J-Comi 2nd beta public release: 2011/01/11
number of manga: 3

1. shonen manga
[石岡ショウエイ] ベルモンド Le VisiteuR 1-3 all
Shueisha Shonen Jump 2007
http://www.amazon.co.jp/ベル&#...;/dp/4088745051
(still under copyright, but releasing with the permission of Jump editor Sasaki.)

2. shoujo manga
[新條まゆ] 放課後ウェディング
http://matome.naver.jp/odai/21267594007604...759675760684403
(a one shot story)

3. seinen manga
[梶 研吾 (著), 樹崎 聖 (イラスト)] 交通事故鑑定人 環倫一郎 1-18 all
http://www.amazon.co.jp/交通&#...3230584&sr=1-16
(Shueisha, long serial, both the artist and author will receive payment.)

the major difference between beta 2 and beta 1, for Love Hina, the ads were carried free of charge, for beta 2, there will be fee for the advertisers, and J-Comi will publish how much the mangaka made from the ads this round.

honestly, this will be tough, I am not interested in all three titles, but I feel obligated to support this venture to at least see it take off, so may be my favor titles will make it up there in the future.

And of course, unlike most, he's actually trying something new in the hopes of buoying a faltering industry. I wonder if twenty years down the road, he'll be best known for Negima, Love Hina, or JCOMI?

Are the release formats compatible with e-readers? (Got one for Christmas.)

I think the format is PDF, so it depends on the e-reader you got.

Coolness.

Received a B&N Nook, which does support PDF, so I'll certainly have to look more closely at what's going on with J-Comi.

Thanks.

(edit:)

Tried it with a PDF'd non-H Strike witches doujin I had and it worked. (Tiger in the Desert.) A bit slow changing pages, but I can live with that.

the 12/17 USTREAM conference outlines (Japanese)
http://ascii.jp/elem/000/000/578/578310/
some key points:

-- the new bill is done with someone slick, by purposely including the language for incest, and Ken is calling it a "threat" to the authors.

-- the bill applies to repeat business of all publishing, sales, and renting of manga, while one time sales of dojinshi in Comiket would not fall under such jurisdiction, distribution the same dojinshi by Toranoana would definitely be under the law.

-- including abolish or stopped publishing one, there were more than 900 manga magazines in Japan.

-- J-Comi had NOT talk to any advertisers (12/17), yet.

-- the majority of the current e-business ads are the adult business variety, as 80~90% of all e-books are mobile phone manga, and again 80~90% of the manga are dominated by BL and adult manga, while Love Hina ads are mostly from major business, in the future J-Comi ads more than likely will concentrate on the online gaming or animation ads.

-- J-Comi server is at Philippine, so the new bill on manga will have no effect on the working model of J-Comi.

==========
from Ken's twitter

-- for J-Comi, Ken made 200 new name cards, talking to lot's of people.

-- the color works of J-Comi Beta 2 is done.

http://d.hatena.ne.jp/KenAkamatsu/20101228

to ease the loads will be put on the J-Comi server, the second beta releases will be staggered. for details on titles see link or post above.

01/11
shoujo one shot 50 pages
01/18
seinen 1-18
01/25
shonen 1-3

the total download number for each will be released after about a week being made available for free download, then the amount of money each author made from the ads will be announced 1-3 days after that.

==========
http://d.hatena.ne.jp/KenAkamatsu/20101229

J-Comi had partnered up with Google to do dynamic ads, so people from abroad (America, etc.) will received different tailor made ads each time he is reading J-Comi,

also, for the saved commentary pages, there will be translation, indexing, and links exchange, between URL and twitter, etc.

as Ken said, the J-Comi ads income will help pay for the staffs who is doing the PDF formating,

J-Comi Beta 2 had started with a shoujo offering.

新條まゆ"放課後ウェディング"
Shinjou Mayu "After Classes Wedding"
one shot, 50 pages.

http://www.j-comi.jp/book/detail/2101

for people used to shonen and Negima, remember, this is a shoujo manga. it is up to you to decide whether it is worth the time for you to d/l the free manga.

