Crap! That is brilliant? Can I repost your diagram at THE BEAT???

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Well, sure. :D I'm surprised that people are so interested in the diagram, but go ahead. :)

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You guys here are fond of spending money on Amazon.com? Or What?

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Don't sue if I make big bucks off this! j/p

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personally, I believe that e-books are the way of the future. I just think that it won't catch on with our current level of technology, though things may change in 5-10 year's time.

I couldn't agree more! I wouldn't be adverse to reading comics in a digital medium if the medium itself were more technologically advanced. As it stands, e-book readers are actually pretty nifty--my s/o has something called an "e-bookwise" with a touch-sensitive screen that was only about $100 and, I've actually read a couple books on it and found it quite enjoyable, readable, and not a strain on the eyes at ALL--however, creating something for high resolution art is another matter entirely. There is a new technology called digital ink</i> that could very possibly be the wave of the future. Imagine comics and graphics displayed on your e-book or e-tablet at the same LPI as actual print! It's an incredibly technology and one currently limited only by size and speed. But as we all know, those two factors are the things most quickly overcome in the technology industry.

And personally, I'm all for e-books once they're able to be mass produced and used by more people. While books are beautiful, They also waist some great natural resources. How many trees are cut every year to fulfill the demands of the print industry? How many people actually recycle their books, magazines, mail, and flyers? Of course, producing hardware also consumes resources of their own, but it's a product that can be reused over and over and over again, as long as it doesn't break too soon.

And I can't wait to see your next series! XD I'm looking forward to the rest of "The Dreaming," but I want to see where you go from there, as well. :) :) :)

Excellent article! As always!!!!! :)

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I'm all for digital comics once they become more portable and convenient to read, but right now they're designed to fill my precious not-looking-at-a-screen time. Also, I can't imagine reading an e-book in bed, which is currently where most of my reading is done.

As for anthologies, I don't think they'll work in the west because of distribution models amongst other things, but I still like the idea of collected works (Rising Stars, etc). I'd like to see more themed tankabon series of a similar ilk.

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That's why digital ink is so brilliant! It isn't a screen; it's basically a piece of paper with positively and negatively charged particles that alternate between black and white (and someday cyan, magenta, yellow) to create the illusion of ink on paper. I wouldn't want to stare at a screen all day, either.

Though . . . the one e-book I've used is actually quite comfortable to read in bed and it's great for traveling or reading books with an open copyright (meaning free, because like Queenie, I dislike paying for stuff online, as well, so I just download it from the gutenburg project website). It's a nifty little technology that's come a ways, and not one for completely writing off unless you try it.

Though yeah . . . still not something I'd read a comic with. :P

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Anthologies won't ever work in the West in the same way as they do in Japan, because we already have the internet. We'd all say Madman Entertainment was insane if they tried to ask people to pay for its Anime Sampler DVD.

It's likely that the problem with western manga anthologies at the moment is that they're incomplete. You can't just buy an anthology and feel satisfied -- you have to wait for the next, and hope the stories will be continued to the end. I remember one of my favourite stories from OzTaku lasted only a single issue--incomplete. Other stories were ongoing. It's great once you've got the whole story in your hands, but until that point...

Of course, that means they should be structured on the more successful model of short story collections. "More successful" is only a relative term though. People don't buy many short story collections. They buy novels.

Anthologies are great, in my opinion, but they would be most successful when using a marketing model more like the Anime Sampler. Tokyopop could gather the first few pages from a variety of its manga, throw them together into a cheaply printed book, and hand them out for free.

Better yet, save on printing and throw them into an e-book anthology. I'm sure people would read it. It's not like their current setup where you've got to search through their titles for the one you haven't noticed yet.

Still better, if you want to know what I think is the perfect marketing system -- check out last.fm. (Though it's hard to tell when comics will be ready for something like this.)

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Western anthologies are notorious for artists dropping out, so stories don't continue from issue to issue. It becomes very messy and unsatisfying for the reader. Even 'pro' attempts at western OEL anthologies such as Ironcat's Amerimanga magazine tend to die quickly when one of the artists (Fred Gallagher) pulls out.

"Tokyopop could gather the first few pages from a variety of its manga, throw them together into a cheaply printed book, and hand them out for free."

They already do, it's called Toykopop Sneaks. It's awesome. I'm not sure whether it makes it to australia, but we get it in the UK. It includes about 6-10 pages of new titles, and a shitload of ads.

As for online anthologies, I don't feel this would work. The nature of online content means that people can pick and choose what content they read, so they would most likely only read a specific comic. It's true that the internet serves most of the purpose of print anthologies, but it's still difficult to capture people's attention as thoroughly as a print magazine.

