Twitter Not Helping Me Much…Maybe???

I’ve been experimenting with Twitter to broadcast my scanlation releases and looking at my blog analytics, Twitter is completely ineffective.  Of the 69 sources of visits to my blog, Twitter accounted for 1 out of the over 2000 visits to my anime and manga blog last week.  Most of the visits to my blog originated from the popular manga websites, Google searches, links from other people’s blogs, or people directly going to my blog.

And here comes the VERY BIG BUT

There is a big unknown, though, with respect to Twitter.  I often don’t directly “follow” people on Twitter because I don’t want to broadcast to the world or the person that I’m following them, so instead I pull an RSS feed of the tweets into Outlook.  Clicking on link from Outlook gets counted as a “direct” visit to my blog.  I don’t know how to get information on pulls from RSS feeds, so I have no idea who pulling RSS from my Twitter or my blog.

Soooo….now a simple comparision:  there’s a BIG jump in visitors from the popular manga sites on days when I release compared to days in between releases.  On the days that I release, 70 – 80% of traffic comes from those sites.  On the days in between most of the traffic comes from Google searches and direct visits (about 50% combined).    I tweet the release at time of the release, so from this I conclude, that Twitter is most likely ineffective and the best way to get the news out about my scanlations is to go where the audience is and that appears to be the popular manga websites and their forums.

I don’t know how Twitter is working for other people who are trying to promote themselves or their products.  But this is my story and I imagine it’s not an uncommon one.  What does this mean for Twitter?  Well, it may not be the best tool for advertisement as hoped, but I think it needs more time and some serious studies to make a conclusion either way.   As always, its good to know where your audience is and to tap into those sources.  Following that logic, if your audience isn’t on Twitter, you certainly aren’t going to bring them there and it’s probably best not to waste your resources on maintaining a Twitter account.  A good way to find out if people are tweeting about you or your product is do a search of Twitter and see what comes up.  I did is for myself and my “product” and not much came up.   As for my future on Twitter: the experiment continues …

Naruto Shippuden on Disney XD in October

Thank goodness Disney bought a clue!  I hope they don’t butcher the show too badly in translation.  (I wonder how they are going to handle the juggy Hokage and alcohol usage, plus, every once in a while Naruto goes “dark” and very bad things happen).  I have only watched the first episode of Shippuden and I wasn’t impressed.  I watched the first 4 or 5 seasons of the first show, and got tired of that whiney brat Sasuke.  It didn’t look like Shippuden was any different.  But what does it matter, I’m not the target demographic.  I will say, though, in terms of the other shows out there a 6 -14-year old boys could be watching, this isn’t bad.  Next Disney XD needs to get “One Piece,” something with Gundams, and “D. Gray-man.” (The current series “07-Ghost” is a really good one).  Although, I imagine if a Gundam Space (or land) opera showed up, it would capture girls and grown-ups too — nothing hooks people like the “Gundam Seed,” “Code Geass,” and “Full Metal Panic.”  I call that great family time around the flat screen!

Ahaha!!! I think Disney could do well to grab the girls they don’t already have with some Shoujo goodness.  It’ll give girls some animation to turn to when they grow out of the Princess madness at the ripe old age of 8.  I remember loving Sailor Moon as a tween/teen.  They could jump on the vampire bandwagon with the two seasons of “Vampire Knight” available.  “Earl and Fairy” was quite dreamy and oh, and “Tail of Saiunkoku” … my otome heart sighs and thumps loudly … Ah, and then there are a ton of series that appeal to males and females alike like “Blood+” and “School Rumble.”

Oh that note, anime I’m currently watching:

• 07-Ghost
• Guin Saga
• Hanasakeru Seishonen
• D. Gray-man
• Princess Lover
• Umineko no Naku Koro ni
• Valkyria Chronicles
• Wolf and Spice (season 2)

Of those, “Guin Saga” is by far the best, but I imagine it would have limited popularity amongst some very nerdy adults unless it was turned into a live action show.  (Naris is AWESOME!!!  Beware of beautiful men.  I also love the Leopard headed man!!!  That show rocks!!!).

Disney Buys Marvel

Soooo, the business pundits are saying Disney’s answer to entertain for boys is Marvel Comics.  Oh my gosh are the pundits wrongs!  The folks that follow Marvel are well into adulthood and are most likely cringing at today’s news.  I have no idea what Disney plans for Disney XD to capture 6 -12-year old boys.  I do know, though, that the current animated series based on Marvel character are on Adult Swim, meaning they are intended for a male audience 18 and older.  I still maintain that Disney should turn to Shonen anime and extreme sports.

