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Digital Manga do's and don'ts
Melinda Beasi tried to read manga on the Square Enix website so that you don't have to.
Verdict: It sucks. Color me not surprised considering that I have had nothing but terrible experiences with all of the Japanese-language Squeenix digital manga thingamabobs that I have taken for a test drive, too (namely the Japanese version of their online manga store and their GanGan Online iPhone/iPad app).
Also: Viz FINALLY FREAKIN' GETS IT by making their digital manga store platform-free. Which means that your can purchase any of their titles and view it on any platform, whether on your mobile phone, iPad, other tablet, or plain old computer web browser. And yes, this retroactively applies to any titles that y'all may have purchase through ye olde iPad app.
Verdict: The Viz stuff rocks, which is also not terribly surprising given that Shogakukan (one of the owners of Viz Media) has always been lightyears ahead of any other Japanese publishing company in terms of their digital manga offerings for mobile devices and the web.
Meanwhile, everybody is flapping their internet gums and armchair-quarterbacking about Jmanga.com, while largely ignoring the fact that a similar initiative over in Japan (http://www.j-comi.jp/) has been hugely successful, even while seriously one-upping Jmanga in the handing-users-exactly-what-they-want-on-a-silver-platter department: Namely, offering all of their surprisingly diverse selection of titles for ABSOLUTELY FREE, and offering high-quality PDF downloads of a few of the more popular titles instead of just online viewing.
Then again maybe J-comi has been successful because it offers everything for free, which I realize is not at all the plan for Jmanga. ^^;;
Verdict: It sucks. Color me not surprised considering that I have had nothing but terrible experiences with all of the Japanese-language Squeenix digital manga thingamabobs that I have taken for a test drive, too (namely the Japanese version of their online manga store and their GanGan Online iPhone/iPad app).
Also: Viz FINALLY FREAKIN' GETS IT by making their digital manga store platform-free. Which means that your can purchase any of their titles and view it on any platform, whether on your mobile phone, iPad, other tablet, or plain old computer web browser. And yes, this retroactively applies to any titles that y'all may have purchase through ye olde iPad app.
Verdict: The Viz stuff rocks, which is also not terribly surprising given that Shogakukan (one of the owners of Viz Media) has always been lightyears ahead of any other Japanese publishing company in terms of their digital manga offerings for mobile devices and the web.
Meanwhile, everybody is flapping their internet gums and armchair-quarterbacking about Jmanga.com, while largely ignoring the fact that a similar initiative over in Japan (http://www.j-comi.jp/) has been hugely successful, even while seriously one-upping Jmanga in the handing-users-exactly-what-they-want-on-a-silver-platter department: Namely, offering all of their surprisingly diverse selection of titles for ABSOLUTELY FREE, and offering high-quality PDF downloads of a few of the more popular titles instead of just online viewing.
Then again maybe J-comi has been successful because it offers everything for free, which I realize is not at all the plan for Jmanga. ^^;;
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I'd look for series that have not been commercially released, and yet have good followings on the scan sites.
I'd get aggressive on the aggregators on those series, and offer it free on JManga, with a "tip jar" payment model.
Maybe a few weeks delay on the manga, which can be gotten around by paying a monthly subscription fee. I can't see people "going legit" any other way- especially since no one's going to get in trouble for just reading the sites.