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I don't think online anthologies (online as in "I gotta log onto a site to see it, WHILE on the internet) will work either, and it's because there isn't a direct line from "reading online" to "buying the book". I'll browse random pages of manga online, but I'll need much more motivation than that to actually BUY it, online or offline. I'll only make the effort if I REALLY want it, because otherwise it'll mean I'll have to fish out the credit card again, and if I'm lukewarm about it, I'm not going to.

That's why I said that as a BUSINESS MODEL, iTunes is effective in that buying online music is only 1-click away. Consumers are lazy. Never mind whether iTunes makes money - it's the fact that people actually buy stuff on it with 1-click that's amazing.

And ofcourse, Western anthologies are constantly plagued by vanishing artists. I didn't address this problem because my "essay" was meant to talk about the commercial viability of e-anthologies (from a theoretical vantage point). Whether the artists are able to keep up with deadlines is a separate issue from this one altogether.

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Indeed. I was actually proposing something more like your download method. An anthology I can keep is much more... tangible. And I can view it all at once, instead of having to wait for the page to download every time I go to the next page.

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I wouldn't get too excited about an iTunes kind of model, if I were you. It is true that Apple is making a lot of money from the iPod, but iTunes itself barely manages to break even. Apple is desperately trying to protect its DRM (which means iTunes music can only be played on their players), even though it's anti-competetive.

CD sales are still the preferred medium for purchasing music, partly due to the lack of DRM. (Who are they to tell me I can't play this music in my car?) All of this has only encouraged the increasing piracy of their music, as music fans don't like giving their money to music companies that treat them like criminals.

Also, do you know how little the artists actually make from sales on iTunes? "According to widely circulated data from the coverage of The Alman Brothers suit against Sony BMG, you could expect something like $45 of each thousand songs sold to be paid to you in royalties." http://digitalmusic.weblogsinc.com/2006/06/14/weird-al-yankovic-says-digital-is-a-raw-deal-for-some-artists/

I'm not sure it could work. I also think there's too much free content on the Internet for a paid model to be effective. (There's much more free comics than free music, I can say that much.) Nonetheless, eventually we end up putting too much power into a single source (Apple, the music moguls), and as a result make it too easy for them to shaft us.

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Correction:
All of these new attempts at DRM have only encouraged the increasing piracy of their music, as music fans don't like giving their money to music companies that treat them like criminals.

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Apple don't make a great deal of money from selling songs on iTunes. Most of the money goes to the music labels. Rather, iTunes Music Store is designed to drive sales of iPods, and eventually, Macs.

Apple is fundamentally a hardware company, which is why you will never see them selling Mac OS X that can run on generic PCs. All of its strategy and energies are directed towards sales of its peripherals and hardware.

Yeah, most of the profits from song sales on iTunes never reach the artist, but the music labels and record industry shoulders the majority of the blame for that.

I hope one day online stores like iTMS can just deal with all artists directly rather than having to go with scummy middle-men.

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Heh. OS X is actually being redesigned to work on x86. support for the PowerPC in coming years will disappear as Macintosh migrates entirely to x86, probably ending around 2009. Unless I'm missing something, that means Microsoft and Apple will be on the same computer from then on. So no more trying to use their OS to sell hardware... Wikipedia declares it to be the truth.

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It's true that you can run OS X x86 on many AMD/Intel machines now, but it's unsupported and it's illegal under Apple's licensing conditions. Anyone who is running OS X on their beige box is running a pirated copy of OS X, with hacks added to get it working properly.

Apple's last foray into the clone PC market went disastrously, so they will not go down that path again. Apple is a hardware company first and foremost. The Apple computing experience is a complete and carefully designed package, from computer hardware and peripherals down to the software.

I'm not hating on PC users -- I really don't care what tool people use as long as it makes them happy and productive. But there's often a lack of understanding about Macs coming from PC users who have never used a Mac before.

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Ah. Nevermind. I was afraid I mesinterpreted it. Seems they'll be basically using x86 hardware, but with it tweaked so it's not cross-compatible. ^_^;;

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Yo, man. I see you have a beef with iTunes, but please don't confuse iTunes the BUSINESS MODEL with iTunes the UNSCRUPULOUS AND UNETHICAL TREATMENT OF ARTISTS AND CONSUMERS. The fact that iTunes is breaking even is a freakin' miracle. Nearly all the music I've downloaded through iTunes can be found for free on the internet. Why is ANYBODY using iTunes at all, when they can get stuff for free off the Internet?

The reason why I'm touting iTunes is a success is not because it's barely making money, but because it gets people to pay for things they can otherwise get for free. Funny you'll mention Weird Al, because I used to download his music for free off the net. I bought his songs off iTunes because it was easy to - I'm afraid I don't love his music so much as to actually GO to a store and pay $30 for one of his CDs (with a whole buncha other songs I don't want). So with iTunes, he actually sees a few cents from me, compared to otherwise $0.

I'm not justifying Apple's unscrupulous methods. I'm just pointing out that the averge person don't give a damn about the money problems of artists.

