Reading Manga On The Kindle: Maximum Ride Review

While the Kindle has kept me from being buried alive by my books, the comics and manga just keep rolling in. For as long as I have owned my Kindle, I have dreamed of reading manga on it. I live in Manhattan in a teeny-tiny studio. Similar to many urban bookworms, I fight a loosing battle with available space for new books.  Every purchase is bittersweet because I don’t really have any place to put these acquisitions.  Manga purchases though are the worst because while I love the printed format, I only get about a half hour’s worth of enjoyment out of something that will take up space on my shelves indefinitely.  I would have loved for the Kindle to have been able to come in and be my savior.  Alas, not yet.

There are obvious reasons to be skeptic of Amazon’s e-reader as a platform for manga.  The artwork after all is the most powerful and compelling component of visual storytelling, and on the grainy screen of the Kindle 1 and 2 the fine ink strokes of an artist’s hand are not likely to translate well.  But when I stumbled upon the first volume of James Patterson’s Maximum Ride the Manga in the Kindle store, I still bought it without a moment’s hesitation.  I just had to give this a try.

I’m not going to really review the story itself this time.  As Maxiumum Rise is a graphic novel adaptation of James Patterson’s YA noveland I haven’t read the prose of Maximum Ride yet, I don’t feel like I could comment on it fairly.  The initial attraction for me was that here was the first manga that I had seen for the Kindle published and it was published by Yen Press.  I really love that house.  Though they come no where close to the volume that is manga giant Tokyopop, they’ve always put out a consistent and original line.  Small as they were in the beginning, they’ve taken some rather daring risks and I really respect them for that.  But that’s a convo for another day.  I could gush about Yen Press for quite some time.

I had little difficulty falling into the action of reading the manga over the e-reader.  I’ve been a web-comic reader for years so the idea of reading comics over a computer device is not all that unnatural.  To the Kindle’s credit I wouldn’t say the reading experience was horrible, but it does have a ways yet to climb.  It was much better than I expected. The scenes were reasonably clear and my eyes followed the story panel by panel without much stumbling.  The only confusion occurred whenever there was combat involved because the dialog got completely lost in the action. To fit on the Kindle screen, the image has to be reduced from what you would ordinarily see in a printed tpb.  That made for some very tiny type.  And though I have artificially perfect vision, my eyes really strained to make sense of what might as well have been kanji for all I could tell in places.  Now on a 1st generation Kindle I could not zoom in on the picture in order to enlarge the type.  To be fair though, the 1st generation really wasn’t designed to support graphic novels.  There have been other articles claiming that significant improvement was made n the second generation to better allow for manga and graphic novels.  And I believe you can zoom in, though don’t quote me on that.

I had to really struggle to read this volume and I definitely put in more than a half hour in order to do it.  I enjoyed it however, despite the challenges, but I’m not convinced yet that the Kindle is the place where the digital comics revolution is going to occur.  I would consider buying more comics for my Kindle; however, if a series grew into a property that I well and truly loved, I would likely switch back to paper for that line.  If you feel differently though, let me know and be sure to check out Tumor when it first pubs exclusively for the Kindle through Archaia with a HC run to follow. The first issue will be reportedly free, with the seven subsequent issues priced at .99 a piece.

/End of Line

~ L.

Chinese/Japanese E-reader looking as doughty as Kindle

 Chinese IT company, Founder Group, unveiled it’s E-reader last month for Chinese and Japanese markets.  On appearances alone, the device looks like nothing more than a clone of Amazon’s Kindle.  PW reported on this in July and notes however that the device does have two internal differences that set it apart from it’s American predecessor.  

“By using a SIM card, contents can be directly downloaded to the terminal, while its cellular modem means wireless downloads will not, unlike the Kindle, be restricted to only one network.  The device is also configured to display double-byte characters – essential for reading scripts in Japanese, Chinese and Korean characters…”

But bleck…couldn’t they have improved on the design at all?  I really love my Kindle, I am glad that I have my 1st generation device.  I wasn’t a fan of the design choices made in the 2nd gen. The screen feels smaller, the type is noticeably less legible, it feels like there is a lot of wasted space inside that 

I’m really wondering whether the graphics will be of a high enough quality to legibly display the intricate characters of asian languages and wish I could have found a better picture with type displayed.  Based on the limitations of the orignal camera and my own screen resolution this new device doesn’t look like it stands a chance of being widely accepted.  Legibility is such a huge obstacle to overcome for e-readers.  No matter how cool the bells and wistles are that adorn a devicer, reading is first and formost an experience.  If the experience is a struggle or gives the reader a migraine, it won’t be one to repeat. 

