Hey, sorry about the lack of link-post today—I was unusually busy with other projects this week. Regular linkage will return tomorrow. Also, I upgraded WordPress over the weekend so images don’t work—they will be back soon, I promise.
But! Here’s some news from a quarter that has been rather quiet lately, Seven Seas. It seems they are putting their manga on the Kindle, at the low, low price of $3.50 per volume, which they claim is the lowest price of any manga publisher.
Hmmm… They may be right, although Netcomics prices their books at a quarter a chapter/$1.25 a volume. But you don’t get to keep them. And I’d have to do a points-to-dollars translation to think about Digital Manga’s system. But as far as the iPod/Kindle goes, most of the manga I have seen have been 99 cents a chapter, which is 4-5 bucks a book (the first chapter is usually free).
All the details are below the cut.
Seven Seas’ Manga Titles Come to the Amazon Kindle
(LOS ANGELES, September 9, 2009) – Seven Seas is pleased to announce the release of three of its top-selling original manga series on the Amazon Kindle and through the iPhone/iTouch’s “Kindle for iPhone” application. Amazing Agent Luna Vol. 1-5, Aoi House Vol. 1-2, and Aoi House In Love! Vol. 1-2, along with Christopher Rowley’s Arkham Woods, are now available on the Kindle at the extra low price of $3.50 per volume (200 pages each), making Seven Seas’ Kindle editions the lowest priced manga from any publisher.
“The pricing of our eBooks was a really important point for us as we wanted to make our digital titles affordable. Print editions represent a higher value to today’s consumer, so we decided to price digital editions realistically, and set them several dollars lower than their hard copy counterparts. Digital content should be more of a low cost impulse buy, where you pick something up and can enjoy the heck out of it for a few hours,” says Adam Arnold, Senior Editor with Seven Seas Entertainment. “If Kindle eBooks are successful, then we’ll look into releasing more titles in this format, including some of our best-selling Japanese series.”
Amazing Agent Luna, with more than 75,000 copies in print, is one of Seven Seas’ premiere original manga series. The series features 15-year-old Luna Collins as the perfect secret agent, grown in a lab from the finest genetic material and trained since birth to be the U.S. government’s ultimate espionage weapon. But now, she has been given an assignment that will test her abilities to the max—high school!
Aoi House, which was published in four volumes and serialized in Newtype USA, was picked as the #3 best manga of the year by IGN.com. In Aoi House, a raucous harem comedy, Alex and Sandy are two normal guys just trying to get through college, until their troublemaking hamster, Echiboo, gets them thrown out of their dorm. With nowhere else to turn, the boys move into an anime clubhouse where five crazed yaoi fangirls call the shots!
Finally, Arkham Woods, by acclaimed science fiction novelist Christopher Rowley, is an original manga tale of supernatural horror inspired by the Cthulhu mythos of H.P. Lovecraft. Kirsti Rivers, an L.A. teenager, is suddenly transplanted to the small New England town of Arkham Woods. Kirsti and her mom, Victoria, have to clean up and sell the old house left to them by Silas Scadmore, Victoria’s eccentric uncle. But from the hidden recesses of the house, Kirsti and her friends unwittingly unleash and ancient evil that could spell the end of the world—unless they can find a way to stop it first!
LINK: http://www.gomanga.com/kindle/index.php
Look for more Kindle editions of Seven Seas titles in the near future.
About Seven Seas Entertainment, LLC
Established in 2004, Seven Seas Entertainment is devoted to producing original manga, comics, graphic novels, and youth literature, and bringing the best in Japanese licenses to North American audiences. The company’s current line-up includes such original manga properties as Amazing Agent Luna, Aoi House, Arkham Woods, Destiny’s Hand, Hollow Fields, and It Takes A Wizard; the stunning vampire manga Dance in the Vampire Bund that’s soon to be a hit anime series; and Rachel Roberts’ best-selling YA novel series Avalon: Web of Magic. Seven Seas’ web site, www.gomanga.com, is a daily stop for thousands of visitors eager to read manga online and contribute to an ever-growing forum community. Seven Seas Entertainment is currently partnered with Tor/Macmillan and have collaborated on several series such as Afro Samurai, Hayate X Blade, Inukami!, and the upcoming Wicked City novel series by Hideyuki Kikuchi.
