Ken Akamatsu’s free manga distribution service “J-Comi” has launched (in beta form) to much fanfare with the complete Love Hina collection, but Akamatsu is publicly lamenting the fact that it seems all the users are too miserly to buy anything from his affiliate links, putting the project’s future in doubt before it is even out of beta.
He worries about the state of affairs in a recent Tweet:
“W-wait! We have over 450,000 downloads of Love Hina but not a single purchase on our Amazon Affiliate account!? This won’t even do for a test, come on, buy something!”
2ch is less than sympathetic towards this “affiliate begging.” It also questions his wisdom in attempting to sell people copies of a manga which is out of print, available dirt-cheap second-hand, or already owned by many of his readers, or expecting them to start by buying the last volume of a different manga entirely.
Another possibility is present, as Amazon’s affiliate tracking statistics are not real-time and lag a day or so behind actual results, so his sales may simply be lagged – though the fact that no-one involved with the project seems to know this is hardly reassuring.
For those not familiar with the system, Amazon only pays out if a user buys something after visiting through a link (and only within 24 hours), and affiliates are in competition with each other as the last link used prior to the purchase will generally get all the sales commissions in the basket.
Amazon.co.jp also pay by far the least of any of the Amazons, so it would probably not be a terribly lucrative option for a business of this type compared to the other advertising options on offer.
Fortunately, Akamatsu does seem to have some other advertisers so all is not lost, yet.
In other comments Akamatsu has suggested not only would he like to try hosting other out of print manga, if possible he would like to try doujinshi as well (though these are a legal minefield), but he suspects the complexities of regional licensing rights (they are owned by different companies in each territory) may preclude any international service for manga.
Such talk may well be premature – if he cannot secure a revenue stream the site will never be viable, and the marketing acumen on display so far does not bode well for J-Comi’s future.
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That's kinda sad for him... but I still lol'd.
I didn't expect anything else from those greedy japanese, or so they would say...
Money always money ...
Well, if he was asking for donations......
What is this buying he speak of?
-shot-
Next week: "Pleas donate: A personal appeal from J-comi founder Ken Akamatsu"
Well I guess he would make more money if they downloaded from his site and then just donated X dollars/yen, instead of giving X to amazon to buy something they don't really need and then amazon giving a little cut to the site.
Though getting people to donate would be very troublesome.
J-Comi itself takes 0% commission with the advertising revenue going to the authors, so maybe some people would be willing to donate to it.
Although so far the only author is also the site owner, so maybe not...
dont current webcomics in america pay enough for some people to live off the income? is it that fucking hard to set up a system like that for a manga? seriously, the fuck is he doing, his manga got 450K downloads, if it was a web comic site that would be the equivalent of 90million page views, in one fucking day, you telling me he cant tun profit off that kind of bandwidth and 450k unique views?
Views don't mean shit if they dont buy anything from the ads (at least as far as amazon is concerned).
Also 450k downloads != 450k downloaders and I have no idea how you're turning 450k downloads into 90 million hits.
Well what did they expect, luring in people expecting not to pay anything for what they came for.
I was under the impression he had gotten ahold of some 'per hit' ads or some such that virtually guarantees payment over a certain amount of hits per day. Or something... honestly I'd love to know more about how one can do effective internet advertising on their web pages and get payments OUTSIDE of porn sites. Anyone know where to find info like that?
Well, webcomics make their money on merchandising, selling prints, stickers, tees, etc.
He ought to try that.
Selling fashionable (couldn't tell which gender it was for) underwear as a tie-in to a harem manga series? I mean, the ads are in the pdf, even.
Seriously poor product placement, imo.
If he makes a picture of Reimu holding a small donation box on the front page using his artstyle, I wouldn't mind coughing up $50.00...
Oh, and there better be EXPLICIT waki exposure~
*licks rim of helmet*
450K x about 200
a page hit add can get between 1$ per 1000, up to 179$ per buy
I'm sorry you just can't put up a site like this then immediately bitch that *free* isn't really free. And that you've got a suck profit-model expecting all these click-throughs to just happen. Wait a month anyway you big baby.
I just wish him the best. People keep ratting on these mangaka like they are rich and hold onto vast empires of money-raking ventures, but it's just not true. These artists needs the support and I'm sad to hear the naysayers think it's some exploit by a rich man to sell goods that are equivalent to 'second hand goods'. Where is the fan-love in all that?