Furthermore this device has to contend with the superior abilities of cellular displays in Japan and China and the mobile publishing industry.  I have been constantly amazed by how clear the screen displays were on the Japanese phones I’ve seen.  Unless this photo is just really, really bad, the display on this reader does not appear to hold a candle to them.  What then is the motivation for the consumer to buy a device like this when the keitai shousetsu (cellphone novels) market is a bit older, more consistent, and advanced market.  

Orbit $1 Dollar E-books – The Night Shift

Orbit’s August selection is available now, The Night Shift by Lilith Sinclair.

The summary I’m putting up goes from the Little Brown UK because it is far more descriptive and thus convincing than what’s currently up on Orbit or Amazon.

Summary: Jill Kismet is a dealer in dark things and demon slayer, and it’s her job to patrol the nightside. In the cold pre-dawn, Jill is called in to assess the aftermath of a particularly savage cop-killing. Under the haunted eyes of the forensic techs, Jill picks up the stench of hellbreed and something else – something dangerous and tainted. But this makes no sense as hellbreed always work alone, distrusted even by their own kind. Jill’s a Hunter, trained by the best, but she’s in over her head. Welcome to the night shift …

Kindle App for the iPhone

Something of only minor signifigance is causing me some anxiety. Amazon recently launched an application for Apple’s iPhone which now allows users to synch up their Kindle’s to their iPhones and for iPhone users to read the same conetent available on the Kindle Store.

The program, which can be downloaded from Apple’s online application store, lets iPhone and iPod Touch users read the same electronic books, magazines and newspapers that Kindle owners can buy on Amazon.com. As with the Kindle, the iPhone app lets users change the text size on the screen, and add bookmarks, notes and highlights.

….the new application will show books in color that were developed that way. This is unlike the Kindle 2, which has a 6-inch screen that only shows content in shades of gray.

The application does not include the text-to-speech feature Amazon built into the latest Kindle, which can read books aloud, sparking concerns among authors worried it would undercut separate audiobook sales.

Did you see that? COLOR

So while we wait for Kindle Color, the iPhone application at least get’s the ball rolling. It will be interesting to see if Kindle begins to distribute digital comics and graphic novels through the Kindle Store now that they have a platform on which the medium can be enjoyed in all its 4 color glory.

The application will not enable iPhone users to directly access the Kindle store, yet. I could see that coming though somewhere down the road if this app. kicks off.

Honestly, this could be nothing but a brief sales bump for Apple and Amazon, but I swear I just have this feeling.

***Fantasy Geek Warning: The following may make no sense to you, and I don’t care. :p ***

I guess the most appropriate analogy is that it is like the dice are rolling in my head, a la Mat Cauthon style from the Wheel of Time. When I read this article from the AP, they just stopped. Like something was just decided.

/ End Nonsensical Anecdote

I saw the iPhone as the biggest competitor to Amazon’s Kindle, even more so than the Sony. One day soon, I’ll do a whole post on that. I’m not completely anti-Sony, I just think it has a specific place in the market.

Apple’s marketing teams have a tremendous knack for making their products hip and appealing. I saw them as having the potential to make reading “cool”, or cooler at the very least. Indy cool perhaps. They also excell where Amazon bombed: with a sleek, simple design. In many ways the iPhone is a much more appealing high end gadget and reader.

There is another side to this argument.

I have happily taken to e-books, but I don’t think I could make the jump to reading on my phone…not yet. There is, however, an entire market for that. Multi-million dollar companies are run off a Blackberry so I suppose reading for entertainment’s sake isn’t that far of a stretch. You still have to be the type of person for that, and not everyone is. So while the iPhone was Amazon’s competition, it was also targeting a different audience making it a little less threatening to the e-retailer. Each company pulled in a piece from two different pies.

But now: one pie. Additionally, these two powers whom were thought to be the strongest competitors are playing…nice. I really don’t know what to make of it, or how long this playground friendship will last, but a cold chill tells me that Amazon suddenly got a little more powerful today, as if we needed that.

“It’s as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced… ” Obi Wan Kenobi (Star Wars)

/End of Line

~Darcy

Orbit’s One Dollar E-books: March Offering

I completely forgot about this in February, but it’s truly a great promotion for fantasy fan’s an e-book readers. This month Orbit is offering up Karen Miller’s Empress, Book 1 of the Godspeaker Trilogy. The $1 dollar e-book is available on Amazon, Sony, and Booksonboard.com.

