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[Terrestrial Dream]

Originally Posted by aohige

The "new big thing" would be Toriko, actually.
Beelzebub is doing pretty decent, along with few others including Sket and Nurari.
That's limiting the perspective to the shounen magna field, the largest one, of course.

Off topic, but is Nura being in danger of cancellation? From what I seen in weekly rankings it always seems to be at the bottom.

[aohige]

Originally Posted by Terrestrial Dream

Off topic, but is Nura being in danger of cancellation? From what I seen in weekly rankings it always seems to be at the bottom.

The cumulative sale of 18 volumes have recently hit 10 million copies, so no.
It does terrible in polls, but the sales are high enough to not matter.

You know, sorta like Hunter x Hunter and Death Note.

[DonQuigleone]

Originally Posted by aohige

Your Strawman BS is really starting to piss me off.

Your "argument" is simply throwing perspective such as what you quoted here into my mouth, and arguing points without even a cause.
Let me paste my own quote again.

It is very easy in a forum context to read something into another person's post that they did not intend. I have done so with your posts, and you have done so with my posts. Lets' leave this matter aside...

Akamatsu wasn't around in the 80s. He does not know how competitive the market was back then.
Or the fact "big timers" already had their seats back then too.

Well the discussion was with Takekuni who was in the industry back then.

"Cracking into" manga industry isn't harder nowadays. In fact, it may be even easier as the windows have widened.
It's "harder" to immediately crack into the big seats of major magazines, but not the industry itself.
Now you have to actually prove yourself. Oh, boo-hoo.

Indeed, but the gap between the big guys and little guys has considerably widened. There are fewer but bigger sellers now. That's my perception anyway. Haven't done an indepth study or anything.

You can get a MUCH BETTER perspective on manga industry growth from reading stuff from manga gods like Kazuhiko Shimamoto's Blue Flame than someone like Akamatsu. Or listening to his radio rants.

What's the problem with Akamatsu. Other then some Love Hina, that interview was the only thing of his I'd ever read.

Not much of a fan of his work, but he's still qualified to give an opinion on the industry, being in it for quite a while, and having been succesful within it.

[sa547]

Originally Posted by Vexx

Those of you still using Facebook will want to wake up and do a review of your new Timeline "feature" that Zuckertwit is forcing on the user base come 2 Feb 2012. Stuff you *thought* was private may suddenly go public, etc (usual drill of "fuck the user preferences, expose it all).

http://www.pcworld.com/article/24892...d_to_know.html

I fixed that long before Timeline came to being; I use FB mainly for communications with my MMO guildmates, but didn't want my sister and some pesky relatives snooping on my real interests.

-----------
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0112/72114.html

Why punish us economically when we're already being dumped with dirt-cheap goods?

[MrTerrorist]

The toughest place to be a binman

Whoa, they make developed countries garbage men jobs look easy.

[SaintessHeart]

Originally Posted by sa547

I fixed that long before Timeline came to being; I use FB mainly for communications with my MMO guildmates, but didn't want my sister and some pesky relatives snooping on my real interests.

-----------
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0112/72114.html

Why punish us economically when we're already being dumped with dirt-cheap goods?

In the next ten years or so, everyone would get used to their threats. Being an export based economy, they dry themselves out if they don't wish to play ball or do good business - magic lights is all they can muster when people stop buying in bad times.

They think overtaking the US economy will make them the king of the world and they can do whatever they want ; the ruling party is certainly blinded by power.

[TinyRedLeaf]

Originally Posted by aohige

I very well know the increase and decline in WSJ sales, who the hell do you think I am?

You work at WSJ?

Originally Posted by aohige

The graph is accurate, and I have discussed it in many threads in the past.
What he doesn't seem to realize is market trends. He's looking at the peak time as "the norm", when clearly the graph says otherwise.

I was actually more interested in learning the background and context behind the figures — how they were gathered, reader demographics, and so on — than challenging them. I don't know enough about the manga industry to be sceptical about the numbers.

Originally Posted by aohige

So you agree that they should completely abandon print medium, even though it's doing just fine, and put everything on digital?

...Since there's no digital alternative to those magazines, the only alternative is pirated copies of manga. Yeah, no.

...I said, the print decline in Japan is FAR more gradual than the rest of the world, and digital medium is attributing it far less, and on top of that, it has a threshold of demand that gives it a safety net.

Here's something that puzzles me: for a population that is so comfortable with reading e-mail and watching TV on phones, that has been paying for sundries with phone "walllets" for ages, what's stopping readers from simply reading manga on phones?

I get the customer loyalty to print media. I get the differences in reading habits. I also get that no one is particularly eager to fix a distribution system that ain't broke. But as Vexx was suggesting, switching to an online platform could lead to significant cost savings for consumers (and potentially for producers as well; junk the printing presses! Though, of course, industrial relations in Japan would probably make that incredibly difficult). Hasn't anyone in Japan tried to explore this market gap? If someone did, I'd be interested to know why the initiative didn't take off.

[SaintessHeart]

Originally Posted by TinyRedLeaf

You work at WSJ?


I was actually more interested in learning the background and context behind the figures — how they were gathered, reader demographics, and so on — than challenging them. I don't know enough about the manga industry to be sceptical about the numbers.


Here's something that puzzles me: for a population that is so comfortable with reading e-mail and watching TV on phones, that has been paying for sundries with phone "walllets" for ages, what's stopping readers from simply reading manga on phones?

