They opened it up for test drives a few months ago, and now DMP has opened up shop for real at emanga.com. The site is a combination of rental and purchase models; you buy points and use them to get access to an online title for 72 hours. If you want to read it again, you pay a discounted price and you get unlimited access. That means you can re-read the manga forever, as long as the site is up—there doesn’t seem to be a download option.
Digital has beefed up the yaoi content with a total of 13 titles, one of which, L’Etoile Solitaire, is free for a limited time. They offer free previews of some of the others. The current offering of non-yaoi titles is somewhat disappointing—just four how-to-draw books. Digital does some interesting but hard-to-find titles, and it would be nice to see some of them offered online. Click for the full press release.
Digital Manga Inc.’s Online Manga Site eManga Open For Business
(Los Angeles, September 23, 2008) – Digital Manga Inc., one of the industry’s most unconventional and innovative companies, is pleased to announce that its online content service eManga has completed its beta stage and is now open for business. Launched last month, eManga is the industry’s first publisher-sponsored manga rental site. The site offers many titles published by Digital Manga, Inc., making them available for rent at a low price. Users can also access free samples of all the titles.
On eManga, content is not downloaded, but is streamed through the Adobe Flash player, which means that users can access their library wherever they have an internet connection. The customized reader also supports extra features, such as a panel-by-panel mode that helps users easily follow the flow of a story. Additional features and performance improvements are constantly being added, and users are encouraged to shape the development process by providing feedback and suggestions.
For a limited time, the standard rental price has been lowered to 300 points for 72-hour access. Users can also “keep” their favorite titles by re-renting them at a discounted price, which means that they have unlimited access to that content. Currently, eManga offers points in four different packages. The standard package costs $10 for 1000 points, but higher packages come with free bonus points.
New titles are being added on a regular basis, and the site will feature not only manga and novels, but also will introduce original creator content. For a limited time, L’Etoile Solitaire by Yuno Ogami is being offered for free in its entirety.
The eManga website can be found at www.emanga.com .