So what do I think Disney is up to?  I think they are grabbing profits from established movie franchises like “Iron Man” and “Spider Man” and putting a lid on the other studios distributing those movies.  But that’s just my humble and largely uninformed opinion …

Manga Scanlation

I suddenly find myself in the world of manga scanlation.  It is a world I never intended to walk into because I feel torn about the copyright issues.   However, I feel something needs to change with the way that manga is distributed.  Manga online seems natural to me.  Because it is good online and there are people like me who can put out and English version of a manga online, it seems like it should be done.  The problem is the original authors and artists of the manga need to be paid for their work.  I, too, would like to get paid for my work, but currently their is no mechanism in place to facilitate this.  Instead, we, in the US particularly, have to wait about 6 months for the manga to come over here.  For the most part the mangas are localized for whatever the publishers think a typical teenager would like and then compiled into volumes, usually ~200-pgs in length, that are priced from $8 – 11 each, making them out of reach for most teenagers.  This is why there is fan scanlation.  But, also, in a sense, those of us who can pay for the paperback books are subsidizing those that read online and those that read the book in the store but never make a purchase.  This ends up going badly because the publishers find themselves unable to make money and end up dropping a manga mid-series.  This also limits the number of series that make it to the US because it’s a huge investment to run a batch of books.

I like the operating model of Netcomics.  They work on a micropayment system in which the user is charged 25-cents per chapter for 2-day access to read the chapter.  The manga and manwha are released simultaneously online in their native language and English, so the users always have the latest updates to their favorite stories.  I understand that this may still be too much for teenagers and this is still a barrier to teens because most folks under 18 don’t have a credit card.  Beyond that, not everyone who reads manga in English is in the US.  Actually, I get people from all over the world reading my blog.  I can’t say these people have credit cards, nor can I say that 25-cents US is trivial in all countries.

There’s also the example of Crunchyroll in the anime world.  They went legit after many years of illegally distributing anime for profit.  They use a subscription model.  They are now partnered up with the producers of anime series like “Naruto” and fan translators to bring viewers nearly simultaneous Japanese and English releases of some very popular anime series.  The TV producers have decided to cooperate with the fansubbers rather than fight them.  All they ask is that fansubbers hold off on distributing the episodes for a week.  During that week, folks that have a Crunchyroll subscription can watch the show.  After the week, it’s a fansubbers free for all.  I think, though, the transition for Crunchyroll was quite simple because they had the subscription and the distribution infrastructure in place.  I salute Crunchyroll and the TV producers for coming to a happy win-win-win solution.

I often thought about how to make this a win-win-win solution for everyone with respect to manga.  I like both what Netcomics and Crunchyroll has done.  I also like manga online because paper-based manga is a huge tree hog.  The monthly and bi-monthly manga magazines I buy are like phonebooks!  They quickly accumulate and eat vast amounts of space.  The little paperback volumes can accumulate quickly too because there are usually 10+ volumes for each manga series.  TokyoPop and Viz have made small efforts to put some of their manga online, but for the most part they are short teasers to hook customers into buying the paperback volumes.  Also, I find both publishers website extremely difficult to use.  Then I think about what’s nice about the aggegator sites.  Here’s a short list:

• They have built-in readers to view and navigate quickly through the manga series
• They have drop dead easy to use uploaders so people can upload scanlations
• They have wonderful and engaging forums for fans to discuss the manga
• They have VAST libraries of manga to explore , which,  of course, means they have easy to use and effective search built in

What these sites don’t have is a payment infrastructure.  Again, the problem is that the Internet requires credits of some sort and most people under 18 only have access to cash.  Which brings to mind an idea:  Why doesn’t Paypal sell debit cards at grocery, convenience, and discount dept stores like Target and Walmart?

Well, I’ve rambled enough.  I’m sorry if I don’t have a coherant thought yet about this beyond the need for readily available debit cards for those who may not have a credit card or a bank acount and the need to put manga online rather than on paper.   I would like to see the manga publishers work with some of the fan groups to get more manga out, quickly, to fans.  I would love to see the artists get some money from their worldwide audience.  I would love to see the translators earn a some from their hard work.  The problem is now that people, myself included, are used to free manga, what it going to make them pay for it and how much can be charged — what’s the pain point?

Ouran Wallpaper: More fun with Photoshop

As I post this, I realize that I have no where on any of my formal websites to display this stuff. Yeeks, I’ll figure out something by the end of the week. Anyhow, here’s the Haruhi wallpaper. I like this image of her with sheep (mostly because I adore sheep). So I made the image to look like it was cut out of paper.  Here’s the original image:

This was tough, because the image quality of the manga magazine was very poor.  I had to clean up a lot!

Here are some links to the nether regions of one of my websites. I’ll update this once I get something formal going.

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