Also, do you know how little the artists actually make from sales on iTunes?

Yeah, I do. If artists make no money from iTunes, it's Apple's (and the industry's) fault for the way they negotiated with the artists. It's not the fault of the iTunes business model. They can pay the artists more, or even charge more, or even make less money, but they won't because they're greedy bastards.

All of these new attempts at DRM have only encouraged the increasing piracy of their music, as music fans don't like giving their money to music companies that treat them like criminals.

iTunes haven't encouraged piracy. Piracy has always been around, long before computers or the Internet came to exist. If anything's encouraged piracy it's human greed, long before cable modem and the Internet came around. The point is, if people can have something for free, they will. That's not saying they don't want to pay for something they like. They just don't want the hassle of filling in online forms. If they can pay for something with a single click, they will. If they have to pay for it with a few clicks and using the keyboard, they won't. If there's anything that's encouraged this "one-click" mentality, it's the Internet.

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No, no, no. That's not what I meant to say. iTunes hasn't encouraged piracy. Its effect on piracy seems minimal at most. The problem seems to be DRM. CDs that don't work like they should. Music downloads that you can only keep until you've upgraded or formatted your computer a couple of times. A while back, Sony got in trouble for releasing music CDs with a DRM included -- when you put it in your PC it automatically installed software on your computer that sent information back to Sony, and opened backdoors that made your computer vulnerable to hacking. Who would want spyware on their PC?

I understand how you blame the music industry -- but removing them from the picture only puts iTunes in the seat of power. If they own a monopoly over music downloads, they can set the royalties at whatever level they feel like. They can charge musicians for the honour of being included in their database. It's vital that distribution is decentralised, but that also means that they'd have to soften the DRM.

I can't imagine Tokyopop releasing full manga onto the internet without a strong DRM to prevent piracy (at least it takes an effort to scan a manga, and then it'll tend to be low quality). Once again we'd be stuck with the same problem of monopolisation. People don't want to have to use 4-5 different viewers to read their manga collection, so you're going to be stuck with one organisation (or collaborative group of organisations) in control of the popular DRM.

But you're definitely right on your main point. People don't want to fill out so many forms. iTunes is a step in the right direction, but accessibility is just one area that needs improvement. It won't really take off until artists and consumers get a better deal.

Some artists in the music industry have decided that the best way to become successful is to give away their songs for free on the internet, wait until they're popular, sign up to a good label (or set up their own CD printing thing) and sell the CDs. And people buy them. I can't speak for how universally successful it'd be (not too many online comics have managed to succeed at the same thing), but it worked out pretty well for them.

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Actually, you're right about the DRM thing. But the original point I wanted to make about e-books was to use them to distribute e-ANTHOLOGIES - the kind that is like Japanese manga anthologies in the way they're meant to be a cheap way for people to sample stuff. I'm not saying people should download all 40 volumes of a manga on their computer, especially if the scan quality isn't beautiful - you'll hope that reading e-anthologies will eventually cause your readers to go e-shopping, and BUY the PRINTED COLLECTED VOLUMES.

I actually think iTunes make people buy REAL CDs of a certain artist. In fact, since I've gotten iTunes, I've buying music off artists that I've never even HEARD of. How did I get exposure to these artists? Through that other much-maligned free-loading service, YouTube. I've been watching fan-made anime music videos on YouTube, and when I like the music used in some of these videos I went onto to iTunes to see if I can buy them.

I don't love these music so much that I want to go to HMV to buy their CDs, but at least I know about them now, and if I fall madly in love with someone's music, I may buy their real CDs (and T-shirts and caps and memorabilia and whatever movies they've been in...). The aim of digital stuff is to turn people into fans of stuff they'll never have seen otherwise, and cause them to buy REAL stuff. The buck does not stop at digital media.

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will you make more than three if it gets really popular.

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I'm assuming you're asking about "The Dreaming"? I'm afraid not. The story's been set for 3 volumes from the very beginning, and it's popularity won't have any affect on that. I also have another story planned after it, so I'm afraid that while TOKYOPOP can commission someone else to do another 3 volumes, I won't be the one to do it if it happens. :|

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I was randomly touring my Amazon rec's list when I saw I was recommended "The Dreaming 2". I thought that was reasonable considering I have vol 1 (which I haven't read yet. >_> But I can't wait to find the time to do so..) and own many other OEL/OGM titles.

And then I noticed that the creator was listed as "Chan Queenie". Volume 1, however, is correctly listed as created by "Queenie Chan". Thought I'd toss that to you if you could do something about it. ^_^;

Sorry if you already know, though! Hope things are well for you.

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Hiya, thanks for pointing that out. :D I sent a note to my editor and hopefully those guys can fix it. :)

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You like Kelly book?
http://kelly-blue-book.net4you.org/index.html kelly blue book

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