Available for one month only!

Kindle Talk Silenced

-gags- Oh god, that title reeks of melodrama. I’m sorry, but it is late after all.

Anyway, as posted in the Wall Street Journal and elsewhere on the net, Amazon has announced that they will be giving both publishers and authors alike the option about whether or not to participate in the Kindle Talk feature.

The retailer, which makes the popular Kindle electronic-book reader, announced late Friday that the company is modifying systems to allow authors and publishers to decide whether to enable Kindle’s text-to-speech functionon a per-title basis.

Amazon began its press release, released late Friday, with tough talk. “Kindle 2’s experimental text-to-speech feature is legal,” Amazon wrote. “No copy is made, no derivative work is created, and no performance is being given.”

But then the company says: “We strongly believe many rights holders will be more comfortable with the text-to-speech feature if they are in the driver’s seat.”

They are in essence giving in (at least partially) to the Author’s Guild’s demand to kill the Kindle Talk feature that accompanies that was to be a feature of the second generation of Kindle.

Now, why is everyone surprised? Of course they caved. There was some merit in the argument brought forth by the Author’s Guild. Although Kindle Talk was by-the-book legal, it would have of course eaten into the sales of audiobook at least among Kindle users. The climate of this economy is such that the courts would have likely sided with the Author’s Guild in order to protect audiobook industry had the Author’s Guild followed through and brought an anti-trust lawsuit against Amazon. Honestly, no one wants to hear about another struggling industry. We’re all in a panic enough already. The audiobook industry might in no way be as important as the automotive and technology industries, but it does account for roughly $1 billion dollars in sales annually.

Let’s also not forget that Amazon owns Audible. I don’t believe for a second that Amazon would have kept a feature like that around, long-term, if it did begin eating into their own profit. The new feature was more of a reel to lure you in. Interesting and innovative, I have to hand it to them there.

Does it suck for the Kindle consumer? You bet. But guys, remember, we’re still a very small sub-sect of a very small minority, readers. The Author’s Guild is much more powerful. And truthfully, if it hadn’t been this, it would have been something else that killed Kindle Talk. Time perhaps. Just ask Kindle Now Now why don’t you? Oh right…you can’t.

/End of Line

~ Darcy

Amazon Kindle Keeps Rocking the Boat

The highly anticipated Kindle 2.0 is finally on it’s way to us. If you haven’t seen it yet, you can read about it on the main page of Amazon in a letter from Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos.

Kindle 2.0 on Amazon

The new device looks like it addresses most of the design & hardware issues considered problematic in the first generation. Longer battery life, larger basic memory, crisper text. The device has grown sleeker itself, and is now about as thin as a magazine or pencil. Hopefully, they fixed the darn battery plate. I love my kindle. I don’t mind the size of it like some who think it too cumbersome. (I feel like I’m a reading a book when I’m holding my kindle. And that feeling is important to me.) But the battery plate is really annoying and such a stupid design flaw to let slip past production.

No color screen; however, despite the progress made in color e-ink this year. I’m actually happy about that. I hate it when companies punish the early adopters by releasing the new, shiny product on the heels of the first gen. $400.00 was a lot of money for me to lay down on an electronic device. Mentally, I’ve been dreading the Kindle 2.0. I’m just not ready to be feeling out-of-date and second rate.

Kindle 2.0 is neither more or less expensive than the first generation. I expect it will take a price drop soon, after the initial sales die down following the release. Amazon looks to be playing it safe with this device that is supposedly doing so well. On the one hand everyone is happy, and on the other, it makes you wonder how well the device is really doing.

This post has so far been very negative. Don’t get me wrong, the Kindle is a wonderful gadget. I would recommend one to any, and in my opinion it is the best e-reader on the market. But the new Kindle is non-threatening, maybe some would think underwhelming. There was a lot of build up and speculation surrounding the near mythic Kindle 2.0, and the expectations out grew the product I think.

I am happy though. I will go to bed tonight, curled up with my little electronic white book, content without visions of color screens tempting my pocket book.

Others however…not so much.

Kindle 2.0 still managed to stir up quite the controversy, basic as the new update is. A new feature in Kindle 2.0 which converts text to a voice format allows users to listen to the books they’ve bought. The audio book buisness is feeling quite threatened, and honestly, rightly so.

Kindle 2.0 doesn’t do anything illegal by this because no electronic file is permanently created (I don’t think). The text-to-voice features is considered more of a public performance. The same as if someone read the book aloud to you. Regardless, it still is going to hurt audiobooks sales.