Even though the pdf's are protected I was able to do a screen capture and edit the page. If I get really bored I can now redo the tanks for myself ^_^

Grabbed it also - but I'm not sure what protection there is on it since I was able to view it with the linux PDF viewer (evince) and also open it with The GIMP (and even open it with a text editor 'vim') - though I don't know if evince did any automatic decryption of it (or if it can even do that) when I first opened it.

The image quality of the HQ version is still not the best though :(
The greyscale pages (imported at 72dpi which they are internally) aren't as good as a good volume raw (plus they also need some cleaning)

A certain team members scanner would do a way better job of it ... looking closely at the grey area patterns.

Looking inside the PDF (I opened it with just 'vim' but if you're on windows, I guess open it with something like wordpad?) it says the pages are all 1170x827 (which gives 72dpi)

I also tried 288dpi and then scaled down to 1170 with the script we use to maximise quality when scaling down to 1200 high, just in case The GIMP wasn't producing an exact one to one copy at 72dpi, but that didn't make it any better (in fact it made it worse - that would probably be The GIMP's fault)

Here's page 9 imported at 72dpi and saved as a grey PNG: http://207.36.180.49/HW-p09.png
(specifically - panel 3 sux: the background and the girls lines)

You guys are way to serious with quality... good lord.

It's good enough to read on kindle or iPad.

Quite the opposite - you clearly do not take quality seriously enough :)

You're on the wrong forum to make that comment.
We take quality seriously here with scanlation and fansubbing.

Well, I don't care about it.

You guys can go on. =)

I'm indifferent, to an extent, either way.

Not having much experience with e-readers, I was worried about the 'double-page' scanning format.

Since my Nook seems to adjust its display of the pdf accordingly and only show one page at a time, my biggest worry is now moot.

http://d.hatena.ne.jp/KenAkamatsu/20110113

due to system problems, the seinen manga "Traffic Accident Appraiser Kan Rin' ichirō", scheduled to be released on January 18th, now will be delayed for one week and released on January 25th,

while the shonen manga Belmondo Le VisiteuR scheduled for the January 25th will be released as planned at the moment, but Ken warned that situation might arise to make that release delay by one week as well, Ken apologized for the inconvenience.

the links are up, the second round of Beta 2 release of J-Comi is under way, in any case, 18 books will take a while to d/l anyway, reading the first one, as I expected, being seinen making it harder to read than shonen for Japanese impaired people, but again, legally free with ads manga, can't beat that.

(ads mostly are computer oriented and much better organized/placed in PDF, and this time J-Comi inserted legal disclaimer spell out the rights and usages. improvements from beta 1? yes.)

http://d.hatena.ne.jp/KenAkamatsu/20110125

the first number is out for Beta 2, for the released of the 50 pages one shot manga, "After Classes Wedding" mangaka Shinjou Mayu's earning from ads is...

"525 Thousand Yens"

the second round of beta 2 is still on going, but there are reports of technical problems involved Opera browser, and they are working on it.

=====
on my side, while all files can be opened by Adobe Readers, some of them can not be opened by readers compatible graphic apps, in my case, Preview for Mac. those are probably the same problems they had with Opera, wonder if they will recode the file or not?

<conspiracy_theory>Apple OSX intentionally cripples/doesn't work with Adobe software for reasons known only to Steve Jobs.</conspiracy_theory>

anyone know if there's a new translation project for Love Hina? Would there still be a problem with such a project? (iirc Kodansha took away rights from Tokyo Pop and LH was included)

I'd really hope Kodansha USA has this on the docket for a possible release. From what I heard Love Hina's TP release, while not nearly as bad as their other stuff still had flaws. A proper release, even in omnibus format, would be something I'd get.

But yeah, no news on this. A lot of licenses were taken from Tokyopop and I bet Kodansha USA will look into them to see what could be released again.

Awwww.... crap.. =/ I've bought 23 volumes of Negima! already from Del Rey Manga... and now Kodansha decides they're gonna take it over and re-release it with a new translation? I really wish I'd heard about this before buying another 3 or 4 more volumes over the last few months...

