, believe me. But what they should be doing is what Viz and other animanga distributors have already begun doing with anime - put it online yourselves. Viz now offers many anime series, both dubbed and subbed, for free streaming on their site. Why can't they do the same with a manga viewer? Think about it - going page-by-page refreshes ensures that they can make a hell of a lot of money in on-screen advertisements. And they can make this online manga available for download to a Kindle or iPad or hard drive for a lower price than buying the volume itself. And there will always be people willing to buy the print volumes. I love manga volumes. They're very visually AND tactile-ly engaging.


Don't shoot yourselves in the foot, manga distributors. Work with new media, not against them.

EDIT: shit mangafox took down all its Pokespe oh my god no I need this to survive work this summer oh my god fuck no

Comments

[ironyaficionado.livejournal.com]

Seriously, that is just a bad idea. I won't even ponder their stuff if they go through with all that.

[okroginator.livejournal.com]

What they fail to realize is that removing online manga sites will not make people go, "oh, oh well, guess it's time to drop $200 at my nearest B&N to get all that manga I've been missing." No, what's going to happen is that manga fans are going to get pissed and withhold their money. I'm sure their low sales have less to do with scanlators than the fact that the economy is still shit right now, and people are cutting costs, and they can't afford to pay ten bucks a volume. I am cradling my head and moaning, "no no no you stupid shits don't do that no," as if I'm watching a horror movie instead of a bad business decision.

Not to mention they're going to lose money and productivity to the legal suits they are threatening. I can't even begin to articulate how dumb this is.

[ironyaficionado.livejournal.com]

Next, they'll go against the people who come into bookstores, read a volume, and then put it back on the shelf. :|

[okroginator.livejournal.com]

[ironyaficionado.livejournal.com]

I wasn't even thinking about that. What a brilliant one you are.

At the same time, I kinda wanna leave a post-it in one of the volumes that says something equivalent to "Snape kills Dumbledore." A spoiler guard, so to speak.