Galleycat reports that a group of 39 Japanese manga publishers has launched a portal site called JManga, offering digital English translations of manga readable in a Flash-based on-line reader. The manga is for sale via point-based subscription, but also offers free one-issue previews. It has a number of popular titles now, such as Naruto and One Piece, and plans to have 10,000 titles available by 2013. It used to be that Japanese content producers didn’t care what happened to their work outside of Japan. (Case in point: in the early 1980s, Japanese studio Tatsunoko licensed the external-to-Japan rights...

iReader Review has an article on the Kindle 3 and Manga. They have lots of screen shots and also go into great detail about how to get Mangle up and running on the K3. The Kindle 3 handles images really well – But can Kindle 3 handle Manga? K and 4rc wanted to find out about Kindle 3′s Manga capabilities and also how well Mangle, the Manga Program for Kindle, works with Kindle 3. Well, this post has some photos to show you that Kindle 3 does fine – The Kindle 3 Manga photos are after the jump (second part of...

From the Wall Street Journal The light weight iPad reader has added fuel to Japan's budding e-book industry even though Apple's digital bookstore iBookstore is not yet open for business in Japan. Still, the healthy stable of iPad and iPhone applications on offer via the Japanese iTunes store allows users to pick through a well-stocked library of choice reads . . . Sandwiched between two comics at number 38 in the rankings for the most downloaded book for the iPhone at Apple's App Store in Japan is Japan's surprise runaway bestseller this year, "What If the Female Manager of a High...

Anime News Network is reporting this award for manga available on mobile phones which will be the result of a poll running from June 11 to July 12. Here are the 20 nominations. Those marked with an * are available in the US in English: *Aa Megami-sama (Oh My Goddess!) by Kousuke Fujishima Ao no Fuuin by Chie Shinohara Boku no Hatsukoi wo Kimi ni Sasagu by Kotomi Aoki *Fushigi Yûgi by Yuu Watase Godhand Teru by Kazuki Yamamoto *Gokuraku Seishun Hockey Bu (My Heavenly Hockey Club) by Ai Morinaga *GS Mikami Gokuraku Daisakusen!! (Ghost Sweeper Mikami) by Takashi Shiina *Itazura na Kiss by Kaoru Tada Hotaru no Hikari by Satoru Hiura Kami no Shizuku by Tadashi Agi *Kare...

Publishers Weekly has a piece on Japanese and American manga publishers banding together to oppose “scanlations”—the manga equivalent of animé fansubs, where fans translate and repost manga for the benefit of non-Japanese readers. What they are objecting to is not so much the process itself (which they say has been going on since the ‘70s—have scanners even been around that long?) but a number of “scanlation aggregator” sites that gather together scanlations from all over. They are threatening legal action against 30 scanlation-aggregation sites. According to a spokesperson, these sites are among the most...

Anime News Network is reporting that Japanese publisher Sueisha will be developing an ebook business for anime in America and other countries. Sueisha will offer manga for mobile phones running Microsoft software. In a longer article the site says that the manga will be free at first, but will move to a fee-based service by next March. The first release will be a free sample of Dragon Ball. It's a pity they picked Microsoft as a partner. Windows Mobile is loosing market share rapidly and Android, Apple and Nokia would give them a far larger market. Thanks to...

According to The Japan Times, Professor Kaichiro Morikawa and the Meiji University will open the Yoshihiro Yonezawa Memorial Library of Manga and Subcultures, which will house the 140,000-plus items of the late manga critic and subculture enthusiast's private collection. Yoshihiro Yonezawa was among the first manga critics in Japan, and he helped to legitimize the medium with his writings in the '80s. Up until his death in 2006, he was a voracious collector, known to fill entire houses with books and manga, then abandon the space as storage and migrate to another house to repeat the process. This earned him a...

Well, I guess today is the day for emails. I don't know why. It also seems to be international day. This one is from France, it follows one from Singapore, which, in turn follows one from Hungary. Received the following from Nicolas Gary and thought it well worth reprinting: We have good news for french et european partenairs of DoCoMo. In fact... only if they like mangas... For the first in DoCoMo will sell mangas on smartphone Everything is here : http://www.actualitte.com/actualite/11109-Bouygues-mangas-Docomo-portable-telecharger.htm Enjoy Kind regards -- Nicolas Gary Directeur de la rédaction -- Here is a short excerpt from the site: Alors que l'opérateur français SFR a annoncé...

From Manga Xanadu, by Lori Henderson: While looking around for links to add to my e-reading section, I stumbled upon these posts about putting manga on the Sony E-Reader. They feature the PR-500, but the current, less expensive version, the PR-505, is essentially the same. These include an extensive comparison of color comics, scanalated manga, and Tokyopop manga available through Sony’s store. There are also links to a conversion guide to convert scans to a format optimal for reading, and Manga2Ebook, and RasterFarian, programs used in the conversion guide. Lori also posts some videos that...