Ughhh... While that's all well and cool, I'd like to see some way to trade my old manga in for a discount or something on the new translated version.

I've definitely enjoyed DRM's translation so far. It's way better than anything TP's done. I hate how most north american publishers decide that none of us can appreciate cultural differences. Like naming differences, Given-Family vs. Family-Given. And along with that the forms of address between people, typical acquaintance relationships where they refer to each other by their family name since they aren't close enough to use given names. And the different name suffixes used for different kinds of relationships.

It'll be the same translators. So essentially what you're getting is the Del Rey manga under a new imprint.

And volumes 1-6 had a lot of issues too with translations. I wish we could trade in our old volumes though.

Hmmm... their webpage does say "Negima! gets an omnibus release in June, collecting the first three volumes with a new translation!" And there definitely were inconsistencies in the early volumes... I can live with replacing some of the less-well translated ones... if that's their goal I'll be quite happy with the switch-over. Not so much if they do sweeping changes for all 28 of Del Rey's released volumes.

I've never actually perused an omnibus release before, so I don't really know what to expect with this. It'd be cool if it incorporated the spine art of the volumes it's collecting and separated the 3 volumes with full-color pages of the volumes' covers.

Omnibus front cover (volume 1 front cover)
pg 20X (volume 2 front cover)
pg 40X (volume 3 front cover)
Omnibus back cover

Or whatever the page counts end up being. It would be a terrible loss to discard the cover art of the replaced volumes. I contemplated adding the original back covers to that list, but there really isn't much more than one character pic and a synopsis of the volume.

Really, my main complaint would be the updated releases looking out of place with the rest of the volumes on the shelf.

now it seems people with W-Zero3, Kindle, and Sony Readers all have the same unable to open PDF problem with some of the files of release 2, the tech people will try to figure out a solution by next week.

So basically - something like $5,250 (Aus/US)
That doesn't seem like a lot ...

Actually, I'm pretty sure that's good. Don't forget that most authors don't get Rick Castle money. I'm pretty sure a grand a page isn't bad in the publishing industry, especially considering it's probably still getting additional downloads.

Imagine if it were a weekly manga, or even a monthly, and the number starts to look even better.

1.
under the current Japanese publishing system, the said mangaka would never get another cent from that 50 pages of work. Publisher won't reprint titles unless they are sure at the minimum it can sell more than 10,000 copies, this is half a million yen in her pocket by giving up the right to it and makes it free ware.

btw, for magazine serial, regular mangaka got paid 10,000 yen per page, (that is the 2007 number, I think SJ jacks the pay to 12,000 yen per page now a day.) and for big time mangaka like Ken? 20,000 yen per page, while that sounds a lot, but when you take into account of rent, equipments, and assistants with the standard of living in Japan, that is no where near enough, unless you can make enough money from compilation sales (only about 40 yen per book goes to the mangaka for a 440 yen book.) you either have to take a second job to support yourself or you have to get out of being a mangaka all together, which is why generally you can judge how well a mangaka is doing by how many assistants one has, anything more than 3? he is doing good,

2.
on the front page they listed real time download numbers
Love Hina 2,693,270
(14 books, so almost 500,000 people?)
After Classes Wedding 50,959
(one shot, so around 50,000 people and each download earns the mangaka ten yen?)
Traffic Accident Appraiser Kan Rin' ichirō 155,954
(actually not very good number for less than 10,000 people per 18 books, but it might be because people notice there are problems with the PDF format and holding off downloading to wait for fixed update.)

btw, I want to mention one thing, the first two number of people who download are mirroring the number of people who buy actual compilations for each title very closely.

and PS, right now $1 ~= 82 yen, the old 1 to 100 ratio no longer applied.

Wow, the conversion rate has dropped that much?

That's a lot of downloads for Love Hina. And to think I was part of that (only a few volumes though, I should get the rest)

people asking Ken if he wants pixiv to delete Negima drawing, here is Ken's reply.

