DRM opponents should be sending love letters to the Japanese Digital Comics Association. As of March 26th, its “streaming manga” website JManga (which I covered here before) will stop selling new manga—and as of the end of May, manga already purchased will become unavailable to view. And there is no way to download and back up manga files that have been purchased from this site—they can only be read online. At the end of May, loyal customers can kiss goodbye all the money they have ever spent at the site. Unused purchase points will be refunded as Amazon gift cards, but...

CNet has a report on a new book scanner (Japanese) from Dai Nippon Printing that takes and corrects three-dimensional images of book pages, allowing for them to be scanned at the amazing rate of 250 pages a minute, meaning that the average book could be captured in little more than two to three minutes tops. This is the result of the scanning development technology we covered in March of last year, created by University of Tokyo professors in the hope that it could be used for easy scanning and sharing of manga titles. (The manga studios were not amused.)...

It’s an Amazon roundup! Here are some Amazon stories from the last few days that might not deserve full pieces by themselves, but are nonetheless interesting tidbits. Wired reports Amazon has released a firmware update for the Paperwhite that will allow readers to enlarge panes in manga novels—undoubtedly aimed mainly at the Japanese market, but potentially useful over here, too, for translated manga. And perhaps also for those single-issue DC comics, if DC decides to allow reading them on black and white devices after all. It also fixes some issues with novels that only filled half the screen, and improves handling...

Publishing Trends has an interesting article looking at the problem of manga scanlation, which a number of manga publishers feel is retarding the potential international market for their product. Scanlation, the manga equivalent of fansubbing, has been around for a while, but really kicked into gear around 2007. (I covered this in detail a couple of years ago.) [Kurt Hassler, Publishing Director at Yen Press (Hachette’s manga imprint)] argues that rather than “pushing” manga publishing into the digital age, the genre’s robust digital piracy-base has retarded its progress. As if the challenges of image-rich content weren’t...

Amazon has pulled the plug on the account of an erotica publisher, Digital Manga Publishing. DMP is an importer and translator of Japanese manga (whose launch on Kobo we covered last year), and apparently one of its yaoi (homosexual male romance genre) titles ran afoul of Amazon’s prohibition on “Pornography and hard-core material that depicts graphic sexual acts.” DMP writes on its news blog: There is no definition of “pornography” versus “erotica” officially available from amazon. In the past, we considered our titles the latter, and strive to comply with Amazon’s guidelines. However, with such vague...

Publishing Perspectives has an interesting article about comic book piracy in France, focusing on a report by the Paris government’s “Le MOTif” book and writing “observatory”. The third in a series of reports on piracy that began in 2009, Le MOTif zoomed in on comics, as this is the category of books that is pirated the most in France. Comic books make up 10-14% of France’s global book market, but the availability of comics in e-book format does not meet the readers’ needs — resulting in organized teams of pirates (up to 100) that have...

From the press release: Barnes & Noble, Inc. (NYSE: BKS), the leading retailer of digital media and educational products, today announced that it has teamed up with VIZ Media, LLC, the largest distributor and publisher of anime and manga in North America, to bring the digital manga (graphic novel) experience to NOOK Tablet and NOOK Color customers. Debuting in the NOOK Store™ today, VIZ Media’s collection includes 18 series, featuring 107 volumes, from its popular Shojo Beat, Shonen Sunday and VIZ Signature imprints. Volumes are available for purchase and fast download in the U.S. and Canada for...

From GoodEReader: Digital Manga, mostly known for manga comics and graphic novels, has teamed up with Harlequin to bring 20 books to the Barnes and Noble bookstore. This is a large partnership not only between Digital Manga and Harlequin, but also Softbank. Softbank was the company responsible mainly for the localization in foreign languages with the project. Digital Manga said only a paltry 20 titles will be available at the launch, but by the end of the year there should be hundreds. Initially, all of the books will be in English, but the companies...

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...

From the press release: Digital Manga, one of the manga industry's most unique and creative publishers, is proud to announce its digital distribution expansion on to Kobo books— http://www.kobobooks.com/ —a global eReading service, providing readers with a global alternative to the Amazon Kindle. Kobo have distributing partners with Canada's Chapters Indigo, Borders US & AU, Australia's Angus & Robertson, and New Zealand's Whitcoulls ebookstore storefronts which are powered by Kobo.Digital Manga has so far launched over 90 titles from their DMP, Juné, and 801 Mediaimprints into the Kobo ebookstore and their partners, with more to follow in the coming weeks and months, including popular...

According to Publisher's Weekly Comixology is setting up a beta program for authoring tools: David Steinberger, CEO of Comixology, said preparing comics for the Guided View technology is a “labor intensive” process that has caused a backlog. While Comixology can convert up to about 200 new comics a week for delivery through the Comixology app, Steinberger said demand to get content in the channel has been overwhelming. By opening access to the Comixology authoring tools, Steinberger said he will speed up the process of getting comics into the Comixology digital marketplace. Once the beta program is complete, Steinberger said he hopes...

The Anime News Network is reporting that: Manga creator Ken Akamatsu (Negima! Magister Negi Magi, Love Hina) announced on Monday that he is launching a "J-Comi" website that will eventually post out-of-print manga for free with advertising support. He is working with Ryusei Deguchi (Abenobashi: Magical Shopping Arcade ) and other fellow manga creators, in part to deal with the current situation of manga being scanned and uploaded without authorization. Under the proposed plan, the site will distribute out-of-print manga with the creators' permission and with advertising. The advertising revenues will then be split among the creators. The site will use PDF...