News
Morning 2 Mag Posted Online for Free on Shipping Date
posted on by Egan Loo
Three issues of Kodansha's monthly Morning 2 magazine will be posted online for free at the same time that those issues ship in print to stores, starting on Friday. After those three issues, the next nine issues will be posted online for free one month after the print versions ships. (The magazine ships on the 22nd of every month.) The magazine's editorial department describes the strategy as the "first such experiment in Japan."
Kodansha already posted all the pages of an issue last October on the same day that the next issue shipped. That experiment continued for three months, but each of those three issues were posted online after a one-month delay, not simultaneously. At the time, the magazine staff said it posted issues online because of the surge in success for Saint Young Men (Saint Oniisan), Hikaru Nakamura's comedy about Buddha and Jesus sharing a Tokyo low-rent apartment. Saint Young Men's new readers caused the magazine to sell out throughout Japan, so Kodansha posted the issues on the web for readers who could not find a copy. As a result, the website received 400,000 accesses in three days, sales of the compiled comic volumes increased, and awareness of the magazine grew. The aim of this year's experiment is to expand the readership further.
To differentiate the print version from the web version, the print copies will bundle a Saisei Sentai Holy Men: Gyakushū no Marla (Most Sacred Task Force Holy Men: Marla's Counterattack) booklet. Nakamura himself draws a parody of his manga for the booklet.
Source: Mainichi Shimbun's Mantan Web
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