"私は、同人誌には異常に寛容ですが（笑）, むしろ描いて欲しい(><)"
"I am unusually tolerant on fanzine (laugh), on the other hand we want drawing, (cross face)"

http://twitter.com/KenAkamatsu/statuses/31206848237404160

this comes up because talking about copy right with "Jisuinomori" (自炊の森, self cook/provide forest/cafe), where an Akibahara store allows buyers to buy "self digitized" dojinshi/manga/light novel without actually owing the physical copy, and trying to avoid the law by having the buyer doing the scanning in store themselves, the store technically only earn fees by renting scanning equipments, (but providing free materials on the shelf to scan.) unlike J-Comi this one is pretty much illegal if you ask me, original author got no compensations, and current title like One Piece and Bakuman were included, what Ken is saying in later twits, if he or any mangaka wants to, they can make pixiv and Toranoana withdraw all copy righted product/images like Disney would, the only reason it is not happening is because they don't want to, and they are not happy with Jisuinomori, which unlike Ken's J-Comi model, is basically just a money grab operation.

http://akiba-pc.watch.impress.co.jp/hotlin.../etc_jisui.html

Yeah, that's pretty obviously illegal. Just find one store to "make an example of" and sic the publishers on them, and it'll go away quickly enough.

Only reason they should have scanners in the stores anyway is for authors to digitize their own homegrown dojinshi for distribution, so those should be the only things getting scanned.

the third phase of Beta 2 is underway, with the 3 volumes shonen manga Belmondo Le VisiteuR available for download, published on Shonen Jump in 2007 and still under copyright, it is made available for free download just because Jump is nice to Ken. :rolleyes:

might be old news to some from last November,
http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/press-rele...co-seigahttp://
but this is tag with J-Comi news today.
http://getnews.jp/archives/96027
"Say hello to Black Jack" English translation project is on the go at "Nico Nico Seiga".
http://www.niconico.com/

Ken in a series of twit messages, talks about what he think of manga in oversea (none Japan) market doing, etc.

read the series of messages from bottom up, biggest number first, etc.

1. あと中国は、（様々な問題から正規版は）手つかずで、もし「安価な娯楽」として電子版を普及させることができれば、広大な新天地といった感じです。物質本では不可能でも、電子の世界なら無いとは言えません。

7. 私が市場として注目しているのは、すでに出来上がった（これ以上取りにくい）西欧＆北米ではなく、南米とアジア。何故かブラジルやタイ等からの感想メールが多いですね。イスラム圏はかなり厳しいかな・・・。orz

8. 海外にもウケる作品を、「無料」で「早く」配信できれば、まだまだ勝ちの目はあると考えます。そのためには、今の出版構造自体を変える必要がありますね。

9. また、世界では本は「左綴じ」が多いんです。そのため漫画も、昔は絵を左右反転した「裏刷り」ばかりだったのですが、今では日本と同じ「右綴じ」が一般的。どの国でも、日本の「オリジナル」を読みたい方向に変わったわけです。

11. ラブひなの初期、韓国版では「お風呂シーンに黒い水着」が描き足されていました。でも後期はそのまま収録されるようになりました。

12. また、海外でウケる漫画の種類はいつも大体決まっており、「日本で売れたあの作品が、海外では全然売れない！」と騒ぐのもおかしいです。それマーケティングしてないだけじゃん。

13. 西欧と北米と南米がメインで、あとはタイや台湾などアジア圏ですね。イスラム圏では見たこと無いです。

14. 「無料」で「早い」スキャンレーション（※スキャンしてトランスレーション＝翻訳した違法マンガのこと）に対して、「高額」で「遅い」正規翻訳コミックスが負けるのは当然。もう、誰も正規版なんか読んでないんじゃないかな・・・。

16. 去年、日本の出版社からの圧力で潰された、海外のマンガ違法配信サイト「one manga」は月間11億アクセスを達成し、グーグルのアクセス数トップ1000にランキングするほどの需要がありました。

17. そもそも、この世界的な出版不況で、「漫画本の売り上げが下がる」のは当然。アメリカ第２位の書店が破産法申請する昨今、何を驚いているんだ、みたいな。

19. 現場の印象から言うと、海外版の正規翻訳コミックスの売り上げは確かに落ちているが、危機的と言われるほど「海外からの反応」が悪くなったとは思えない感じです。

this is too much for me to translate, so I will just run it through google and highlight items of interests, again, read it from bottom to the top. FIFO style. and yes, Ken did know about OneManga.

