When do you think manga will be available on e-ink readers, like amazon kindle?!


Question: There are two questions inherent here:

1. Will manga be available in ebook formats such as mobi or Kindle format?

2. Will manga available in such formats display on an e-ink display (such as the Kindle) in a way that makes it useful?

The answer to the first question is a definite yes. There are some examples and some announcements.

e-ink is a really different technology than that which is used for LCD devices like a palm pilot. I have an Amazon Kindle and this device displays illustrated plates from books (such as the maps in David Weber and Eric Flint's "1633", available from the Baen Free Library) as well as cover art, but it simply does not do them justice. Additionally, while these might be full page in the originals, they are shrunk significantly by the way that they were positioned by the content manager.

Additionally, Amazon's Kindle uses a 4 level display - so that each pixel fits in two bits. white, light grey, dark grey, black. The display is capable of more, others who use it dtive it to eight levels (three bits per pixel). For text there are two levels I care about, black and white. But your question is about Manga, which form inherently includes art.

There are also many screensaver pictures included with the kindle. The ones that look the best, to my taste, are old woodcuts. Art that depends on line and thickness of line, as opposed to grey shading, look the best on the e-ink displays. Frankly, the simpler illustrations look better.

There is a fair amount of Manga that lives within the style restrictions of woodcut - art that is strong in line and simple of composition. But there is also much that will not fit those style restrictions.

Additionally, you want your panels to be uniform. They should be in the proportion of the kindle display and, well, I would not mind holding my Kindle sideways for a Manga, I would not want to rotate it every frame or two. So I'd want the artist to live within the 600x600 proportions and probably not put more than 10-20 words per panel.

This does not mean that Manga will not be available electronically. I've seen a lot of Manga that is simply gif scans of panels arranged in pages using HTML for organization, and, viewed on a standard computer monitor it looks fine.

But a computer monitor, or even a Palm Pilot is not e-ink.

The strength of the Kindle is not only the e-ink display. The Kindle allows you to shop, and almost instantly get your purchases, assuming that your cell connection is a good one. This means that you could select your purchases while on the platform waiting for your train and read them on the way in. This is a huge advantage to Manga sellers - no stocking newsstands, no competing for space. Instant sales.

Manga varies enormously in terms of art style, and many could be published in a way that would be acceptable to the kindle. Doing a search for "manga" in the Amazon Kindle store gives me three items. One is a book on Naruto, then something called Saburo which, from the description seems to be a book of short stories, and finally something called "Won & Twoo (Compromise is the Mother of Murder)", which actually seems to be a graphic novel, if not strictly a Manga. Your question made me curious, and so I ordered a copy.

Well, I'd have to say that while it might be that some manga might be eInk ready, this one is not. The story would have to be managed, strong illustrations - limited, large text per panel, so that it can be read, and simple, strong lines. Part of art is working within your media and making the art accessable to the users of the media.

This one is a failure in Kindle format. The print is sometimes barely readable and sometimes undiscernable. I considered asking for a refund, but I actually want to keep it because it is so bad.

There are a couple of things they could have done. The simplest would have been to intersperse the illustrations with standard text repeating the text in the bubbles and panels so that one would not need a good microscope to read them (assuming that they are even discernable, I can't tell). That would also have made the text portions of the graphics discernable - and it would have made the book more easily able to be translated to other languages.

So, will traditional manga be accessable on eInk? Yes, the kindle's format, as well as Mobi's format, can handle illustrations associated with text and anchored therein.

Will the manga then be useful on eInk readers like the Kindle? So far there are no successful examples that I know of but my sample is limited.

There is also no question in my mind that I've read Manga that would be appropriate to the media with just a small amount of reformatting, and that, had the artist been targeting the Kindle, as opposed to the printed page, that the Manga would be a complete success.

A Manga artist/writer who was creating for the Kindle could create a product that would work on the Kindle.

What I think is doomed to fail is trying to take ordinary Magna which are drawn in a wide variety of formats and panel sizes and putting them into an e-book format where they will then be viewed on a small e-ink screen.

So far we have dealt with possibilities. But the question is when. I think that the answer to that is, "Whenever someone decides to do it!" As soon as the appropriate author, or translator steps up and says, "There is a market for this, or this is an appropriate Manga, so I am going to secure the rights or do the creation personally," and this person picks the right Manga or creates the right art and text so that it works with the limited media of the Kindle, we will have Manga for the Kindle.

I did my best to answer your question based on the available technology and what I could find on blogs and in the literature. This is a fast moving field, and everything could change by tomorrow. But one thing that can't be predicted is creativity. When will someone create a Manga in Kindle format? When they do.