Shippoyasha
15:12
when they ditch publishers, go online, and deliver 1-2 pages a day, ill throw them a few $ through donations, but if they bitch on behalf of publisher they can go fuck themselves.
this guy needs to get his buisness model to include ads on the page that are bought, 1$ per 1000 page views is the worst i have ever seen ads go for at worst he could make 450$ at best he could make 45000 it depends on how they are set up.
At least Japanese also love free things, so 2ch cannot blame us on manga scan site like onemanga / mangatoshokan etc. heh.
Except here the stuff was given away so no, it's not the same.
It's funny because that's pretty much exactly what would be said. That or commentary about thieves/beggers , etc , etc.
lulz, as if you don't just pirate your anime and manga.
Look in the mirror.
Sharring is carring lads
...but nobody carres.
And those Japs accuse US of piracy!? Whatta bunch of hypocrites.
Oh yeah like we still don't pirate a shit-load? In case you haven't noticed HE put those up FOR FREE, hence why everyone downloaded it, it's not piracy if you give it away.
Srsly, no reason to lol. He had the right idea but he's doing it wrong. He should 1- use p2p to distribute and cut costs, 2- have general ads to support the site and 3- add the foreign audience.
Hope it works out somehow.
Hit reload and 2-4 posts pointing out all the same type of crap is on sankaku are deleted.
Hypocritical beyond all belief..
"come on, buy something! My wife is asking for a new hand bag!”
Your avatar + comment = facepalm priceless
I already have love hina bought, in spanish. I'll try in japanese now.
The idea is great but the quality of the pdf is shit. I can barely read the furigana...
Really? I can read it just fine. I DL the HD version.
That's strange. I downloaded the HD version too, which seems to have each page at a resolution of 827×1170 pixels.
It's not as bad as "barely readable" most of the time, but it sure could use some more detail, especially when it comes to youon and dakuten marks.
Yeah, after reading some of vol. 1 I can see what you mean. There some furigana I must guess what it is, but most of it is OK.
There's a zoom-option.
I wish him the best of luck.
Me too! He's a living treasure.
And then they come and all us thief hah...see what they do when they can.
I salute the poor guys.
Can't complain of piracy when you GIVE IT AWAY, no one to blame but himself.
I'm not sure Amazon affiliate links are the best method of gathering revenue these days...
Kinda sad for him.
It's no mystery that our society devaluated intellectual property to the point most of these kinds of endeavors need something "extra" to make the few that actually put their money where their mouth is carry it on their backs.
Now... comes this guy and offers nothing but old manga and expect it to be a huge success in a couple of hours?! Anyone even closely interested in any of the titles currently offered already bought the damn thing most likely. He seems to be suffering from the MPAA disease where he thinks every DL translates to a possible buyer.
I am still rooting for him, but would someone please slap him across the face and bring him back to 2010?!
He may just be judging it after too short a time.
Now I know the example I'm about to bring up might not be the best to compare, but MMORPGs take more than a year to even recover back just the capital spent(FFXIV's supposed to take over 5 years of continuous subscriptions to begin raking in profit). J-Comi here is just barely getting started.
J-Comi's marketing team needs to pump up advertisements in mags, newspapers and TV to create more awareness. Give out leaflets. Organize an event or a contest to give people more reason to log on to his site other than the barebones product. You know: ESTABLISH THE BRAND...
Or maybe J-Comi doesn't have a marketing team, or of he does, a bunch of fresh graduates who is still wiping their nose with what they should do as marketers.
He's too stressed about Negima's schedules (he said so on Twitter). Hope he get a beer, get drunk and forget about his problems.
It's only that his manga is reaching the public that wouldn't buy his manga, he should be happy about it.
He should be happy that out of 450 thousand people none of them like his work enough to think it might be worth any money?
Indeed, because these people could also be reading any of the thousand of webcomic, youtube or niconico videos and online news that compete for their attention every single second.
Think about this, these are not paying readers, he didn't lost anything, these are people that out of an uncountable number of free content available decided to read him.
I would be glad if that happened to me.
When you give it away for free you can't complain when no ones buying.
Sos un Dios ;D
Dude... no offense... but it's Love Hine. Everyone who wanted to buy Love Hina bought it years ago. Who else is going to buy Love Hina?
Tasteless people.
You, sir, can fuck right off. That series introduced me to manga as a whole, and without it, I wouldn't have started reading and watching any form of anime. It's a multi-award winning series and it's what put Akamatsu-senpai on the map.
"Tasteless"? Somehow I get the feeling many of the millions of people who bought it or read it will highly disagree with you.
Someone who wants to read a kickass manga, and didn't know about LH.