The Manga Business Goes Digital

Acquiring light users by displaying one panel at a time
Mecha Comic

Mecha Comic, operated by Amutus Corporation, is a service that was initially aimed at feature phone users. Rather than displaying several panels arranged on a single page, as is the standard format in Japanese manga, the service adopted a format in which one panel is displayed at a time on the screen of a mobile device. Mecha Comic established a method of displaying manga optimized for mobile devices in a manner that differs from that of Korean webtoons.

The eBook distributor that helped to popularize free promotional access to the first few volumes of a series
Media Do

Media Do is a key driver in the digital manga business, having partnered with several hundred stores, platforms, and publishers, including LINE Manga, as their digital distributor. For example, their strategy of boosting digital comic sales by offering free promotional access to the first one to three volumes of a series, which would have been impossible in the print manga business, became popular and widespread due to the company’s contributions in the area of systems and operations.

The emergence of artists who earn their living through digital self-publishing, without the need for publishers
Miso Suzuki

In 2013, Miso Suzuki earned 10 million yen in one year when he turned his manga Genkai Shūraku (Girigiri) Onsen [Hot Spring in a Village on the Verge of Disappearance] into an eBook on Kindle Direct Publishing. This became a pioneering example in the establishment of the business of independent manga artists offering and selling digital comics without going through publishing agencies.

Twitter manga posted daily
Twitter 4-koma

Twitter 4-koma (@twi_yon), managed by Star Seas Company, generally posts story-based, four-panel manga on Twitter every day, one page at a time. Back in the days when manga was only available in print form, weekly magazines were the fastest way for manga to reach readers (excluding the four-panel strips in newspapers). Using Twitter has enabled artists to publish works daily and create serial manga while checking readers’ reactions and comments in real time.

Reading manga in a news app
SmartNews’ manga channel

Aiming to replace paper newspapers, Korean web portals NAVER and DAUM have begun publishing webtoons on their sites in place of newspaper comics. In Japan, the news app SmartNews has created a “manga channel” that makes manga easily accessible to businesspeople for browsing alongside the news.

Digging up works that never made it into book form
Manga Library Z

Manga Library Z, operated by J-Comic Terrace Corporation, digitalizes works of manga that are out of print or were never converted into books or eBooks and makes them available for free online. It also aims to counter the restrictions that Amazon, Google, and Apple regulations place on expression in Japanese manga. Through this service, manga fans discovered manga that had never been published in book form, such as Ren-chan Papa by Takeshi Arima (Sogo Tosho, 1994), causing a buzz on social media.

Achieving simultaneous distribution worldwide in multiple languages MANGA Plus by SHUEISHA

 MANGA Plus by SHUEISHA is a manga distribution service launched by Shueisha in early 2019. It releases serial manga published in magazines such as Weekly Shōnen Jump and Jump Square in other countries simultaneously with their release in Japan. Not only does this serve to deter circulation of pirated versions, it also has enabled the manga Spy x Family by Tatsuya Endo (Shueisha, 2019), serialized in Shōnen Jump+, to achieve international popularity despite the fact that it has never been adapted into an anime.

Manga videos, a new form of expression
FermiLab

YouTube is a hotbed for digital pirated versions of comics, but it also has mediated the creation of “legitimate” new content. After the YouTube channel “FermiLab” established a method of presentation in which original works of color manga were accompanied by voiced dialogue in the form of a video, these “manga videos” have become commonplace as a new form of expression in digital comics.