Greetings Manga Community,
This past week has been an exciting one. We recently
announced the existence of the OpenManga project, and boy has word spread like wildfire. From making headlines on major websites such as
Anime News Network and
Manga.About.Com to the many interesting blog articles such as this one at
Timeless Grey, as well as a lot of discussion and talks about the
OpenManga project on various forums.
We have seen
related comments from industry officials, as well as reader comments on the many forums and fansites around the net. On the OpenManga Twitter and Facebook channels, we are encouraging discussion and feedback on many of the related issues to digital manga distribution, and even OpenManga itself.
So the question is, to what end?
First of all, we would like to take this opportunity to point out that we are indeed listening to what you all have to say by addressing a few questions that have been sent our way. One of the biggest complaints thus far, is the fact that not many details about OpenManga have been released to the public for scrutiny and inspection. In that regard, this post will reveal a few new pieces of information; however, before we get to that point we wanted to let you know exactly why we are doing things this way.
1) We realize that there are other entities out there that are working on products that may compete with our own, and we want to keep some of the more integral ideas that we think give our project an upper hand to ourselves for the time being.
2) While we have defined most of how OpenManga is going to operate, and are in the development and implementation phase of this, not all the actual values are set in stone. As you may have seen, we are encouraging debate about some key topics, and would like the opportunity to take the feedback that we get from these conversations into consideration before we make any announcements to ensure that what we announce is indeed what accurately reflects the thoughts and beliefs of the community. One example could be defining the perceived monetary value of a digital manga chapter.
3) We have a set schedule for announcing most of our features, functionality and business plan, and will continue to unveil things as we get closer to the beta.
That being said, we do have some updates for you as to how OpenManga will work, and some updates on what our philosophy and ideology is behind the development of the platform. The sheer scope and size of the OpenManga project is a lot larger than what most people think of when we announced OM as a "digital publishing platform". I am going to go out on a limb and state that the first (and in many cases only) thing that came to mind for many people was simply "an online manga reader".
While OpenManga is in fact going to be exactly that, there are many other aspects that are (in our mind) perhaps equally exciting and part of paving the way in the manga revolution. One of these aspects is contextual value.
Having read that, many of you probably thought "huh?".
One of the services we are looking into with OpenManga is Manga viability as part of an educational platform. From language students wanting to learn idioms, everyday speech, and translation techniques, to students looking to become manga artists, or even the integration of manga as a means of learning via visual explanations; the application of manga can be so much more than simply just an entertainment product. This was briefly brought up for debate on Twitter in a convo that we had with
@vulgoalpeh.
Another topic that has been
recurring recently is mobile availability of manga. The subject has been mentioned several times on our Facebook feedback posts, as well as on Twitter. While the topic is still up for debate, we wanted to take the opportunity to inform you of our stance on the subject.
Mobile availability of content, and entertainment, is (one of) the way(s) of the future. We realize this, and can therefore happily inform you that OpenManga is going to support most of the major platforms where this makes sense. This includes, of course, application development for the iPhone/iPod®, the Android® platform, and also the recently announced iPad®. The good news in this aspect is that we have partners that are particularly adept at building applications for these platforms, so we hope to be producing quality products for everyone's enjoyment.
In the end, we are hoping to be releasing a quality product, and service, that fully complies with the market demands of the 21st century; and perhaps even provide some of our own innovation on top of that. With all of this said, we have reached the end of this news update. Before leaving you to your own devices though, we would like to thank you for all your feedback so far, and to remind you all to follow us on
Twitter and
Facebook for the latest updates, feedback, and interactions.
You can also
email us with any questions, concerns, thoughts and feedback that you may have, and we will try to get back to you as soon as we can.
The OpenManga Team
PS: Feel free to use our Twitter and Facebook banners to help spread the word of OpenManga!
Care to elaborate? :)
1.Most of it is still top secret coz our rivals are out to get us.
2.We are looking for feedback...even though the amount info we gave out is still very very vague and very little.
3.It's going to be a manga-reader site with lots of fancy stuff✰
4..A lot of people want to read stuff on their iphones,ithings,etc,so we put that in too.
5.Promote us on facebook and twitter plz.
Uhh I think I got all the main points down....
I suppose that's one interpretation :) another one is that these are the platforms we are using for feedback, questions and announcing updates and features as you'd see if you read through it!
None the less, you can expect a pretty major announcement in the very near future :)
In other words getting paid for hosting other peoples scanlations?
6. Based on your comments we'll set the $$~price~$$ of this product.
"educational platform"?? wtf?? I just want to read manga.
You mean besides that we announced free to read already? :)
Perhaps this is already planned ;) *ducks out of spoiler light*
That is a lot of questions in one post ;)
No.
The way things are being developed, these are partially choices that the author has to make. We will be facilitating direct cooperation between authors and translators and scanlators, and we will be providing means for measuring impact and popularity of releases; both by authors, and by the scanlators themselves.
Our goal is to facilitate the creation of mutually beneficial relationships between authors and their fans, as well as their volunteer contributers :)
By default, yes.
Authors will however retain the ability to limit and restrict if they see the need for it.
Yes.
The exact details of contracts between artists and OpenManga still remains to be solidified; however, that being said we do not intend to attempt to restrict an author from releasing their work on other open platforms.
The author will retain the copyright to their own work.