I get the customer loyalty to print media. I get the differences in reading habits. I also get that no one is particularly eager to fix a distribution system that ain't broke. But as Vexx was suggesting, switching to an online platform could lead to significant cost savings for consumers (and potentially for producers as well; junk the printing presses! Though, of course, industrial relations in Japan would probably make that incredibly difficult). Hasn't anyone in Japan tried to explore this market gap? If someone did, I'd be interested to know why the initiative didn't take off.

Exploring new markets is often deemed expensive and will never get the approval of traditional financw managers unless it is ordered by the boss him/herself.

You could ask your own bosses on how much work it took to push ST into digital format.

[TinyRedLeaf]

Originally Posted by SaintessHeart

You could ask your own bosses on how much work it took to push ST into digital format.

Singapore is a different market altogether, one that is bound by an ostensible social mission on the one hand, and onerous legislation on the other. The simple fact is that print and broadcast mass media here is essentially one huge monopoly, which accounts for the inertia towards the new-media threat (rest assured that there is no lack of awareness of the dangers; scarcely a week goes by without top editors voicing such concerns).

Even so, there is no lack of online alternatives to print media in Singapore. The only major difference is that these producers haven't monetised their projects (though, in the case of Temasek Review Emeritus, it is not for lack of trying). And in the case of mrbrown.com, founder Lee Kin Mun has used his blog as an advertising platform for a number of ad hoc media projects.

That's the thing: Where are the independent publishers in Japan and how are they adapting to the opportunities? From what I heard, porn spam on phones is pretty common in Tokyo? What's stopping doujinshi, for example, from tapping this channel?

[SaintessHeart]

Originally Posted by TinyRedLeaf

Singapore is a different market altogether, one that is bound by an ostensible social mission on the one hand, and onerous legislation on the other. The simple fact is that print and broadcast mass media here is essentially one huge monopoly, which accounts for the inertia towards the new-media threat (rest assured that there is no lack of awareness of the dangers; scarcely a week goes by without top editors voicing such concerns).

Maybe it is because the top editiors are Singaporeans. Complaining is in their blood and they do it in print. *joking*

Even so, there is no lack of online alternatives to print media in Singapore. The only major difference is that these producers haven't monetised their projects (though, in the case of Temasek Review Emeritus, it is not for lack of trying). And in the case of mrbrown.com, founder Lee Kin Mun has used his blog as an advertising platform for a number of ad hoc media projects.

That's the thing: Where are the independent publishers in Japan and how are they adapting to the opportunities? From what I heard, porn spam on phones is pretty common in Tokyo? What's stopping doujinshi, for example, from tapping this channel?

I think the answer could be somewhere in the first part of my previous post.

It could be the societal pressure to do things religiously by the "norms" and "books" in the Japanese society that stopped the creative charge.

Either that or they see the new media industry as a "risky new market" rather than a tool to reach out to their premier consumers more easily. The most common examples in counterarguments I hear for not moving into new media often cites the dotcom bubble as the reason why moving business onto the Internet is dangerous.

Funny how some of the spokespersons who read about it failed to understand how Webvan went the same way as their comprehension of the dotcom bubble.

[ganbaru]

EU leaders to agree on permanent bailout fund
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/...80S0SR20120130

[SaintessHeart]

Originally Posted by ganbaru

EU leaders to agree on permanent bailout fund
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/...80S0SR20120130

Enjoy the bailout. Here are the news from 10 minutes ago :

Spanish GDP falls 0.3% in final quarter of 2011

Europe stocks open lower, led by banks, Philips

Only Barclays PLC was up.

[Anh_Minh]

Originally Posted by TinyRedLeaf

Here's something that puzzles me: for a population that is so comfortable with reading e-mail and watching TV on phones, that has been paying for sundries with phone "walllets" for ages, what's stopping readers from simply reading manga on phones?

The small, eye-tiring screen?

[DonQuigleone]

Originally Posted by Anh_Minh

The small, eye-tiring screen?

They're big enough for games...

Though personally I agree, Cheap tablets is where it will be at, for instance, Kindle Fire is already 199$. Who's to say that won't get cheaper.

[Anh_Minh]

Even that doesn't make for very good reading, IMO. I prefer e-readers, but they're not ready for manga either. Not enough resolution, and too slow.

[Haak]

My friend reads manga on his phone. It takes him ages to read a chapter because he's having to scroll down or across the screen a lot.

[Dhomochevsky]

Originally Posted by Haak

My friend reads manga on his phone. It takes him ages to read a chapter because he's having to scroll down or across the screen a lot.

That sounds horrible. What if there is a scene filling a whole page? You can never view it all at once.
I have a pivot monitor that gives me a 1050x1680 resolution (ie I can twist it 90 dregrees). If I view a manga page full screen on that, it works. But only if the scan quality is good. I still can't view scenes that stretch over a double page without zooming.
And then it's not mobile at all. I can't see this as a huge competetion to paper mangas yet.
Maybe once we get very high resolution e-paper devices (with colors!) that will change.

[X10A_Freedom]

"Young Japanese decline to fall in love"

Brought to you by the BBC feat. Azu-nyan!

[Dhomochevsky]

Originally Posted by X10A_Freedom

"Young Japanese decline to fall in love"

Brought to you by the BBC feat. Azu-nyan!

We had that some days ago.
To recap: It is weird how the report constantly mixes up sex, relationship and having children, as it was all the same thing.

[DonQuigleone]

Originally Posted by Anh_Minh

Even that doesn't make for very good reading, IMO. I prefer e-readers, but they're not ready for manga either. Not enough resolution, and too slow.

I agree, though people don't seem keen on E-paper technology. It's been around for years, and just as the first e-readers were released, well, the iPad came along...