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Japanese publisher lets readers tweet out their favorite manga page

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Japanese publisher Kodansha is making aggressive moves toward digital recently. Our readers may recall we wrote about their partnership with Line’s novel service back in June. Another initiative from Kodansha is its mobile app ‘D Morning’ provided in cooperation with internet portal Excite Japan. There is a weekly comic book entitled ‘Morning’ that has been in print since 1982. Since then, the comic book has attracted so many manga fans of all ages, especially men. D Morning is the digital version of this comic, and works as a subscription-based app. The application was released back in May and provides about 500 pages from popular comics such as Shimakosaku and Uchu-Kyodai. Users of D Morning can enjoy the latest issues of comics every Thursday at 12am, faster than anybody else. The two companies just updated the app, with a unique feature that lets users share their favorite page from a selected comic to social networks such as Twitter and Facebook. Readers can tweet out their favorite quotes or pictures that they find especially moving. This feature is exclusive to iOS users for now, but the Android app will see an update sometime in October. D Morning can be downloaded for free,…

D-Morning

Japanese publisher Kodansha is making aggressive moves toward digital recently. Our readers may recall we wrote about their partnership with Line’s novel service back in June.

Another initiative from Kodansha is its mobile app ‘D Morning’ provided in cooperation with internet portal Excite Japan. There is a weekly comic book entitled ‘Morning’ that has been in print since 1982. Since then, the comic book has attracted so many manga fans of all ages, especially men. D Morning is the digital version of this comic, and works as a subscription-based app.

The application was released back in May and provides about 500 pages from popular comics such as Shimakosaku and Uchu-Kyodai. Users of D Morning can enjoy the latest issues of comics every Thursday at 12am, faster than anybody else.

The two companies just updated the app, with a unique feature that lets users share their favorite page from a selected comic to social networks such as Twitter and Facebook. Readers can tweet out their favorite quotes or pictures that they find especially moving. This feature is exclusive to iOS users for now, but the Android app will see an update sometime in October.

D Morning can be downloaded for free, on both iOS and Android. The first download comes as a free issue, but subsequent downloads will cost 500 yen (about $5) per month. The back catalogue, going back to the time of registration, is available as well.

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Apple announces paid content for iBookstore in Japan

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Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) has released an update to its iBooks application, which finally introduces paid content for users in Japan from the iBookstore. The update also includes improvements for Asian language books, and ostensibly that includes Japanese. We heard early reports about this development back in December, with Nikkei writing that Apple had 80,000 titles ready to go from local publishers. We’re not sure what the official number of offerings is, but the iBookstore now offers a wide variety of manga and novels, including big name titles like One Piece. CNet Japan notes that publishers on board include Kodansha, Kobunsha, Gentosha, Shueisha, and PHP Institute. The Japanese ebook scene is a notoriously difficult one for Western companies to penetrate, and Amazon can attest to this as its Kindle ebook reader took forever to arrive. This was reportedly due to long, tedious negotiations with Japanese publishers who are are resistant to having their industry disrupted. Apple, no doubt, had work hard to get past those same issues. (Via Tuaw)

japan-ibookstoreApple (NASDAQ:AAPL) has released an update to its iBooks application, which finally introduces paid content for users in Japan from the iBookstore. The update also includes improvements for Asian language books, and ostensibly that includes Japanese. We heard early reports about this development back in December, with Nikkei writing that Apple had 80,000 titles ready to go from local publishers.

We’re not sure what the official number of offerings is, but the iBookstore now offers a wide variety of manga and novels, including big name titles like One Piece. CNet Japan notes that publishers on board include Kodansha, Kobunsha, Gentosha, Shueisha, and PHP Institute.

The Japanese ebook scene is a notoriously difficult one for Western companies to penetrate, and Amazon can attest to this as its Kindle ebook reader took forever to arrive. This was reportedly due to long, tedious negotiations with Japanese publishers who are are resistant to having their industry disrupted. Apple, no doubt, had work hard to get past those same issues. (Via Tuaw)

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