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johnnyboi johnnyboi
Joined: 02 Sep 2020
Posts: 2
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Posted: Sat May 27, 2023 7:27 am
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I call Bull I think kodansha is just lying through their butts.
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Bisuketto
Joined: 09 Mar 2005
Posts: 153
Location: Middle America
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Posted: Sat May 27, 2023 12:38 pm
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Another company allergic to money it seems.
A shame really.
And the censorship on top of it? And they wonder why there seems to be a rise of high seas activities.
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sprinterstar7
Joined: 28 May 2023
Posts: 1
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Posted: Sun May 28, 2023 7:03 pm
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Quote: | In Japan, we use a system that is exactly the same as K MANGA, and we have been able to share the fruits of its success with our authors.
Based on this philosophy, we compensate authors for the purchase of their works with free points distributed within the service in the same way that we compensate authors for the purchase of their works with paid points. Even if the user does not spend any money, if he or she spends a little time and effort, we will be able to reward authors for their work.
In addition, with tickets that allow limited access for 72 hours, which can be obtained daily, it is possible to try out at least half of all the available works. We believe that in this way, by allowing readers to experience as many works as possible without having to pay for them, we can ultimately maximize the rewards to authors.
We hope you will understand K MANGA's system for supporting authors, which cannot be achieved through a subscription model. |
Except that Manga Pocket -- the service that KManga is based on -- does include a subscription model so the Kodansha rep is spouting some B.S. there.
https://pocket.shonenmagazine.com/subscription
Also, KManga is significantly more expensive than its Japanese counterpart for how little you get. Some things I mentioned to them a few weeks ago:
Quote: | Being an English version of Magazine Pocket (i.e. magapoke - https://pocket.shonenmagazine.com/), it's disappointing how KManga is not only an inferior implementation that has fewer offerings at a more expensive price but also fails to address the reason why Western audiences love and use contemporary services like Mangaplus or Viz's offerings: being able to read the latest chapters for series even if -- in the case of Mangaplus -- for a limited time.
Right now KManga offers 13 of Kodansha's Weekly Shonen Magazine (WSM) series: "Tying the Knot with an Amagami Sister", "When Will Ayumu Make His Move?", "Girlfriend, Girlfriend", "A Couple of Cuckoos", "The Cafe Terrace and Its Goddesses", "Go! Go! Loser Ranger!", "To Your Eternity", "Medaka Kuroiwa is Impervious to My Charms", "Blue Lock", "Rent-a-Girlfriend", "Shangri-La Frontier", "Edens Zero", and "Four Knights of the Apocalypse". A certain amount of these chapters are available for free, but the availability discrepency between KManga and Magapoke doesn't make sense. For example, in KManga "Cafe Terrace" requires points for all of its chapters starting at Ch. 51, but on Magapoke -- at the time of this writing -- Chs. 99-101 were available for free ( https://pocket.shonenmagazine.com/episode/3269632237257218878) and there's no indication that the most recent chapters (i.e. 102-104) will even be made available for free on KManga at any point like it would on Magapoke.
In addition to that, KManga is just exhorbantly more expensive than Magapoke. As I mentioned above there are 13 WSM series on KManga which means that if a user wanted to read all of them they would have to spend nearly $13 per week. But in Magapoke they offer a subscription that gives you all the series in the magazine as if they were paid with points for the cost of 840 yen (or roughly $6.24) PER MONTH! So in a month's span a user could theoretically pay more than 8x what their Japanese counterpart would pay for fewer series. Why isn't such a subscription option available in KManga? It just seems counterintuitive to not even have such an option avaiable when you have offers like Mangaplus where the first three and most recent three chapters for a series are available at no cost or Viz's various apps where the same is true but they include an additional subscription option that allows you to read a set number of chapters per month from their entire backlog (which is great for people who want to binge a series or see if they're interested in something) and doesn't require a commitment like is being done on KManga where you are effectively buying chapters piecemeal rather than buying the volumes for the series you like from other storefronts. It's just not convenient. |
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lys
Joined: 24 Jun 2004
Posts: 1014
Location: mitten-state
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Posted: Sun May 28, 2023 10:00 pm
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Covnam wrote: | Thanks for getting that info, annoying as it is to see. I can understand that they might need to censor for app stores, but if they just put the same version on the web to save the trouble/cost of having to have two different versions, then they've lost me there. I prefer reading on a big screen over a phone or tablet, but I'm not going to pay for a worse version than could be found elsewhere. I'll still pick up the physical books for series I want to collect, but the buck stops there. |
I haven't explored this in great detail, but mild censorship is typical of JP manga apps (as another user mentioned) and it sounds like the browser version of the app will just use the same files. However, generally the ebooks you pay for (on various platforms, like Bookwalker etc) are not censored, so there is incentive to pay for the series you're interested in rather than relying on what are basically intended as free previews.
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liatris
Joined: 28 May 2019
Posts: 63
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Posted: Mon May 29, 2023 10:00 pm
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It's just as I thought. VIZ and Shone Jump's subscription model included only the most popular titles. But, a system that earns revenue from works alone includes a much more diverse group of works. It is thanks to this mechanism that K Manga has made it possible to read works that have not been translated until now.
Subscription models, as we already know, require disruptive scaling to be profitable. It also has a significant flaw: reduced creator compensation.
The works included in Jump's and VIZ's subscription models are just a small fraction of the vast collection of Japanese manga works.
But I also understand why they do it that way. By delivering carefully selected works, we can prevent the same thing as the past comic bubble burst. In other words, you can protect your brand image by delivering only good works. It's the same as Nintendo in the Famicom era. Only authorized products are delivered to consumers.
However, if K Manga is not used, it is meaningless. I would like to see how these business models develop.
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Covnam
Joined: 31 May 2005
Posts: 3777
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Posted: Tue May 30, 2023 1:28 am
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lys wrote: | However, generally the ebooks you pay for (on various platforms, like Bookwalker etc) are not censored, so there is incentive to pay for the series you're interested in rather than relying on what are basically intended as free previews. |
They aren't just provided the original censored weekly chapters in comparison to the full volume releases, they're censoring on top of what was already censored. And they clearly expect you to be paying for the majority of what you read, so you'd really be paying for a worse product if it was also already available in an uncensored print or e-book.
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