Even the Author’s Guild is getting involved in this battle. Because if the audiobook go under, audiobook royalties disappear with them. So of course authors and agents are going to fight this.

Who is to say what will happen. But in my experience with Amazon Kindle;s experimental features, it will blow over, and dissapear soon enough. Curse you all for taking away my Kindle Now Now! If you don’t know what Now Now was; it was a feature on the Kindle allowing you to send questions in Amazon and answers would be delivered electronically. I used to use that sucker like a GPS. And it was free. Did I mention awesome?

And did you know that the answer to “What is the meaning of life?” can be find in a Wikipedia article on Religon! I didn’t…until Kindle Now Now that is. Wiki is my meaning of life. Oh yeah.

/ End of Line

~ Darcy

I can haz Inkheart plz?

So I finished two kindle books  on my currently-reading-list in the past few days.  (At any one time I’ll be reading five books.  I have book ADD.)  So I thought to reward myself by buying a new book for the kindle.  With Inkheart just five days away, it seemed perfect.  I want to see the movie; however, I should be a good little bookworm and read the book first.  The publisher will surely have put out an e-book format with the movie just around the corner ….

“WHAAAAA!?  What do you mean ‘Inkheart’ does not match any items in: ‘Kindle Store’?”

I did not see that coming.  I really didn’t.  Now that the series is over, demand for these books is only going slow down after the movies’ release.  This was the last chance to capitalize on the current hype in electronic sales.  Electronic sales right now make up only a small contribution to the bottom line for most publishers so yeah, maybe it is just not that important.  But doesn’t every little bit help?  I don’t know what the publisher was waiting for unless there was a contractual problem with the digital rights.  Since Inkheart is originally a german book, perhaps Scholastic didn’t get english electronic rights.  

Who knows, but no new book for me.  Blargh.

/End of Line

~ Darcy

Nintendo Enters the E-book Buisness

From the Guardian:

“The creator of Donkey Kong and Super Mario is hoping that Austen and Dickens will prove as great a pull to computer game fanatics. It has worked with HarperCollins to select 100 titles – from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea to Gulliver’s Travels, Pride and Prejudice, A Tale of Two Cities and Treasure Island –which will be available in a single software package for the Nintendo DS costing around £20.”

OMG, yes!  This is exciting news, and it makes so much sense.  The DS is cheap, user friendly, light… in short everything that the present e-reader are not.  My only worry would be the quality of the display, and of course over long periods of time the reading experience would be much harder on the eyes.  I do like the recommendation/mood feature in this program.  Can you imagine what amazon/the kindle store might be like with this sort of feature?  I mean, the “Amazon recommends” feature is usually pretty good, but some days I am craving something outside of my purchasing box in which case the website is no help.

Sword of Truth Novels Soon To Be Available As E-books

Terry Goodkind’s Sword of Truth novels will soon be available for the Amazon Kindle.

And on the Kindle only.  This is quite an exclusive for Amazon.  The interesting thing about it is that Goodkind has chosen to publish the electronic formats of his series with a publisher called RosettaBooks and not Tor, the original publisher of the print volumes.  I’m rather sad though.  It would have been cool to see what Tor could have done to push the electronic format of the series especially since the launch of the oh-so-fantastic Tor.com.

This situation is interesting because here we have an A-list, bestselling author choosing a smaller publisher.   With medium size publishers offering higher royalty rates to authors there is some powerful incentive out there to jump the conventional ship since the traditional distribution advantages that the large publishers held are not as relevant in the digital arena. 

Kassia Krozer at Booksquare, blogs about it, bringing up some very interesting points and questions.

“Why should an author give over his or her epublishing rights to a traditional print house? What advantage comes from this sort of arrangement? I am not asking a rhetorical question. In a new distribution landscape, what advantage does a traditional, print-based publisher offer?”

What I’m hoping we’ll see are traditional publishers really embracing digital technologies and coming up with new innovative marketing techniques, but…sometimes I don’t know how soon that’s going to happen.  I’m a student right now in a publishing program.  It both amazes and frightens me to see just how techno-phobic/illiterate some of my classmates can be. 

The large conglomerates will always have the advantage of being able to do more marketing for their big name authors than smaller houses will.  But, just because traditional publishers have the money, it doesn’t mean that the little guys can’t go toe-to-toe with them.  The internet makes it so much easier for medium-sized and small publishers to reach potential new customers, and a certain level of competition in a market is healthy.