THE BRIDGE

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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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DeNA and Docomo joint venture empowers amateur comic and novel creators

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Everystar is a joint venture between DeNA and NTT Docomo that allows people to publish and distribute their own comics and novels for consumption on mobile devices [1]. While most of the content is available for free, some of it is paid as well, with those who sell their works collecting 40% of royalties from published works. Normally those publishers are professionals, but today it was announced that Everystar will be allowing all users to publish and collect 80% of their royalties for a limited time campaign. The promotion will run until December 31, 2013, during which time if any user wishes to sell their content on the Everystar platform, they can opt to do so. To date there are more than two million works listed on the site, with some notable success stories. For example, the King Game keitai novel saw great success on the platform, and even went on to publish on Amazon, subsequently selling 4.6 million physical books and comic books. The Everystar service sees over one million daily unique users, which makes it a valuable outlet for aspiring creators to reach an audience. Having originally launched back in 2010, it’s already a profitable business for its…

everystar-2

Everystar is a joint venture between DeNA and NTT Docomo that allows people to publish and distribute their own comics and novels for consumption on mobile devices [1]. While most of the content is available for free, some of it is paid as well, with those who sell their works collecting 40% of royalties from published works.

Normally those publishers are professionals, but today it was announced that Everystar will be allowing all users to publish and collect 80% of their royalties for a limited time campaign.

The promotion will run until December 31, 2013, during which time if any user wishes to sell their content on the Everystar platform, they can opt to do so.

To date there are more than two million works listed on the site, with some notable success stories. For example, the King Game keitai novel saw great success on the platform, and even went on to publish on Amazon, subsequently selling 4.6 million physical books and comic books. The Everystar service sees over one million daily unique users, which makes it a valuable outlet for aspiring creators to reach an audience. Having originally launched back in 2010, it’s already a profitable business for its operators.

Over the past few years I’ve developed the habit of referring to DeNA as just a mobile gaming company. And while gaming is still its bread and butter business, it’s interesting to see that company actually has diverse internet offerings, with services like DeNA Shopping, its Groovy music app, and its social network for seniors called Shumito Club.

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  1. The venture is 70% owned by DeNA and 30% by Docomo.  ↩