- and with that, it is bed time. Good night ladies and gentlemen :)
But of course most attention goes to topics like scanlation and authors, but I'm really curious about the translation of these mangas...not necessarily the payment part, but will this site help beginner translators to begin/continue their work, and will it be for free or not?Not just Jap->Eng translations, but other languages as well...thx
And good luck with this project, I hope that the result will satisfy the fans all around...
so the big problem is that people from all around the world want to read the latest chapter of their favorite manga as soon as possible. in japan it's possible because they can buy the magazine as soon as they're out. what could make everyone at the same level could be to publish japanese magazines everywhere in the world with the exact same content but this is totally impossible. so the solution is by the internet because everybody can have access to internet(from usa, france, africa, everywhere). something that could bother japanese publisher about publishing their manga on openmanga is that they may end up having less benefits but this may be the way to satisfy every body:
manga from japanese publishers should be aviable on openmanga only in issues(packs of chapters). for example an issue of weekly jump that contain one chapter of one piece, bleach, naruto,etc...(as in the paper issue). the price should be the same as the paper version of the magazine. publishers will have a part of that money and openmanga will have the rest(that money openmanga gets can be seen as the equivalent of the money they usually spend printing paper issues).
so, if someone buy the 25th issue of weekly jump he/she have access to all the chapter in that issue. pages cannot be saved in his/her hard drive but once he/she buy them they're added to his/her owned issues on his/her account and he/she can read them as he/she want. the price in japan could be a bit higher since they can buy the paper version, that way people who can buy paper versions won't prefer the digital version, so that won't change anything in japan but in the other hand japanese publishers will gain more from other countries(since readers will buying online issues in addition to the volumes they always buy instead of reading free and
illegaly)
only chapters(in issues) should be aviable not volumes. maybe if everything is allright like that then they can think about adding volumes too but that's another story. it will only be as if the magazine was sold everywere in the world. and when a volume of a manga you like is out in your country you can buy that paper version just like japanese reader does.
so this is it! if openmanga was like that japanese readers and every readers in the world would be spending the same money and having access to the same content,
plus the japanese publishers would gain more! everybody would be happy!
any reactions?
Is their a chance that the new platform, Openmanga, will allow me to expose my work. Even though I may not have been published "professionnaly" yet ?
Also, if a mangaka is open to the idea of putting up their work on an internet site, then why would they go with YOUR site, of all the other sites that are out there? Because there already are very successful artists out there putting up their manga online (like Hidekaz of APH), and something tells me that they couldn't care less for this new site you're intending to launch, especially with all uncertainty about whether it'll even survive. The idea of launching your manga on a site that proceeds to die is not a very appealing one, and the probability of your site dying is ridiculously high.
One thing that bugs me more than the possibility of paying for scanlations (even though I know the point of OpenManga is to stay free)...is the issue of time.
Honestly, the one thing that makes scanlations so appealing to me and I'm pretty sure, most of the fans, is the fact that they tend to stay extremely current, maybe (I'm talking about mainstream) only a couple of days behind from the last current Japanese release.
If this is to take effect...will the same hold true? Because, to me...the way it's sounding, I wouldn't be surprised if the scanlations ended up being a month behind or more. If scanlators have to contact the mangaka, make arrangements, and have everything approved before uploaded...wouldn't that take a lot more time? Of course, the benefit for translators and scanlators is that this would all be legal.
But the point of scanlations...initially, correct me if I'm wrong, was to provide those outside Japan with a means of currently keeping up with a mangaka's work. What I'm asking is that... a time delay seems to be inevitable, but will it cause drastic changes?
Maybe that was a stupid question. ^___^"
The thing is that the delay won't occur...if an author decides to create a partnership with OpenManga, then OpenManga will receive the Raw material before it gets published, just like it happens now...that's because the material is already drawn a week before or even more
1) Should we work on a series and we get designated as its sole scanlator, will we get free access to said series? We won't have to pay to work on the series right?
2) Will we be given a release schedule to follow if we work on series? We'll still be doing it in our free time after all.
3) What kind of works would we be working with? Works currently being published under another company, new works by established authors or works by relatively unknown ones?
the Latest Releases and raws that appears since last week are always the same.....
the only thing that updates are the translations and I don`t know what to do to get the page updated D :
Ah. That's a miscalculation on my part. I didn't realize that could happen.
If so, then it's brilliant. No other flaws are apparent to me right now.
You're either a bit late or missed the post. MangaHelpers has taken down all Scanlations and Raws due to Japan making some huge announcement to pursue legal action against huge sites. For now, only the people who uploaded scanlations (and maybe raws, not too sure), can look at them, and it's for backup purposes only. Then even those will be gone.
Or even in other languages... Right?
Actually, the earliest mainstream scanlations lately have been being released before the street release date (say, Shounen Jump is released on Mondays, and you get your Naruto/Bleach/OP fix the Wednesday-Thursday before...)
This is the problem with people on the internet, you see a problem and just say "lols it will fail", rather than figuring out a solution. That's why so much half-assed stuff on the internet does die and fail.
The quality control thing is simple, just have a top ten (or twenty, or one hundred or whatever) list of mangas on the front page of the site (could be based on number of views, or being able to give the manga a rating like on this site etc), and suddenly the good stuff isn't buried under crap. You could also have a new artist feature etc so new people can gain exposure. There are plenty of artists out there who aren't published who are better than a lot of what's currently on the market.
Also, as has been previously stated, the artist owns the copyright, not OM. So they are free to place their work on as many sites (including their own) as they want. If that's the case, then why wouldn't you place your work on OM if it's a free way of being able to get your work exposed to more fans and everyone getting more money?
OPENMANGA FTW!!!!, and i hope openmanga its ready to work soon, and that it will keep working letting me read my mangas at least until im death LOL
At least OpenManga would do more to support artists - the big aggregator sites like MangaFox and OneManga make tons of money off their ads and not one cent of it goes to the creators.