Answers: There are two questions inherent here:

1. Will manga be available in ebook formats such as mobi or Kindle format?

2. Will manga available in such formats display on an e-ink display (such as the Kindle) in a way that makes it useful?

The answer to the first question is a definite yes. There are some examples and some announcements.

e-ink is a really different technology than that which is used for LCD devices like a palm pilot. I have an Amazon Kindle and this device displays illustrated plates from books (such as the maps in David Weber and Eric Flint's "1633", available from the Baen Free Library) as well as cover art, but it simply does not do them justice. Additionally, while these might be full page in the originals, they are shrunk significantly by the way that they were positioned by the content manager.

Additionally, Amazon's Kindle uses a 4 level display - so that each pixel fits in two bits. white, light grey, dark grey, black. The display is capable of more, others who use it dtive it to eight levels (three bits per pixel). For text there are two levels I care about, black and white. But your question is about Manga, which form inherently includes art.

There are also many screensaver pictures included with the kindle. The ones that look the best, to my taste, are old woodcuts. Art that depends on line and thickness of line, as opposed to grey shading, look the best on the e-ink displays. Frankly, the simpler illustrations look better.

There is a fair amount of Manga that lives within the style restrictions of woodcut - art that is strong in line and simple of composition. But there is also much that will not fit those style restrictions.

Additionally, you want your panels to be uniform. They should be in the proportion of the kindle display and, well, I would not mind holding my Kindle sideways for a Manga, I would not want to rotate it every frame or two. So I'd want the artist to live within the 600x600 proportions and probably not put more than 10-20 words per panel.

This does not mean that Manga will not be available electronically. I've seen a lot of Manga that is simply gif scans of panels arranged in pages using HTML for organization, and, viewed on a standard computer monitor it looks fine.

But a computer monitor, or even a Palm Pilot is not e-ink.

The strength of the Kindle is not only the e-ink display. The Kindle allows you to shop, and almost instantly get your purchases, assuming that your cell connection is a good one. This means that you could select your purchases while on the platform waiting for your train and read them on the way in. This is a huge advantage to Manga sellers - no stocking newsstands, no competing for space. Instant sales.

Manga varies enormously in terms of art style, and many could be published in a way that would be acceptable to the kindle. Doing a search for "manga" in the Amazon Kindle store gives me three items. One is a book on Naruto, then something called Saburo which, from the description seems to be a book of short stories, and finally something called "Won & Twoo (Compromise is the Mother of Murder)", which actually seems to be a graphic novel, if not strictly a Manga. Your question made me curious, and so I ordered a copy.

Well, I'd have to say that while it might be that some manga might be eInk ready, this one is not. The story would have to be managed, strong illustrations - limited, large text per panel, so that it can be read, and simple, strong lines. Part of art is working within your media and making the art accessable to the users of the media.

This one is a failure in Kindle format. The print is sometimes barely readable and sometimes undiscernable. I considered asking for a refund, but I actually want to keep it because it is so bad.

There are a couple of things they could have done. The simplest would have been to intersperse the illustrations with standard text repeating the text in the bubbles and panels so that one would not need a good microscope to read them (assuming that they are even discernable, I can't tell). That would also have made the text portions of the graphics discernable - and it would have made the book more easily able to be translated to other languages.

So, will traditional manga be accessable on eInk? Yes, the kindle's format, as well as Mobi's format, can handle illustrations associated with text and anchored therein.

Will the manga then be useful on eInk readers like the Kindle? So far there are no successful examples that I know of but my sample is limited.

There is also no question in my mind that I've read Manga that would be appropriate to the media with just a small amount of reformatting, and that, had the artist been targeting the Kindle, as opposed to the printed page, that the Manga would be a complete success.

A Manga artist/writer who was creating for the Kindle could create a product that would work on the Kindle.

What I think is doomed to fail is trying to take ordinary Magna which are drawn in a wide variety of formats and panel sizes and putting them into an e-book format where they will then be viewed on a small e-ink screen.

So far we have dealt with possibilities. But the question is when. I think that the answer to that is, "Whenever someone decides to do it!" As soon as the appropriate author, or translator steps up and says, "There is a market for this, or this is an appropriate Manga, so I am going to secure the rights or do the creation personally," and this person picks the right Manga or creates the right art and text so that it works with the limited media of the Kindle, we will have Manga for the Kindle.

I did my best to answer your question based on the available technology and what I could find on blogs and in the literature. This is a fast moving field, and everything could change by tomorrow. But one thing that can't be predicted is creativity. When will someone create a Manga in Kindle format? When they do.

Hey, I've never thought about that before...that would be pretty cool! I would just looove to be able to read my manga on somethng like the Kindle...in the future, they'll probably have lots of things like that, by different brands...like when the iPhone came out, and in the span of a month everybody and their mommas had a phone with a touch screen.

But I digress, lol. I think this manga-on-a-Kindle thing would happen around 2020. Hey, it might even happen sooner! Who knows?



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