1. China after the (regular version from a variety of issues) untouched, if the "cheap entertainment" If we can spread the electronic version as it feels like a vast new land. But this is impossible in the material, and can not say Nara無I electronic world.

5. The market has been attracting attention as I have already finished (no more difficult to) Seiou and not North America, South America and Asia. E-mail are a lot of impressions from Brazil and Thailand and for some reason. How Islamic is a pretty tough. orz

6. Adam Green hardly works as well overseas, "free" in the "early" if the delivery is still considered to have a winning look. So, I need to change the current structure itself published.

7. In this world, "left bound" I do a lot. Some of the cartoons, so the old picture was reversed, "printed back," I was just, like Japan is now "bound" right generally. In every country, Japan's "original" is not unusual to read directions.

9. Early Love Hina, the Korean version of "black swimsuit bath scene" was the draw 足Sa. But late as it is now recorded.

10. The kind of cartoon about Adam Green hardly abroad has always been decided, "That work is sold in Japan and sell abroad at all!" Is funny and even riots. Dakejan unable to marketing it.

11. The main North and South America and Western Europe, and later it is Thailand, Taiwan and other Asian countries. The Islamic world is seen Koto無I.

12. A "free" in the "early" scanlation (translation for the manga scans that illegal ※ = translated), the "high" and "slow" regular course of translation Comics lose. Another, I think we are not reading a full version of everyone.

14. Last year, was crushed under the pressure of the publisher of Japanese manga illegal foreign distribution sites "one manga" has achieved access to 1.1 billion a month, there was enough demand for visits to Google's top rankings in 1000 .

15. First of all, published in this global recession, "comic book sales are down" of course. Bankruptcy laws apply today the second largest U.S. bookstore, I'm surprised what kinda thing.

17. Speaking from the scene impressions, sales of regular overseas edition is translated comics have certainly fallen, even called a crisis, "the reaction from overseas" is feeling very sick, and think.

conference talks (Japanese) on e-manga between Ken Akamatsu and Kentaro Takekuma (竹熊健太郎 )
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kentaro_Takekuma

http://ebook.itmedia.co.jp/ebook/articles/...14/news015.html
http://ebook.itmedia.co.jp/ebook/articles/...15/news047.html
http://ebook.itmedia.co.jp/ebook/articles/...16/news024.html

the UltraJumpEgg.com's three parts Japanese interview of Ken on J-Comi and the future of manga on electronic media is online, require flash to read, at
http://ultrajumpegg.com #jcomi

the profits for the second title of beta 2 trial is made public, for Traffic Accident Appraiser Kan Rin' ichirō the total is 1,065,000 yen, J-Comi will hand over the cash to the two authors by the end of March.

http://d.hatena.ne.jp/KenAkamatsu/20110224/p1

2chan.us just posted a twitterview with Akamatsu, Minako Uchida and Kazumi Tojo as discussed on 22-23 February.

Widya Santoso

http://d.hatena.ne.jp/KenAkamatsu/20110224/p2

by the first week of March, J-Comi will introduce a new online comic viewer "Arnoul" version 3.0 (the J-Comi technical director probably names it after a French actress.)

features including
- switch between double pages (PC) and single page (Mobile)
- with registration, you can read other reader's comments/feedback on any particular part of the pages for "social reading"
-- with registration, can switch manga dialogue to text screen which will make it possible to run it through google translate.
-- once switch to text screen, can also be easily converted to speech via Google.
-- can search an entire volume by text keyword.
-- banner ads from google specifically targeting the readers will be incorporated, and graphic version for PC and non graphic text only version for mobile.
-- magnify, bookmarks, and other functions, etc.

Really cool. I hope the manga artists continue supporting this.